In former times, requirements for teachers to become reflective were connected to the moral goods of education and were concerned with developing ethical and caring teachers with capabilities to think and reflect on their practices. Reflection, reflexivity and critical reflexivity, and the role of value systems and ethics in education, has its origins in the work of Dewey and experiential co-enquiry and has generally been considered an important feature of teacher education programmes in higher education. However, the case for reflection and reflexivity has not always been grasped by every teacher educator and policymaker as the same thing and it has proved rather elusive. Functional notions of schooling differ from any understanding of education as an emancipatory and societal practice. Different groupings of educationalists and theorists share an interest in teacher reflection – communitarians, positivists and critical scholars – and each school of thought has a different emphasis.