EDU406 Highlighted Handouts by Stylish

HANDOUTS

Topic 1 What is Reflective Practice?

➢ Teaching should value reflection and evaluation of their own practice and their continuing professional teachers. ➢ There is one quality above all that makes a good teacher-the ability to reflect on what, why and how we do things and to adopt and develop our practice. ➢ Most teachers spend time thinking about what they did in class but they don‘t always take it a step on their actions and make plans to do things differently. ➢ What is the implication of this for reflective practice? ➢ In a professional setting, reflection is: ➢ Deliberate ➢ Purposeful ➢ Structured ➢ A process which links theory to practice Deep learning. ➢ John Moon says: ➢ ―Reflection is a form of mental processing that we use to fulfill a purpose or achieve some anticipated outcome‖. ➢ 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.‖ (Moon, 2005:1)

Topic 2 Why the interest in Reflective Practice?

In encourages us to understand our learners and their needs and abilities Stephen Brookfield (1995:92) believes that of all the pedagogic tasks teachers face, getting inside students‘ heads is one of the trickiest. It is also the most crucial. Reflective teachers are more likely to develop reflective learners

Why the interests in Reflective practice?

Finally and most importantly, reflective practice is the key to improvement.

Why Reflect?

Reflective practice leads to: Higher quality practice and better outcome for learners Awareness of value and beliefs More likely to challenge and change practices Leads to inclusive environment

Why Reflect?

Reflective practice leads to: Leads to seeking research, resources and advice Promotes collaboration between professionals Why is Reflective practice so important? Research shows that reflective practice is a crucial way of learning and extending professional understanding.

Why reflect?

Reflection and critical reflection are highly personal processes that require the professional to take daily experiences, internalize them, turn them over in their mind and filter these new thoughts through previous lived experiences and personal values and biases before deciding how best to proceed.

Why is Reflective Practice so important?

Research also shows that teacher who regularly reflect on what they do, why they do it and how this new knowledge can b used to improve their practice achieve the best outcomes for students.

The Place or Reflective practice in Teaching

Consider this task to help you understand the place or reflective practice in teaching: a) Make a list of teaching strategies that you have used over the last 2-3 weeks(e/.g small group work, lecture, demonstration). Consider this task to help you understand the place of reflective practice in teaching: b) Analyze each teaching strategy: what is your role, what is the role of the learners, what tasks are used? Consider this task to help you understand the place of reflective practice in teaching: c) Examine one teaching occasion which went ‗badly‘, list the unexpected factors and try to explain them. Discuss with a colleaguehow could you changed your practice? A culture of Reflective practice is essential. Further research demonstrates that in order to provide high quality teaching there must be a commitment to on-going learning, professional development and reflective practice (Comer, 2008: Howard, 2003). This is not necessarily tied to specific training or in-service courses but instead can begin with looking at daily practice and being able to say, ―that hasn‘t gone well, why might that be? Reflective practice is a process by which you stop and think about your practice, consciously analyze your decision making and draw on theory and relate it to what you do in practices. Critical analysis and evaluation refocuses your thinking on your existing knowledge and helps general new knowledge and ideas.

Topic 3 What is to be Gained from Reflected Practice

It provides a real shift in power over who determines what counts as knowledge what counts knowledge. The move is from a deterministic or even patriarchal mentality to one where there is considerable cope for genuine dialogue about the nature of our work.

Achieving Best Practice:

From David Halberstam‘s novel ―The Reckoning‖ Hal Sperlich, an executive of ford Motors, on one of his visits to Japan in the early 1070s, notices that there were no repair bays for defective cars: ― Where do you repair you cars? Sperlich asked the engineer with him. ― We don‘t have to repair our cars,‖ the engineer answered. ― Well, then Sperlich asked ― where are you inspectors? ― The workers are the inspectors,‖ his guide answered. (Halberstam, 1986: 716) During the last two decades, the slogan of reflective teaching has been embraced by teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers all over the world. The move toward seeing teachers a reflective practitioners is also a rejection of top-down forms of educational reform that involve teachers only as conduits for implementing programmed, curricula and ideas formulated elsewhere. On the surface the reflected practice movement involves a recognition that teachers should be active in formulating the purposes and ends of their work. And that they need to play leadership roles in curriculum development and school reforms. Most importantly, reflection helps us to develop our own learning and teaching framework. Stephen Brookfield (1995) proposed the following framework:

What is to be gained from reflected practice?

Stephen Brokfield (1995) purposed the following framework: RP allow us to consciously develop our own repertoire of strategies and techniques to draw upon in our teaching which are relevant to our particular context and discipline. RO helps us take informed actions that can be justified and explained to others and that we can use to generate answers to teaching problems. RP allows us to adjust and respond to issues and problems. For instance, rather than being upset by a poor teaching evaluation. It allow us to investigate and understand what underlies these evaluations and to take appropriate action, which might be to adjust our teaching. RP helps us to become aware of our underlying beliefs and assumptions about learning and teaching so we understand why we do what do and what might need to change. RP helps to promote a positive learning environment. Through reflection, our teaching becomes responsive to student feedback and needs which can serve to build trust in students when they see their feedback is valued and taken seriously through changes to teaching. RP helps us to locate our teaching in the broader institutional and social context and to appreciate the many factors that influence student learning. IN this way reflection helps us to keep our perspectives and to avoid blaming ourselves for every problem that arises in our classrooms.

Topic 4 Advantages and Drawback of Reflective Practice

Critique of Reflective Practice Schon (1983) coined the term reflective practice in his book ― The Reflective Practitioner‖. Reflective practice has been adopted in a wide range of professional group. A number of critiques of the theory of reflective practice have been articulated. Lack of conceptual clarity Too much foucs on the individual Failure to acknowledge on going discourses in practice Failure to understand the complexities of practice We shall look at each of these in turn.

Lack of Conceptual Clarity

What do we mean by reflective practice and indeed what is reflection?

Van Manen (1995) says the nation of reflection is changing and may refer to a complex array of cognitively and philosophically distinct approaches and attitudes. Bleakley 91999) says that reflective practice is becoming a chatch-all term for an illdefined process.