Research suggests that the formal socialization teachers receive in teacher education programs may be the least influential factor in determining their beliefs about teaching and pedagogical practice. The beliefs prospective teachers have developed about teaching as a result of their long immersion as students in the culture of schooling appear to have a profound influence on the way they teach and the way they think about teaching. The majority of teachers and prospective teachers initially demonstrate a tremendous resistance to the notion that students possessing a sense of agency can be empowered to take responsibility for constructing their own understanding and, ultimately, determining the direction of their own lives. It is argued that teachers' beliefs are culturally constructed ideological systems, frequently unconsciously held, pervading their entire ways of knowing and acting, not just their explicit philosophies of teaching and learning. This fundamental resistance to reflective teaching is illustrated with extensive excerpts from a professor's reflective journal about students in an inservice teacher education class. The method used in this class was Paulo Freire's approach to critical pedagogy which attempts to enable teachers to develop more enriched ways of knowing, a more empowered sense of agency, and more progressive pedagogical beliefs. The course syllabus is appended. (JD)