an ahah moment

I love it when I actually come across something in the literature that supports my own thoughts - although having someone else say it first does severely reduce my chance to make an original contribution to the field but one must sometimes win a small battle to continue engaging in the larger war. Yost, Sentner and Forlenza-Bailey note that pre-service teachers must acquire a personally meaningful knowledge base to connect to their experiences in order to produce critical reflection. That's my point! Unless pre-service teachers feel that reflection has personal worth, that it's more than a 3 page essay from yet another education professor, they will never recognize the process as a meaningful contribution to their own teaching. Now, I may not be able to claim that as an outcome of my upcoming research, but I can at least do a little dance that my emerging ideas aren't complete fantasy in the realm of teacher education.