Term 3 Week 7: Reflective Teaching - Exploring our own classroom practice

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Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about it is a process of self-observation and self-evaluation. We identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching.


Why it is important?


Many teachers 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 focussing 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.


  • If a lesson went well we can describe it and think about why it was successful.

  • If the students didn't understand a point we introduced we need to think about what we did and why it may have been unclear.

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

Beginning the process of reflection


You may begin a process of reflection in response to a particular problem that has arisen with one or your classes, or simply as a way of finding out more about your teaching. The first step is to gather information about what happens in the class – peer observation, student feedback.


What to do next


Once you have some information recorded about what goes on in your classroom, what do you do?
Think You may have noticed patterns occurring in your teaching through your observation. You may also have noticed things that you were previously unaware of. You may have been surprised by some of your students' feedback. You may already have ideas for changes to implement.


Talk

Just by talking about what you have discovered - to a supportive colleague or even a friend - you may be able to come up with some ideas for how to do things differently. If you have colleagues who also wish to develop their teaching using reflection as a tool, you can meet to discuss issues.


Read

You may decide that you need to find out more.


Ask

Pose questions to colleagues, websites or blogs to get ideas from other teachers.


Conclusion


Reflective teaching is a cyclical process, because once you start to implement changes, then the reflective and evaluative cycle begins again.

SO:

  • What are you doing?

  • Why are you doing it?

  • How effective is it?

  • How are the students responding?

  • How can you do it better?

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