This paper is informed by Deweyean pragmatism, critical pedagogy, Marxist humanism and social constructivism, all of which see teacher professional learning as a process of constructing knowledge and identity through critical interdependence. In addition to presenting the philosophical root of the reflective approach to teaching and the structure for engaging student teachers in reflective processes, I present the outcome of my own and my colleagues' attempts to unlock the reflective potentials of student teachers at a poor teacher education faculty in Ethiopia and a theoretical/methodological framework to deal with the reflective data. I hope that teacher educators who work with student teachers in the practicum can benefit from the experience presented in the paper. The implication of the paper for teacher educators is that before they complain that student teachers are unreflective, they should set clear objectives and expectations for themselves as well as their student teachers and supply their student teachers with methods of structuring and evaluating their reflections. They also need to be careful and flexible when they employ theoretical frameworks proposed by some teacher educators to identify, structure and determine the reflective levels of what their student teachers write.