Reflective Reflective TeachingTeaching

Reflective Reflective TeachingTeaching

Thomas Farrel compares teaching in a non reflective way as the specific case of an “experienced” mom and housewife. He states (2003:14):

One day a young girl was watching her mother cooking a roast of beef. Just before the mother put the roast in the pot, she cut a slice off the end. The ever observant daughter asked her mother why she had done that, and the mother responded that her grandmother had always done it.

Later that same afternoon,the mother was curious, so she called her mother and asked her the same question. Her mother, the child’s grandmother, said that in her day she had to trim the roasts because they were usually too big for a regular pot.

Teaching without any reflection can lead to“cutting the slice off the roast,” and can also lead to burnout on the job. One way of identifying routine and of counter acting burnout is to engage in reflective teaching.

Reflective Teaching

Teaching is a complicated activity. Schulman (1987, 15) considers that it involves:

comprehension, transformation, instruction, evaluation, reflection and new comprehensions.

Reflection enables teachers and student teachers to:• diagnose and understand their classroom contexts and students’

learning better, • put their students’ learning at the heart of the teaching-learning

process, • develop a rationale for their teaching and • take informed specific actions and make sound decisions in the

classroom

This is believed to lead to new comprehensions of:• purposes, • subject matter, • students,• teaching and • self and • consolidate new understandings and learning,

through strategies such as documentation, analysis and discussion (Schulman, 1987).

In other words, teachers are required to use their growing ‘knowledge base’ (Schulman, 1987) to identify problems emerging in their classrooms and schools through ‘reflection-in-action’ and ‘reflection-on-action’ (Schon, 1983) and try to solve these problems through continuous reflection and professional and critical inquiry into their own practices (Schon, 1983, 1987);

‘Good’ teaching is hard to define and describe and there will always be room for discovering, inventing and refining one’s teaching (Schulman, 1987).

Professionals practising the scholarship of teaching:

• Focus on change; • They develop their practice through a cycle of action,

reflection and improvement. • They investigate the relationship between teaching and

learning.

Learning to pose questions about teaching and learning is a starting point in the scholarship of teaching.

Gathering evidence, interpreting it, sharing results and changing practice, continue the process.

Writing a teaching diary – Think © BBC | British Council 2004

Writing a teaching diary

Here are some general questions to get you started:

Lesson objectives• Did the students understand what we did in the lesson?• Was what we did too easy or too difficult?• What problems did the students have (if any)?• Was there a clear outcome for the students?• What did they learn or practise in the lesson? Was it useful for

them?

Activities and materials• What different materials and activities did we use?• Did the materials and activities keep the students interested?• Could I have done any parts of the lesson differently?

Students• Were all the students on task (i.e. doing what they were

supposed to be doing)?• If not, when was that and why did it happen?• Which parts of the lesson did the students seem to enjoy

most? And least?• How much English did the students use?

Classroom management• Did activities last the right length of time?• Was the pace of the lesson right?• Did I use whole class work, groupwork, pairwork or individual

work?• What did I use it for? Did it work?• Did the students understand what to do in the lesson?• Were my instructions clear?• Did I provide opportunities for all the students to participate?• Was I aware of how all of the students were progressing?

Overall

If I taught the lesson again, what would I do differently?

So…what are we waiting for??

Let’s start reflecting!

Bibliography:

• Farrel, T. (2003) Reflective Teaching. The Principles and Practices. English Teaching Forum

• Schon, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

• Schulman, L. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57 (1), 1-21.