Reflective practise is an important part of being a teacher in today's schools. If done right, it can transform teaching ability.
In this blog post, I critically examine my current process of reflective practise.
What do I currently do?
I have always considered myself to be a relatively reflective teacher and most of my reflection, I believe, occurs while in the teaching moment - "the thinking while doing" type of reflection as outlined by Schon in Finlay (2008). The ability to think on your feet and change and modify lessons, during those lessons, is something that I think most teachers learn through experience. Often, our students and their needs change, and reflective teachers adapt and adjust with these changes.
A few years ago, our school began including reflection time as part of our syndicate meetings. Whereby each teacher would write up reflections about their teacher inquiries and focus students during these meetings. We had found, previous to this decision, that teachers found it difficult to prioritise their reflections and these reflections were written quickly, or just in time for appraisals, rather than an integral part of teaching programmes.
" For busy professionals, short on time, reflective practise is all too easily applied in bland, mechanical, unthinking ways," Finlay (2008). In this way, we are required to keep a written record of our reflections and share these with colleagues. As a staff, we are encouraged to use Tony Burkin's three questions, What is happening? What is not happening? How can I influence or change what is not happening?
When I relate these practises to Jay and Johnson's reflective model (2002), they certainly fulfil the descriptive element of this model and go some way to being comparative, particularly when I am reflecting on what I could change or do better to help my learners.
What can I change or do better in my reflective practise? And how does this sit with relevant theories and research?
Who's voice?
The first aspect, in Jay and Johnson's model, that I think I am missing is to consider my learners and other people's perspectives. As part of my focus writing students' reflection, I sometimes ask the student their viewpoint around what they are doing well and what they want more help with. But when I consider my reflections on my maths focus students, or the students targeted by my teacher inquiry, I am only using my own perspective and viewpoint. So how can I gather their perspectives and viewpoints?
Secondly, as I am sharing my reflections with my colleagues, often a discussion starts, at this stage I am noting down these comments, made by others, which could become a record of critical reflection.
Fook, White and Gardner (cited in Finlay, 2008 p6) conclude that critical reflection "looks at concerns from a wider perspective" and connects "individual identity and social context."
Where's the research?
The second aspect I need to do better is to use current research and theories to influence my thinking and reflections. Trying out different reflective models is one place that I could start as Finlay (2008) outlines "Different models are needed, at different levels, for different individuals,... "to use in different contexts."
There is not just one model for critical reflection. This would help me to improve outcomes for my target students as well as improve my critical reflective practise.
Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. Practice-based Professional Learning Centre, Open University. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf
Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.
In this blog post, I critically examine my current process of reflective practise.
What do I currently do?
I have always considered myself to be a relatively reflective teacher and most of my reflection, I believe, occurs while in the teaching moment - "the thinking while doing" type of reflection as outlined by Schon in Finlay (2008). The ability to think on your feet and change and modify lessons, during those lessons, is something that I think most teachers learn through experience. Often, our students and their needs change, and reflective teachers adapt and adjust with these changes.
A few years ago, our school began including reflection time as part of our syndicate meetings. Whereby each teacher would write up reflections about their teacher inquiries and focus students during these meetings. We had found, previous to this decision, that teachers found it difficult to prioritise their reflections and these reflections were written quickly, or just in time for appraisals, rather than an integral part of teaching programmes.
" For busy professionals, short on time, reflective practise is all too easily applied in bland, mechanical, unthinking ways," Finlay (2008). In this way, we are required to keep a written record of our reflections and share these with colleagues. As a staff, we are encouraged to use Tony Burkin's three questions, What is happening? What is not happening? How can I influence or change what is not happening?
When I relate these practises to Jay and Johnson's reflective model (2002), they certainly fulfil the descriptive element of this model and go some way to being comparative, particularly when I am reflecting on what I could change or do better to help my learners.
What can I change or do better in my reflective practise? And how does this sit with relevant theories and research?
Who's voice?
The first aspect, in Jay and Johnson's model, that I think I am missing is to consider my learners and other people's perspectives. As part of my focus writing students' reflection, I sometimes ask the student their viewpoint around what they are doing well and what they want more help with. But when I consider my reflections on my maths focus students, or the students targeted by my teacher inquiry, I am only using my own perspective and viewpoint. So how can I gather their perspectives and viewpoints?
Secondly, as I am sharing my reflections with my colleagues, often a discussion starts, at this stage I am noting down these comments, made by others, which could become a record of critical reflection.
Fook, White and Gardner (cited in Finlay, 2008 p6) conclude that critical reflection "looks at concerns from a wider perspective" and connects "individual identity and social context."
Where's the research?
The second aspect I need to do better is to use current research and theories to influence my thinking and reflections. Trying out different reflective models is one place that I could start as Finlay (2008) outlines "Different models are needed, at different levels, for different individuals,... "to use in different contexts."
There is not just one model for critical reflection. This would help me to improve outcomes for my target students as well as improve my critical reflective practise.
Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. Practice-based Professional Learning Centre, Open University. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf
Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.
I find it an interesting that your school has decided to incorporate Reflective Time. I'm sure this leads to in-depth discussions? How was the buy-in at the start?
ReplyDeleteI think because it was something that we were doing as a staff and was just expected in the beginning that that year, at appraisals the feedback was there wasn't time to do it. So integrating into our meetings made sense. We have traditionally looked at focus students anyway after professional development on writing with Gail Loane and we had always shared these at syndicate level. We realised, when the new teacher appraisal process etc required reflection and keeping records, that these focus students covered many of the requirements. Adding in our teacher inquiry just made sense really. We have changed from last year, and don't plan to reflect on everything each meeting, but alternate between writing, maths and reading and our teacher inquiry. We had found trying to reflect on our personal teacher inquiries each week didn't work.
DeleteReflection is so important and yet so difficult to fit in. Adding it to meetings seems like a great plan. If you had to give one piece of advice for a school who wanted to implement something similar what would it be?
DeleteI think you have to be careful about tying teacher inquiries too much into school wide focuses - to me that defeats the purpose. They should be about what the individual teacher wants to inquire into and is passionate about - otherwise they just become stale and artificial. There are other ways to get teachers reflecting on school wide initiatives I think. Having ten minutes at the start of a meeting to write up your reflection works well - and having a time limit on sharing is also valuable. As you have other points to address on your syndicate or team agenda.
DeleteLastly, having some 'across team' time to share reflections is important too - so we plan in PLG groups twice a term where you are sharing and reflecting with a different group of teachers.
I love that your school has begun to include reflective time. That must be invaluable!
ReplyDeleteJac, I totally agree with your comments around time constraints in our busy teaching lives for meaningful reflection on our teaching practise. I think that sharing your inquiry and focus students with colleagues could help in making sure reflections are critical and not unthinking and done as a box ticking exercise. I like that you record your colleagues comments and then reflect again on these and think that is something I will add to my inquiry and focus student reflections.
ReplyDelete