IDENTIFIERS Reflective Thinking

This paper examines collaborative research by a Brazilian public university and public elementary school, highlighting a thematic program of applied research and teaching that addressed improvement in teaching and learning quality through inservice teacher education. The project was designed to build a knowledge base of teacher learning and professional development processes and to define when, where, and how participants would intervene in these processes to refine the knowledge. Researchers examined how the constructive-collaborative intervention, which drew upon reflection of teachers ' practice could help improve pedagogical actions in order to overcome school, teacher, and student failure. Data from descriptive and analytical studies, follow-up studies, ethnographic studies, case studies, observation, diary entries, interviews, and document analysis indicated it was impossible to divide practice and conceptions into reflective and nonreflective groupings. Different levels and types o