Peer Coaching: A More Beneficial and Responsive Inquiry-Based Means of Reflective Practice

Abstract

The aim of this study is to consider a way of developing and enhancing the process of reflective teaching. It is worth mentioning here that there are various ways of promoting reflective teaching in a teacher development program like journal writing, action research, diary writing, teacher development groups, class observations, and critical friendships. But since all of these procedures treat reflective practice largely as an individual, introspective process; peer coaching as a way of collaborative thinking as well as bilateral coaching with its dynamic nature allowing its participants high degrees of dialogical negotiation, therefore it seems to outweigh the aforementioned inquiry-based model of reflective practice. As a result, the present paper both argues and illustrates that how engaging reflective practice in such a model leads to more fruitful and beneficial insights due to the fact that new insights are constructed as a result of dialogical inquiry.