EDU406 Important Questions

What is Reflective Practice?

Reflective practice is an ongoing and dynamic process for the teacher. It involves thinking critically and deeply about what is happening in the class room. It occurs spontaneously, immediately but, also goes in a very planned and structured way. Most importantly, reflection leads to action. Teachers need to value reflection and evaluation of their own practice and their own professional role in the class room. In addition, teachers’ professional knowledge and understanding includes ways to reflect and ways to evaluate what is happening. This is part of the professional role of the teacher.

Teaching is a profession and as such in a professional setting reflection is very deliberate. It is also purposeful. There is a reason for it. It is structured and it links our understanding to theory to practice and also includes deep learning and not superficial learning. Therefore, reflective practices aimed at development …… becoming a reflective practitioner is becoming an excellent teacher.

What are the key words that we can take from this message?

• Mental processing (reflection is structured thoughtful, it is not superficial)
• Better understanding (we gain a clearer, thoughtful understanding of what is happening in the classroom and reflection includes the teacher in the process of teaching)

Reflective practice encourages the teachers to understand their:

learners, their needs and their abilities.

Why Reflect?

Reflective practice leads to

Higher quality teaching and therefore better outcomes for learners.

Awareness for the teachers of the values of teaching and their own beliefs about teaching.

Challenge and to change

More inclusive environments for learners.

Improvement

promotes collaboration between teachers as professionals.

Why is reflective practice so important?

Research shows that reflective practice is crucial for teacher’s learning and for extending their skills as professionals. It is a highly personal process for any teacher and the teacher requires the professional to take their daily class room experiences to internalize, understand them to pull them over in their mind. In this way, it is possible for the teacher to filter through what is happened to focus on what is most important, to understand their personal values and their biases as teachers before deciding how to better move forward as a practitioner.

Research also shows that teachers, who regularly reflect on their teaching, reflect on why they do things and reflect on new knowledge which is being created, use this to achieve the best outcomes for their students.

Reflective practice is a process by which you stop and think and you consciously analyze the decisions you make.

Critical analysis and evaluation for the teachers refocuses the thinking of the teachers and helps to generate the knowledge needed for good quality teaching. We can represent this visually:

• subject knowledge,
• teaching skills,
• interpersonal relationships in the school as well as
• their own personality with a focus on research and teaching.

What Is to Be Gained from Reflective Practice?

Clearly, reflective practice means best practice. It provides a real shift in focus for the teacher away from deterministic views of teaching, a shift in the power of teaching. It creates a general dialogue about what is teaching and learning.

The benefits of reflective practice

Most importantly, reflection helps us as teachers to develop our own learning and provides a teaching framework. Stephen Brookfield (1995) explained this and proposed the following framework. According to him, reflective practice

Allows us to consciously develop our own repertoire of strategies and techniques in the classroom. We can draw upon our teaching and use this in the context and discipline of teaching. Helps us to take informed decisions in the classroom to take the actions which are meaningful and justified and be able to explain these to others. Helps us to adjust our teaching, respond to problems and issues which we have faced as teachers in the classroom. For example, rather than just reacting to a poor evaluation, we investigate and try to understand the underlying reasons for a poor evaluation and use this to take appropriate action.

Helps us to become aware of the underlying beliefs and assumptions that we have as teachers about teaching and learning and as a consequence we can try to understand what we do and why we do.