Reflective teaching

Effective reflection helps the practitioner to see the situation from an outsider's perspective, so that they can develop a better way to respond to a similar scenario in the future. Reflection is meant to achieve a change in practice, rather than simply repeating the same mistakes (Schon, 1983). Many different models exist for structuring the reflective process. Regardless of the framework used, the reflection models are meant to accomplish three things. They are supposed to promote reflecting on events, self-evaluation and analysis, and a plan to change actions in the future. This Reflective essay will utilize Driscoll's 'The What?' model as its structure (Driscoll, 1994). This model has three components"

Reflection means if when you are teaching and you notice something wrong you change it straight away, or for the next time. Practitioners should always be self critical of past lessons and picking out on not only the good parts, but also parts of a lesson that didn’t go so well. For example in order for the practitioners to improve in their practice they could prepare a reflective journal, this would help them by reflecting back on what they did in the perivious lesson and if an activity didn’t go so well the practitioner could think of different strategies of improving the activity or planning a different activity, but on the similar topic and also providing different recourses in order to improve the activity. Also practitioners and staff members should not assume that their work place will automatically inform them about new developments, changes and updates which affect their work, practitioners must be prepared to be active in maintaining their own knowledge base and to ensure that their practice is in line with current thinking and new theories. Practitioners could this by incorporating an awareness of the needs to update their knowledge constantly into all of their work and activities by using resources such as the internet, journals, and libraries or other professional development, e.g. training, and to check their awareness of new developments in their work and to work with other professionals e.g. there

In my opinion, implementing reflective practice approach to professional development in order to expand our knowledge is a challenge. This challenge involves teacher’s ability to “reflect on

Reflective practice might be understood differently by individual practitioners. There are many different perspectives on ‘Reflection’, what reflective practice involves and how the quality of teaching and learning is impacted by reflective practice (Bengtsson, 1995).

Reflection is a tool that is used within many disciplines including teaching and within the legal profession

Reflection is a process of reviewing and thinking critically about activities and how this affects learning of student’s. It is not just descriptions of what happened during the lesson; it’s to

There has been a rapid increase in the ides of critical reflective practice over the last few decades, (Gould, 2004). Before we look at the value and purpose of reflective practice, it is important to take in account ‘reflective practice’ carries multiple meanings from the idea of professionals engaging in self-analysis to that of engaging in critical dialogue with others. For example, with reference to teacher education, Larrivee, (2000) argues that reflective practice is fusing together personal beliefs and values into a professional identity whereby critical reflection can take place without staying trapped in unexamined assumptions and expectations of our professional practice. Therefore, from this, it can be concluded that as a teaching professional, it is important to develop reflections on ones’ professional and pedagogic knowledge to set aspirational goals for a continuing personal and professional development, in other words, it is a way of life.

Reflection is considered as a vital element of professional practice as it precedes to insight and then subsequent change in practice. The hypothesis of reflection is not new as it can be tracked as far back in the 5th century by the influential Greek philosopher, Socrates and to the 1930s primarily focusing on John Dewey’s work. Dewey is one of the founders of learning from experience. He theorised reflection as ‘active, persistent and careful consideration’ (Dewey, 1933) initiated by a specific situation which was opposing, perplexing or uncertain. One of its most common use today is coming up with a thought, an idea, or opinion made or an observation made as a result of concentration, suggesting in essence a way of thinking in which one looks back and meditate upon (Agnes, 2004).

Reflective practice, in this context, is not about just looking at myself in a mirror and accepting what I see blindly, without any question or evaluation. Rather, it is about looking at what I have learned and how I can utilise that learning in my teaching practice.

Reflection is an everyday process and is very personal matter. Jasper (2003) suggests that reflection is one of the key ways in which we can learn from our experiences. Reflective practice can be defined as process of making sense of events, situations and actions that occur in the workplace (Oelofsen, 2012).

A load of research has been done on learning and reflective practice and its effectiveness on the practitioners and one of the first people to research reflective Practice was Donald Schon in his book “The Reflective Practitioner” in 1983. Schon was an influential writer on reflection and had two main ways of identifying reflection and they were reflection in action and reflection on action.

There is a usual but important cliché for a teacher´s career: a teacher has to be a life-long learner to be an effective teacher. Research on effective teaching over the past two decades has proved that effective practice is related to questioning, reflection and continuous professional development. Reflective practice can be a satisfying experience for a teacher evolution. It covers self-analysis, questioning one owns methods, assumptions about learning, theories as well as one´s attitudes and behaviour as a facilitator and communicator, in short making a deep analysis of the actions. Reflecting on teaching includes the teacher´s thoughts on the successfulness of the lesson planning and the implementation used to teach. Within the time progression the teacher´s reflection should be more precise and he or she could

The GTCNI have argued that, “Professional knowledge, by its very nature, is organic and, to an extent, evolutionary, reflecting a synthesis of research, experiences gained and expertise shared” (GTCNI, 2007:10). The GTNCI further reinforces this statement when it states that, “Teaching can never be reduced to a set of discrete skills to be mastered in some mechanical process of assimilation” (GTCNI, 2007:5). Teaching today has moved beyond the outdated view that the most important thing for a teacher was solely to have professional knowledge. Professional knowledge encompasses a range of different forms of knowledge such as knowledge on the curriculum and children and pedagogical knowledge e.g. how to manage a classroom amongst many other forms. Whilst this is still of great importance professional knowledge is of no use if you are not able to adapt this knowledge to meet the ever-changing dynamic situations that you will encounter in the classroom. This essay will examine how reflective practice can be unlisted by teachers to ensure that they are meeting the needs of their pupils as well as

Reflection is thought by linking recent experience with early experience to promote more complex and interrelated mental models or patterns. The thinking involves looking for commonalities, differences, and interrelations beyond their superficial elements. The goal is to develop higher order thinking skills.

Kottkamp and Osterman (1993) write in Reflective Practice for Educators: Improving Schooling through Professional Development that reflective practice is essential for behavioural change and improvement. They go on to eloquently describe what is needed to reflect effectively: “To gain a new level of insight into personal behaviour, the reflective practitioner assumes a dual stance, being, on one hand, the actor in a drama and, on the other hand, the critic who sits in the audience watching and analysing the entire performance. To achieve