ABSTRACT
Now that we have laid the foundations for the realistic approach, it is time to pose the question of what we know about the effectiveness of this new pedagogy of teacher education. There are some interesting and informative studies that address this question. These are discussed in section 6.2. However, due to the fact that the realistic approach is relatively new, evaluative studies on this approach are rather limited in number. We can also look for studies showing the effectiveness of a cen-
tral principle in the realistic approach: the promotion of reflection in student teachers on their teaching experiences. Since the beginning of the 1980s, this principle has been adopted by almost all teacher educators, all over the world. However, one of the almost shocking discoveries one can do when starting to screen the international literature on the issue of promoting reflection is that there is very little research on the effectiveness of teacher education programs aiming at the promotion of reflection.
