This popular text provides a clear, succinct explanation of how reflection is integral to teachers' understandings of themselves, their practice, and their context, and elaborates how various conceptions of reflective teaching differ from one another. The emphasis on the importance of both self and context is embedded within distinct and varied educational traditions (conservative, progressive, radical, and spiritual). Readers are encouraged to examine their own assumptions and understandings of teaching, learning, and schooling and to reflect on self and context. The major goal of both this book, and of all of the volumes in the "Reflective Teaching and the Social Conditions of Schooling" series, is to help teachers explore and define their own positions with regard to key topics and issues related to the aims of education in a democratic society. Its core message is that such reflection is essential to becoming more skilled, more capable, and in general better teachers.