EDU406 Complete Handouts

Handouts of Critical Thinking and Reflective Practice (EDU406) Lecture 1

The Place of Reflective Practice in Teaching

The Place of Reflective Practice in Teaching

Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about if it works - a process of self-observation and selfevaluation. By collecting information about what goes on in our classroom, and by analyzing and evaluating this information, we identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching. Reflective teaching is therefore a means of professional development which begins in our classroom.

1. Why it is important
2. Beginning the process of reflection
3. Teacher diary
4. Peer observation
5. Recording lessons
6. Student feedback
7. What to do next
8. Think
9. Talk
10. Read
11. Ask
12. Conclusion

Teachers may already think about their teaching and talk to colleagues about it too. You might think or tell someone that " My lesson went well" or " My students didn't seem to understand" or " My students were so badly behaved today." However, without more time spent focusing on or discussing what has happened, we may tend to jump to conclusions about why things are happening. We may only notice reactions of the louder students. Reflective teaching therefore implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analysing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes.

1. If a lesson went well we can describe it and think about why it was successful.
2. If the students didn't understand a language point we introduced we need to think about what we did and why it may have been unclear.

Q3. If students are misbehaving - what were they doing, when and why?

Benefits of Reflective Practice

The primary benefit of reflective practice for teachers is a deeper understanding of their own teaching style and ultimately, greater effectiveness as a teacher. Other specific benefits noted in current literature include the validation of a teacher's ideals, beneficial challenges to tradition, the recognition of teaching as artistry, and respect for diversity in applying theory to classroom practice. Freidus (1997) describes a case study of one teacher/graduate student struggling to make sense of her beliefs and practices about what constitutes good teaching. Her initial pedagogy for teaching was based on the traditions and practices of direct teaching. Her traditional socialisation into teaching made it difficult for her to understand that her views of good teaching were being challenged in her practice, but the opportunity for exploration through reflective portfolio work enabled her to acknowledge and validate what she was learning. Roffey-Barentson and Malthouse (2009) introduce 10 useful ‗benefits of reflective practice‘ (p 16) which are summarised below:

1. Improving your teaching practice

If you take the time to reflect on your teaching, and reflect on how different parts of what you do work well, where aspects of your teaching can be improved, and how problems which arise could be solved, that is bound to help you to improve your teaching.

2. Learning from reflective practice

There is a good range of evidence that purposeful reflection helps ‗deep‘ learning take place, and for you as a teacher, it will help you to make connections between different aspects of your teaching and what goes on around your teaching. Reflective practice will help you gain new learning and use it in your teaching.

3. Enhancing problem solving skills

When starting off with reflecting on your teaching you may tend to concentrate on problems which arise. By carefully and honestly considering and analysing those problems, you will improve your own capacity to find solutions.

4. Becoming a critical thinker

Critical thinking is about ‗thinking well‘, and ‗taking charge‘ of your own thinking (Elder and Paul, 1994), and reflective practice will help you recognise and adjust what you think to take account of changes in circumstances, and by doing that help you to be better equipped to find solutions which work.