Connecting the dots

Reflective practice enables teachers to examine their personal and professional actions and learn from their lived experiences. The study explores teachers’ conceptualizations of reflective practice, its applications, challenges, and opportunities for being and becoming professionals. The overarching research question guides this article—how do teachers’ reflective practices contribute to their development of self-efficacy, emancipation, and empowerment? Grounded on the lenses of transformative learning theory, this study narrates the experiences of three teachers (two females and one male) from different schools and colleges in Kathmandu, Nepal. We have subscribed to the narrative inquiry as a research method to explore and understand teachers’ reflective practices that contribute to their self-efficacy, emancipation, and empowerment development. Data was collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed using themes aligned to self-efficacy, emancipation, and empowerment. The findings reflect that reflective practice fosters professional development by helping teachers find and address their weaknesses, thereby improving their professional practices. For boosting teachers' self-efficacy, emancipation, and empowerment, the study concluded that reflective practice significantly enhances teachers’ professional development by enabling them to analyze and address their weaknesses.