The Reflective Teacher
Your early childhood education studies will provide you a knowledge base and professional dispositions that will continue to be informed by your experiences as a teacher and curriculum developer. Excellent teachers are also reflective, purposefully thinking about the curriculum decisions they make and their teaching in three principal ways (Schon, 1983, 1987; Winter, 1998; McAlpine, Frew, & Lewis, 1991). You could describe these modes as advance planning, in-action decisions, and debriefing. In other words, you should think about your work before, during, and after you do it.
Reflective teachers who think about their work at the highest level are metacognitive, thinking not only about what they do but also about the process they use to make decisions, thus developing an internal dialogue built on insights and close examination of their actions. This critical reflection process includes (1) identifying beliefs and attitudes, (2) applying insights from teaching to modify assumptions on which those beliefs are based, and (3) adapting practices to be consistent with revised beliefs (Mezirow, 2000).