31 Reflective Teaching

Dr. Nalina Singh

Inside every great teacher, here is an even greater one, waiting to come out.”

-Author Unknown

Content                     

• Learning outcomes
• Introduction
• Understanding reflection, reflective practice and reflective teaching:
• The process of reflection
• Types of reflective practices
• Modes or levels of reflective thinking
• Models for reflective practice
• Significance of reflective teaching
• Strategies for promoting reflective practice
• Questions to ask for engaging in Reflection
• Conclusion

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

• Understand and define reflection, reflective practice and reflective teaching
• Understand the process of reflection
• Identify different types of reflective thinking
• Identify modes or levels of reflection
• Explain the significance of reflective thinking
• List strategies for promoting reflective practice

Introduction:

When learning is at the center of the teaching enterprise, it is only logical that teachers themselves should never stop learning if they are to address the demands of the changing classrooms. Teachers, whether young or old, new or established, need to reflect on their teaching. It is not surprising therefore that it is a well-established fact in the field of language teaching that teachers must continually work on their knowledge of teaching and learning. This means that they must continually engage in their professional development and work towards improving their own teaching practices. One important way by which a teacher can achieve this is by engaging in reflective practice.

Reflection is an important component of teacher development. It lies at the centre of quality teaching. Merely having years of experience as a teacher is not sufficient to ensure quality teaching. According to Avchdano, 2007, “quality teaching is teaching that addresses students’ needs in their own context…quality teaching should be based on reflection of what happens in the classroom and on how students react to what they are taught … quality teaching is not directed by a book but by the goals and objectives that will help students learn”. Thus, whether a teacher is highly experienced or whether he/she is just a pre-service intern, training to become a teacher, it is import that every teacher reflects on his/her teaching to ensure that the teacher is doing quality teaching.

Understanding reflection, reflective practice and reflective teaching:

Many teachers already think or reflect about their teaching when they say, “My students didn’t understand this” or “My students do not take easily to writing tasks”. Most of the teachers however, do not move a step further to analyse and to closely evaluate their classroom observations. They do not make deliberate attempts to plan their teaching differently with an aim of improving the teaching learning process.

What is reflection? Osterman, (1990) defined reflection as concentration and careful consideration of one’s actions. According to Jenny Moon (2005:1) “Reflection is a form of mental processing that we use to fulfill a purpose or to achieve some anticipated outcome. It is applied to gain a better understanding of relatively complicated or unstructured ideas, and is largely based on the reprocessing of knowledge, understanding and, possibly emotions that we already possess”.

Figure 1: What is reflection?

Reflection has three stages:

• The learning opportunity
• The information gathering and critical analysis
• The changed perspective

What is reflective practice? According to Osterman (1990), reflective practice is the close and mindful consideration of one’s professional actions. The term ‘reflective practice’ was popularised by Schön (1991), popularised the term ‘reflective practice’. He was of the view that coaching could help students learn “the artistry of practice.” For Schön coaching was nothing but a “ladder of reflection” where the students and the teachers reflect on their actions. In other words he believed that by developing the habit of critically assessing one’s own behaviour, one could develop one’s own craftsmanship.

Critical reflective practice is deliberate, purposeful and structured. It is about learning by closely examining our actions. It is about affecting change and improvement in the teaching learning process.

How does critical reflection happen? One reflects when one encounters a problem or when there is a discrepancy between what was expected and what actually occurred or even when there is a perceived gap between the ideal and the real situation. Thus for example, when one encounters a problem, one usually takes a step back and examines the actions one took. One does this, in order to understand the causes or reasons for the discrepancy. One steps back to examine one’s actions as a way of trying to understand the discrepancy. The underlying objective is to understand and weigh the effectiveness of one’s actions. Having thus weighed his/her actions for effectiveness, the individual uses this new perspective to develop alternate strategies aimed at improvement. Thus the entire exercise of reflection is an exercise in critical thinking.

What is reflective teaching? Reflective teaching helps us to become aware of how we teach, the kinds of decisions we make as we teach & the consequences of instructional decisions that we take, on the teaching learning environment. It means thinking about how the materials being presented in the classroom are affected. Reflective Teaching is an approach to classroom teaching where in teachers critically analyze their teaching by collecting data about their teaching, examining the classroom experiences and observations against their attitudes, beliefs and assumptions about their teaching practices and critically thinking about it and evaluating it so that they may make changes for improvement in their teaching.

Reflective teaching is a process of self – observation. It is a process of self-inquiry. It is a process of self-evaluation. In other words, it is about what I as a teacher did in the classroom, why I did it and thinking about whether it was successful. We must think about what happened in the classroom – both from the perspective of teaching and from the viewpoint of learner’s response – and must work towards improving it.

The widely accepted belief that reflection is important for the professional development of a teacher is based on the theory of learning by Kolb who argued that experience was the basis for learning and that learning could not fully take place without reflection (Kolb, 1984). Kolb described the process of experiential learning as a four stage cycle involving four learning modes: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation.

The process ofreflection:

Dewey (1933), Eby and Kujawa (1994), Pugach and Johnson (1990), and Schön (1983) describe a cyclical process approach to reflective thinking. The first step to reflective thinking is the identification or acknowledgement of a problem. John Dewey explains such a problem as a “felt difficulty”. Schön refers to such a problem as “problematic situation”. Thus for both, the initial step of reflection in action is to identify a problem.

According to Dewey (1933), the second stage is that of location and definition of the problem. In other words the problem is understood in this stage by locating where it exists and by defining it. Clarke, 1995; Pugach & Johnson, 1990; Schön, 1987 explain the second step as stepping back from the problem to look at the situation from a third-person perspective so that the problem may be defined or redefined . Eby and Kujawa (1994) suggest that the problem can be defined by dissecting the process by means of observation, reflection, data gathering, and by considering moral principles. At this second stage, the use of context and schema are underscored in defining the problem. The experience or event is compared and contrasted to past events so that the reflective practitioner can come up with possible solutions from past experience. In other words, the reflective practitioner searches for routine solutions to a possibly non-routine solution. The practitioner could also utilise his reasoning coupled with his similar past experiences to generate solutions. According to Dewey, the reflective practitioner applies these solutions to the defined problem and systematically tests their efficacy with observation and further experimentation. Dewey referred to this as a scientific process. The next stage in the process is evaluation. At this stage the implementation process and the consequences of the solution are reviewed. It is at this stage that the acceptance or rejection of the solution takes place. If the solution proves successful, the instance may be stored for subsequent retrieval in similar situations or may become routine (Dewey, 1933). However, if the solution is unsuccessful, the problem could be redefined and the entire process is repeated.

 Types of reflective practice:

There are four types of reflective practices. These are:

Reflection-in-action (Schon ,1983, 1990) : Reflection in action means making decisions about events in the classroom as they happen. According to Schon, to be able to take decisions on the spot in the classroom the teachers need to employ their tacit knowledge. An oft repeated example that is given to explain this is that when we recognize a face in the crowd, we cannot really explain how we recognized the face. We cannot pin-point the separate features. Yet we know. This practice requires that the teacher employs knowing- in–action. The teacher just knows and the teacher takes action in class on the basis of this ‘knowing’.

Reflection-on-action (Schon 1983, 1990; Hatton and Smith, 1995): Reflection-on-action means thinking about one’s teaching after they have finished the class. It is also about giving reasons for one’s actions and behaviours in class. Teachers think back on what they did in the classroom. There is an underlying attempt to discover how knowing-in- action could have contributed to an unexpected action (Hatton &Smith, 1995; Schon, 1990).

Reflection-for-action (Killon and Todnew 1991): This type of thinking or reflection happens even before the action occurs. This is proactive thinking which is aimed at guiding future action. Killon and Todnew (1991) argue that “we undertake reflection, not so much to revisit the past or to become aware of the meta-cognitive process one is experiencing (both noble reasons in themselves) but to guide future action (the more practical purpose)” (p. 15). This type of reflection helps teachers to prepare for the future by utilising knowledge of their reflection from what happened during class (reflection-in-action) and what they reflected on after class (reflection-on-action). Reflective teaching is thus also useful for identifying the inconsistencies between belief and practice.

Action research (Dana and Yendol-Silva, 2003; McFee, 1993; Sagor, 1993; Carr and Kemrnis, 1986): Action research is to investigate in great detail, any one topic related to one’s classroom teaching. First the teacher encounters a problem and recognizes the need to investigate it in order to find out a way of solving it. The teacher then reads literature related to the problem in order to formulate ideas about the way in which to solve it. This stage also includes the teacher talking to colleagues about the problem as they may have advice to give. The teacher then plans how she/he will collect data, once the data has been collected the teacher analyses and reflects on the data the teacher then makes data-based decisions. Such decisions are informed decisions which are not based on feelings or impulse.

The teachers will take more responsibility for their decisions that are based on action research. Action research is also an answer to the concern that teachers’ voices are absent in the literature on teaching (Zeichner & Liston, 1996), Action research sees teachers as professionals who can both pose and solve problems.

Modes or levels of reflective thinking:

Van Manen’s (1977) and Valli’s (1997) frameworks can also be considered here. Although both these frameworks have been criticised for looking at reflection as hierarchical, they are certainly useful in that they describe different aspects of the practice of reflection that are important for teacher consideration.

Based on the work of Habermas, Van Manen (1977) had earlier developed three levels of reflection as a hierarchical structure. Teachers, who reflect on problems at the technical level, reflect with minimal schemata. It is thought that many novice teachers reflect at the technical level because they do not have adequate schemata to deal with educative problems. At the technical level, the consideration is about the effectiveness and efficiency of achieving predetermined goals. There is no focus on the criticism, modification or change of goals. The only thing that is reflected upon is the competencies and processes required to achieve these goals. The second level of reflection is practical reflection. At the practical reflection level, the processes or means by which the goals can be achieved along with the goals themselves are examined and assessed.

The third level of reflection is critical reflection. At this level, not only are processes by which the goals are achieved, not only the goals themselves are examined & assessed but also the moral and ethical considerations related to the problem are reflected upon so as to support student equity, justice, care and compassion

Incorporating many aspects of Schon’s & Van Manen’s frameworks, Valli (1992) described a model of reflection that identifies five levels of reflection. The first level of reflection is technical. This is much the same as described by Van Manen (1977). At this level, the students or teachers or professionals who are reflecting at the first level, match their own competencies to the external goals and competencies of the required job and work toward improving their performance with respect to these pre-determined benchmarks. The second level of Valli’s model, which is reflection in-and-on-action, is taken directly from Schon (1983) and combines the reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. This level highlights the need for an examination and analysis of problem both in the context of the action itself (for e.g. teaching in classroom) and as a reflection after the action or event. Deliberative reflection, which is the third level, requires the teachers to seek and weigh various viewpoints with respect to the pedagogical decisions. This level demands that the teacher or practitioner has a strong academic or research base so that he/she is able to assess the learner needs and is able to develop his/her own pedagogical practice. Personalistic reflection is the fourth level of reflection. This level of reflection requires that the practitioner has an awareness of the impact of emotions and intuitions on his/her own cognition. During this stage of reflection, the teacher utilizes this self-awareness to analyse and reconsider its impact on the teacher’s relationship with his/her learners as also its impact on his/her learner’s personal growth. The final or fifth level of reflection is critical reflection, which greatly follows Gore (1987) and others. The focus, at this level of reflection is on moral, political and ethical issues. This type of reflection promotes the development of open-mindedness, rational judgment and creativity.

Thus we can see that there is considerable overlap in the levels of reflection discussed. However, Vallie’s (1997) framework is the only one that accounts for the impact of emotions, feelings and personal attributes on cognition. It is to be noted that while there are many models of reflection (a few out of which have been discussed here) that give valuable insights into reflection, the reflective process itself is an intensely personal practice. Individual, personal reflection however, in the past, was considered to be prone to individual bias and therefore was taken to be unauthentic and unproductive. According to Kinsella (2001) reflective practitioners reflect on themselves and their assumptions. They use their insights to inform their practices. Vartuli (cited in Heydon and Hibbert, 2010) comments that research literature confirms that teacher’s beliefs are at the heart of their practice. Meyer (1999) states that a teacher develops his/her identity based on his/she own personal feelings as also on how he/she identifies with being a teacher. Although Meyer (1999) separates teacher identity from teacher function, it is clear that these are two sides of the same coin as one cannot but help impact the other. Thus it can be safely said that teacher reflection is of necessity, based in experience and Valli’s (1997) personalistic reflective model could be the way forward for a more authentic, personal reflective model which is more closely related to an epistemological perspective.

Different situations will require that teachers engage in different aspects of reflection. It is important that irrespective of the starting point, teachers, engaged in the process of reflection, need to engage in each of the aspects of reflection described above with a complete acknowledgement of the teacher’s own belief, values and interpretations of what constitutes the role of a professional teacher.

Models for reflective practice

One way of understanding reflective thinking is by understanding the models of reflective thinking. The knowledge or understanding of these models help a practitioner to streamline and to give direction to his/her own reflective practice.

Dewey’s Model of Inquiry

John Dewey was the first one to propose the concept of reflective thinking in his book, How We Think (1910, 1933). Initially, he used the word “inquiry” which he later substituted with “reflective thinking” in his later work, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (1938). According to Dewey (1933), “inquiry” is the “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion which it lends.” Inquiry can be, in this perspective, construed to something that is more active and operational than thinking. It refers to the activity of overcoming a situation of doubt to generate knowledge.

According to Dewey, reflective activity occurs when a person faces a problem or experiences a perplexing or troubling situation. Dewey identifies five phases or aspects of reflective thought. The first phase consists of suggestion. In the ‘suggestion’ phase, the mind leaps forward to a possible solution. In this phase no direct action takes place. It is the phase of anticipatory action.

The second phase of reflective activity is intellectualization. In this phase, the difficulty or the trouble is intellectualized as a problem to be solved; it is intellectualised as a question for which the answer must be sought.

In the third phase suggestion after suggestion come to the mind as ideas for solution to the problem intellectualized. Based on insights, these suggestions get corrected, modified and expanded, until the suggestions becomes a definite supposition or, hypothesis. This hypothesis is then used used to guide observation and collection of factual data.

In the fourth phase this supposition is mentally elaborated upon; the idea is reasoned out. The fifth phase is that of testing the supposition or hypothesis by imaginative action to experimentally corroborate, or verify, the conjectural idea (Ross & Hannay, 1986; Dewey, 1993 as edited by Boydston; Dewey, 1993).

According to Dewey, there are three attitudes that any teacher who wishes to become a reflective teacher should person. These three attitudes are:

Open mindedness:

This refers to being ready to listen to alternative views and possibilities. Open mindedness is an active desire to listen to more sides than one and to recognize the possibility or error. It is to be ready to examine even that which is taken to be natural and right and to take pains to find out conflicting evidences of our educational practices.

Responsibility:

An attitude of responsibility means that the teacher should carefully consider the consequences of her/his classroom actions. Responsible teachers constantly ask themselves, why they are doing what they are doing. The underlying concern is to be mindful of the utility of their every action to the learning goals and objectives that have been set up.

Whole heartedness:

This means that open-mindedness and responsibility should be the control and all defining attitudes for the reflective teacher. If teachers get cowed down by the conflicting institutional realities and demands of senior teachers in the institution and their own teacher education learnings, they will be forced into routine behaviour. If prospective teachers are to be reflective teachers then they must actively and wholeheartedly seek to be open-minded and responsible. They must not quickly adopt belief and practices of senior teachers, with whom they work.

For Dewey, thus, a teacher who possesses attitudes of open mindedness, responsibility and whole heartedness and who has a command of technical skills of inquiry (observation) and problems solving, is the one who is a reflective teacher. On the other hand, according to Dewey, to cultivate unreflective activity is “to further enslavement for it leaves the person at the mercy of appetite, sense and circumstance.”

Besides this, Dewey also views thinking as a process for solving problems that culminates in plans of action and the actual testing of the plans. According to Dewey, it involves a look into the future-a forecast, anticipation or a prediction.

 Schön’s Reflective Continuum and Griffiths and Tann’s (1992) Framework

Schön (1983, 1987) has provided an alternative conception of reflection. According to Schön professionals constantly find themselves in unique situations. He posits that in such situations, professionals tend to utilise their knowledge and past experiences as a ‘frame’ for action. According to Schön, ‘framing’ is an active, experimental and ‘transactional’ process that defines what he calls ‘professional artistry’– ‘the kinds of professional competence practitioners display in unique, uncertain and conflicted situations of practice’(1987, p22). In other words, this is to say that teachers rarely engage in bland routine action, but rather in ‘knowing-in-action’, revealed in the sorts of knowledge that emerge in their ‘intelligent action’ (1987, p25) which is much more than Dewey’s conception of routine action.

Schön thus creates a reflective continuum to explain the notions of ‘reflection-in-action’and ‘reflection-on-action’. Reflection-in-action is about ‘questioning schema of knowing-in- action’ which results in an ‘on the spot experiment’ (1987, p25). Reflection-on-action involves trying to articulate tacit and spontaneous intelligence through language (Furlong and Maynard, 1995) .Schön argues that moving teachers along the continuum from knowing-in- action to reflection-on-action is the way that they gain control of their developing artistry. The process of moving from knowing-in-action to reflection-on-action brings to the surface tacit understandings that can be examined, critiqued, developed and re-framed (Elliot, 1991). In this process, better and more general solutions are developed. These solutions can be applied in new circumstances also. Thus, the ‘frame for action’ keeps developing and a more confident teacher evolves. It may be then noted that the ability to frame problems from different viewpoints is a central, defining characteristic of reflective practice for teachers.

Building on the work of Schön, Griffiths and Tann (1992) have explained through a framework that reflection by teachers occurs in five temporal dimensions. The five dimensions are:

1. Rapid reflection – this refers to the immediate and automatic reflection-in-action
2. Repair- this refers to thoughtful reflection-in-action
3. Review – this refers to a less formal reflection-on-action. This happens at any particular time
4. Research- refers to the systematic reflection-on-action. This happens over a period of time
5. Re-theorizing and Research – refers to long-term reflection-on-action. This is based on well informed academic theories.

According to Griffiths and Tann all these five dimensions are equally important and argue that the neglect of one dimension at the expense of another can prove to be problematic. Teachers should reflect in all of these dimensions at one time or another

 Kolb’s Model

David Kolb (1984) has talked about the ‘experiential learning cycle’. According to Kolb, learning has four phases. First, the learner has a specific experience of learning. The learner, in the second phase, reflects and responds on his/her experience of learning. In the third phase, the learner observes and relates these experiences and observations to the learner’s past experiences and knowledge. In the final phase, the learner identifies the implications for action that can be tested and applied to different situations.

David A. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle ( Kolb 1984)

Observation and reflection, the second phase of Kolb’s (1984) ‘experiential learning cycle’ is quite akin to involving oneself in reflective practice. After a concrete experience that has happened or has been completed in the first phase, the learner observes and reflects on the experience of his/her learning in the second phase. This reflection in the second phase helps the learner to conceptualize and generalize his knowledge in the third phase.

Another model of reflection offered by Driscoll (1994) has a simple ‘what’, ‘so what’ and ‘now what’ process, which enables the practitioner to look at the whole event critically and helps the practitioner to come out with an action plan when faced with a similar situation.

Driscoll Cycle (1994)

The reflection model developed by Gibbs (1988) can be useful to reflect on something unexpected that happened in the classroom, when something went wrong (or perhaps extraordinarily well) in the classroom that the practitioner did not anticipate. Gibbs’ model was developed from an earlier theoretical model developed by David Kolb that describes four stage of experiential learning cycle (1984). Gibb’s model suggests how a full structured analysis of a situation can take place using prompt questions at each stage. Gibb’s model is as follows:

Gibbs’ Reflective Model ,1988

The advantages of using the above mentioned reflective modes are as follows:

• they challenge the practitioner’s assumptions
• they explore different/new ideas and approaches towards doing or thinking about things
• they promote self-improvement (by identifying strengths and weaknesses and taking action to address them)
• they link practice and theory (by combining doing or observing with thinking or applying knowledge)

Significance of reflective teaching:

Reflective practice helps teachers to have a deeper understanding of their own styles, beliefs, assumptions and attitudes. Teachers are largely guided by intuition, impulse or routine. Reflection helps teachers to move away from these regular practices the ‘how’ of teaching to a more critical level of analyzing the ‘what’ and ‘why of teaching. It helps teachers to better understand their role as a teacher.

Reflective Teaching enables the teacher to better affect the teaching – learning process. When a teacher engages in critical reflection, a teacher is able to:

• Adjust his/her lesson plans
• Vary the methodology applied
• Modify activities as per student abilities
• Modify activities as per equipments required
• Assess if the/teaching objectives are being achieved

Reflective practice is the key to a teacher’s professional improvement. Reflective practice can help teachers develop their emotional intelligence, particularly if we also evaluate and consider feelings in our reflection. Daniel Goleman (1995, 1998), who developed the concept of Emotional Intelligence, encouraged the development of self-awareness of feelings and the management of our emotions.

Reflective Practice helps, the teachers to understand their learners’ needs and abilities. There are “different worlds” within a classroom and skilled teachers understand these “different worlds” – their needs, requirements and abilities- and create suitable and effective learning environments and situations around the requirements of their learners.

Also, when teachers are in the habit of reflecting on their teaching, they are likely to encourage their students also to reflect, to evaluate and to improve their own learning. Reflective teaching may thus encourage learners to become reflective learners.

Reflective practice is important also because, it helps the teacher to validate his/her ideals. It helps teachers to respect diversity in applying theory to classroom practice. It makes teachers realize that teaching is artistry and it needs to be worked upon, irrespective of the experience one has.

Strategies for promoting reflective practices: 

There are many ways in which reflective practices can be promoted amongst teachers. Teachers can be encouraged to reflect individually, or in pairs or in groups. They can reflect by writing, or by conversing or by both the means. The manner in which a person reflects depends on his/her own learning style, their discipline-whether written oriented, performance oriented or oral. It also depends on the resources available at hand at the time of engaging in the reflective activity. Some of the strategies that can be developed as good practices for reflection are:

Journal writing: Journal writing is considered to be a valuable tool in developing critical reflective thinking skills. This is because journal writing helps to maintain a record of the significant learning experiences that have taken place. In so doing, journals help the participant to become aware of their self-development process that is taking place for each of them. It provides the writer to express himself/herself in a dynamic way. The journal fosters a creative interaction between the participant and his/her self-development process. A personal diary or journal is a flexible way of reflecting as it does not need to be kept every day. The important point to remember is that it must both describe and examine learning and teaching situations or events closely.

Self-Reports

Self-reporting involves completing an inventory or check list in which the teacher indicates which teaching practices were used within a lesson or within a specified time period and how often they were employed (Pak, 1985). The inventory may be completed individually or in group sessions. The accuracy of self-reports is found to increase when teachers focus on the teaching of specific skills in a particular classroom context and when the self-report instrument is carefully constructed to reflect a wide range of potential teaching practices and behaviours (Richards, 1990). Self-reporting allows teachers to make a regular assessment of what they are doing in the classroom. They can check to see to what extent their assumptions about their own teaching are reflected in their actual teaching practices. For example a teacher could use self-reporting to find out the kinds of teaching activities being regularly used, whether all of the programme’s goals are being addressed, the degree to which personal goals for a class are being met, and the kinds of activities which seem to work well or not to work well.

Video Recording: A video recording of one’s teaching is valuable because it provides a real picture, unaltered by any bias, of how effective the class was. The teacher can view the teaching, for its effectiveness, both from the teacher and student perspective. Additionally, a video can help the teacher in spotting certain behaviours and signs that he/she would have missed noticing in the class. These new observations could prove to be very useful in examining and analysing the lesson effectiveness besides helping come up with solutions. Video recording is used by many institutions to help teachers reflect and come up with solutions to make their lessons effective.

Student Observation: Students notice and observe the teachers. They are ready to give genuine feedback when asked for it. Teachers can ask questions regarding the lesson effectiveness, or whatever else the teacher wishes to get a feedback on, by giving the students simple survey or questionnaires. It is important that the teachers think critically about what questions they would like to ask that would not only give the teachers significant information but also elicit thoughtful answers from the students. Thus it will not only be a learning experience for teachers, but also an indirect exercise in writing for the students.

Peer Observation: Peer observation is a useful way of reflecting as it provides opportunities for teachers to critically view each other’s teaching for different teaching styles, the kind of material used , the organization of the lesson, teacher’s time management, students’ performance on tasks, time-on-task, teacher questions and student responses, the typical patterns of interaction and class participation and so on. In this method, colleagues are invited into the classroom to observe teaching. In this method it is important to keep the environment casual and informal to help the teacher teach and give the colleague an honest perspective of the instruction taking place. Teachers can work in pairs and take turns in observing each other.  Prior to the observation, the teachers should meet to inform the teacher who is going  to observe about the kind of material or lesson being taught, the type of students in the class, the teachers’ approach to teaching ,the student’s typical patterns of interactions in the class and other relevant information. The teacher being observed would also assign the observer a goal for the observation classe/s. After the lesson, the teacher and the colleague who observed the lesson to discuss the observations. Peer observation can help teachers gain great insights into their teaching.

Questions to Ask for Reflection:

Whether a teacher uses a self-reflective journal or is taking feedback in the form of peer observation or student observation, it is very important that the teacher identifies formulates the right type of questions to ask. Given below are a few suggestions for the reader.

• How effective was the overall lesson?
• Did I meet all of my objectives?
• What problems arose?
• What materials that were used, worked in the lesson?
• Which materials did not work in the lesson?
• Where my instructions clear?
• Was the lesson taught at a reasonable pace?
• How can I do it better next time?
• How did I deal with any problems that came up during instruction?
• Was I perceptive and sensitive to each of my students’ needs?
• How was my overall attitude and delivery throughout class?

After finding answers to questions as mentioned above, the teachers can analyse the information. The first thing they should do is look for any recurring patterns. If the teacher video recorded his/her lesson, does the teacher find anything that kept happening over and over again? Do the student feedback forms repeatedly mention the same thing? This means you should try and find a solution to this recurring problem. While there are a number of ways in which one can approach a solution, given below are a few ways in which a teacher can look for a solution:

• Talking to your colleagues about your findings and ask them for advice is one way of finding a solution. Your colleagues might have the same issue in their classroom and give you some ideas on how to tackle your problem
• There are a number of resources online that are freely available. Going online and reading articles and blogs can help you come up with effective techniques that can help solve your situation.
• Interacting with other teachers on blogs and on social media sites. Posting questions on popular forums and blogs also opens up the discussion. These discussions might give you perspectives and techniques that you hadn’t considered before..

The ultimate goal of self-reflection is to improve the way you teach. Through the findings you gather, you may gain the insight you need to take your instruction to the proverbial next level, or you may find that you’re already doing a stellar job. In either case, self-reflection is a technique that can gauge your standing honestly and you should strive to implement it throughout the year. By the time the next new class rolls around, you’ll have a much better wider toolkit to pull from when it’s time to teach that lesson once again.

Conclusion:

Reflective practice for teaching is for those teachers who are disposed to think about their teaching practices, and are willing to put reflective practice into action. Reflective practice challenges teachers who have unquestioned assumptions about good teaching, and encourages them to examine themselves and their practices in the interest of continuous improvement.

Reference

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• Driscoll J. (1994). Reflective practice for practise. Senior Nurse, 13(Jan/Feb)
• Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning in doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. London: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Polytechic.
• Griffiths, M. & Tann, S. (1992) Using reflective practice to link personal and public theories, in Journal of Education for Teaching, 18(1), 69-84
• Hume, A. (2009). A personal journey: Introducing reflective practice into pre-service teacher education to improve outcome for students. Teachers and Curriculum.
• Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as a source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice Hall.
• Moon, J. (1999). Reflection in learning and professional development: Theory and practice. London: Kogan Page.
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• Valli, L. (1992) Reflective Teacher Education. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. van Manen, M. (1977) Linking ways of knowing with ways of being practical. Curriculum inquiry
• Zeichner, K. & Liston, D. (1987) Teaching student teachers to reflect, Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), pp23-49
• Zeichner, K. & Liston, D. (1996) Reflective Teaching: an introduction. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates