The Impact of Teacher Knowledge Seminars: Unpacking Reflective Practice

This paper reports on the learning outcomes described by experienced teachers attending a program designed to enable them to come together to engage in professional development through structured and systematic reflective practice. In the first part of the paper, we look briefly at some of the challenges of defining "reflective practice". We then describe the particular project we worked with, and present the collection and analysis of interviews with seven teachers and survey data from 35 teachers working within and near to schools in Vermont, USA. Six themes emerged from the teachers' responses: (1) Renewed enthusiasm for teaching; (2) Looking at teaching with "fresh eyes"; (3) Shifts in understanding teaching; (4) Becoming more reflective and aware as teachers; (5) Enhancing the quality of student learning; and (6) Building professional communities.