Teaching the Dialectic Process to Preservice Teachers in an Educational Psychology Class.

This paper describes an educational psychology class that helped develop self-reflection in preservice teachers by teaching them the dialectic process of analysis. Students explored the attitudes, beliefs, values, assumptions, and biases they as future teachers would bring with them to classroom interactions with students. As an ongoing assignment, students developed their own philosophies of education. Their first assignment was to create an ideal classroom based on their own experiences. As the semester progressed, students incorporated the various educational psychology concepts covered in class. Another instructional strategy involved providing a rationale for the instructor's assignments and behaviors wherever possible, thus modeling the reflective process sought by the dialectic. The instructor helped students develop dialectic thinking processes via a series of cases focused on classroom dilemmas. Students read and discussed cases in class and wrote detailed case analyses (which the instructor provided feedback on). It was through class discussions that the dialectic process was engaged as an instructional activity. Through repeated exposure in the classroom to this dialectic and self-reflective approach to the analysis of cases, class discussions, and revisions of philosophies, students were able to move along a continuum of beliefs. (Contains 21 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.