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Reflective Teaching Practice Ideas
Reflective Teaching Practice – Looking in the Mirror. We know the importance of reflecting on our teaching and lessons we deliver, but the actual action of thinking and noting these thoughts can often be rather elusive.
It’s encouraged and quoted in most articles, journals, and on courses but it may be an aspect that is sometimes challenging to manage or complete. We know the importance of reflecting on our teaching and lessons we deliver, but the actual action of thinking and noting these thoughts can often be rather elusive.
Why reflective Teaching Practice?
On short training courses, it should be practised as much as it is preached so that it is embraced and followed by the participants. The action of reflection ‘supports the uptake of new ideas from input (Leather & Popovic 2008), offering a more effective result that teachers will complete these while at work – after the training course, and so adapted to the teacher’s context. Reflection can provide thinking time and so the meaning of the (new) concept is created from within.
Reflection helps us to combine new ideas with professional experience we (may) already have – connecting or responding to aspects we observe. It can also ensure we critically evaluate or make pragmatic judgments and decisions.
Finally, trainers will have a professional effect on what teachers do while reflection can also enhance interaction between them and open up discussion in a two-way approach.
What is reflection in Teaching Practice?
So, what exactly is reflective teaching? Thornbury (2006) neatly summarises it as “when you reflect on teaching, you think back on it, in order to understand it better, and to take steps to improve it. It means being able to think critically about experience, to identify problems, and to ‘re-frame’ these problems… in order to identify possible solutions and to formulate these as a plan of action.” Therefore, it is more systematic, more focussed than just going into the staffroom and announcing that you just had a really great/amazing/awful/horrendous lesson and discussing it with your colleagues, or anyone who has time to listen.
An effective visual model for reflective teaching comes from Michael Wallace who said it was ‘a shorthand way of referring to the continuing process of reflection on received knowledge and experiential knowledge in the context of teaching practice. He created four areas participants can focus on: a) the information or knowledge from input (or seminar) which is professional and valuable, b) the extent to which their own attitudes, values or beliefs are affected by the input or seminar content, c) the understanding of teaching and learning, developed through their own experiences (experiential) and d) broader issues and attitudes that affect teaching practice.
Finally, David Kolb presented his experiential learning cycle that also has some sound processes where a teaching practitioner can reflect effectively:
How to reflect in Teaching Practice:
During a course or regular teaching schedules, reflection opportunities can be challenging to manage or maintain. Time is a major conflict and hurried reflection may not have the best outcome. Furthermore, reflection is known not to come naturally to some and is indeed a skill that may need to be learned or developed. Providing a framework can help as too can collaboration. It is key to regularly give time for reflection and to complete it – provide it some space in the timetable. Journaling or free writing could help with opportunity and creativity too.
Here is a varied list of reflection tasks to help with regular reflection in several different contexts or for different reasons.
Look at notes you made during your teaching day. Choose one thing you found interesting or want to know more about. Write about it for 3 minutes. Why is it important to you? What else would you like to know? Share your notes with a partner. | Think about the whole seminar / lesson. What are you taking away with you? When you go back to your own classroom, what will be your: key? What will it open? power? What will it make work? compass? How will it guide you? trump card? How are you going to use it? |
Reflect on the activities you have done or learnt today: ……would work in my context / with my students because……. ……would work with the following modifications….because…. …..would definitely not work in my context because…… | Remember two key events from your recent classroom teaching with regard to discipline, a problem and a happy event. What was important about them? What does this tell you about your values as a teacher? Write freely for about five minutes. |
Think about a new idea or activity you have learnt from a session that you think will NOT work in your classroom. Why is that the case? Write down the reasons. Use any format you like such as bullet points, a mind map etc. Examine the list once again and try to identify what element/s you would have to change to make it work in your situation. | Talk about the issue of XYZ (e.g. Correcting errors, teaching grammar from rule etc) in pairs. Then individually, write down the most important parts of the conversation. Go over your notes. Underline one thing you strongly agree/disagree with. Write about it again. Why do you feel that way? |
What was the most important thing you learnt today? Either draw a picture or complete the sentences: The light bulb went on when …..and I saw …… The penny dropped when…… and I heard……. | Write down a list of new ideas or applications. Review the list and select an activity that you will use in your class/es next month. How will you implement it? What resources will you need? How will you know that it has worked? |
Take a moment to recall all the ideas or techniques we discussed in today’s workshop. Quickly list as many possible applications as you can for these concepts. | Look back at the reflection tasks of a course. Which is your favourite? Which ones would you use? How did reflection on the activities help you process them, or not? Write freely about this. |
As Tice (2004) states reflective teaching is a cyclical process, because once you start to implement changes, then the reflective and evaluative cycle begins again.
- What are you doing?
- Why are you doing it?
- How effective is it?
- How are the students responding?
- How can you do it better?
I hope you have found something helpful in this blog post. When or what is your next reflection?!
References:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html (Kolb, 1984)
Leather, S. & Popovic, R. Time for Reflection (ETp Issue 55 March 2008)
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/reflective-teaching-exploring-our-own-classroom-practice (Tice, 2004)
Thornbury, S. (2006), An A-Z of ELT. Macmillan
Wallace, M. (1991) Training Foreign Language Teachers: A Reflective Approach (CUP)
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I work at Odils Learning Foundation as part of our Professional Teacher Training Programme. I’m a Teacher Trainer + Mentor – I advise, mentor + train newly qualified English teachers to quickly build confidence towards their teaching dreams! And….I also blog from time-to-time.