The Role of Critical Reflection in

I am an assistant professor of elementary education and reading who is engaged in the preparation of teacher candidates at a large comprehensive college in an urban center. I teach a field-based course on the pedagogies of mathematics and science in the elementary school. Each semester, I work with 16 preser-vice teacher candidates who are primarily in the 3rd year of college, pre–student teaching. Our field-based course takes place in a high-needs school under the general framework of our professional development school (PDS) consortium—a collaborative of teachers, pro-fessors, and principals working together to construct optimal teaching experiences for our elementary teacher candidates. After studying the body of researc