Reflection is not a teaching strategy that is usually associated with a mathematics classroom. I have taught mathematics to 8th grade students for the last six years; in my time as a teacher I have found that most of my students are not able to reflect and make the connections that their grade in my class is linked to their actions in class. Similar to most teachers, at the end of a semester I have several students that want extra credit to improve their grade last minute. These are the same students that do not understand the relationship between their work ethic in class and their grade at the end of the semester.
This relationship between grades and work is important for my students to understand. This is a life-long skill that will help my students associate their work with positive and/or negative outcomes. I feel this is something that can be accomplished with student reflection. I find that I have a lot of students that are unable to reflect on the connection between their test scores and how they prepared for the test. Therefore, I am left asking myself: How will integrating student reflection with summative assessments into my algebra class affect student engagement and learning?
An important part of reflection is that reflecting on work enhances its meaning. I found through my years as a teacher that when I am teaching a new topic and do not take a moment to reflect with my students afterwards on why that new topic is important, my students are more likely
Kim & Loretta (2003), stated that Atkinson & Murphy (1993) identified the key skills needed for reflection as ‘self awareness, the ability to recollect and describe accurately key aspect of the situation, critical analysis of the situation and synthesis of new knowledge gained with the previous knowledge, in order to develop a new perspective’. I will discuss,
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
What is reflection? Reflection is defined by Wilkinson (1996) as an active process whereby the professional gains an understanding of how historical, social, cultural, cognitive and personal experiences have contributed to professional knowledge and practice.
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 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
This October 2017, practicum observation at Sharpsville Elementary consisted of a third grade Math Assessment interview and observation. The third grade teacher works on formative and summative assessment in the math class. The teacher uses different ways to assess students in the classroom. In most cases, whether the child is above level or at the level where the child should be she has many options and strategies on how to solve mathematical problems as a whole-group or individually. This reflection will discuss the formative assessment, summative assessment, how students respond to the instruction, and a student interview observation..
People live their lives with many transitions, good or bad they provide us with experiences and knowledge. The life experiences we endure provide insight and wisdom to share with others. In life we are continuously looking for fulfilling experiences such as happiness, success, love or contentment. The thing people tend to forget is that these experiences that bring happiness is a basic mood or emotion not a purpose or an endpoint. Reflection provides self-awareness by improving oneself can present a sense of purpose that provides direction to how we live our life. There are moments of reflection that focus on the
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
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).
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.
ffer and Rubenfeld (2000) define reflection as “ contemplation upon a subject, especially one’s assumptions and thinking for the purposes of deeper understanding and self-evaluation.”
According to Howston-Jones (2013) reflection is not something that is out of the ordinary for everyone to do in their everyday lives. Reflection is the act of looking back on a situation, event or incident critically and making sense of it to learn from it and alter our actions to gain better outcomes should the same incident arise again (Capelhow, Crouch, Fisher & Walsh, 2013). As new experiences happen to everyone, everyday; it would be right to consider reflection as an ongoing process within everyone’s life, a process that is repeated, honed and a skill to be developed (McKenna, 1998).
The Royal College of Nursing defines reflection as the process of thinking deeply with the purpose of understanding (RCN 2013). Reflection is a way people recollect, think and evaluate their knowledge which is a vital part of learning. (Boud et al cited in Royal College of Nursing). Reflection allows us to be conscious of any form of discrimination. It enables learning from mistakes and prevents future occurrence (RCN 2013). In addition, Jasper et al (2013) looks at reflection as a way professionals learn through various experiences in their role. They also went further to say, for development to happen in our roles as professionals, there is the need for continuous process of building our knowledge.
Kolb (1984) suggested that reflection plays a key role in transforming experience into knowledge. It has been suggested that reflection is a fundamental process for learning as a development; rather than merely the ability to retain information (Reynolds, 1998). Schon (1983) suggested critical reflection as a strategy for developing from practice to solve complicated or difficult situations, that require problem solving and a degree of “artistry” Schon (1983). Schon (1983) was one of the first theorists to look at reflection in terms of reflective practice. Moon (1999) defines reflective practice as "a set of abilities and skills, to indicate the taking of a critical stance, an orientation to problem solving or state of mind." Essentially, this is a readiness to continuously analysis and review practice.
The idea of reflective practice in an academic context however is new to me, and I did feel lost at first. Now I can see how reflecting on my own learning and experiences has helped me to see where I have improved week on week and I think that as a result, my confidence has improved and I am able to contribute more in class, I have more confidence in my ability to teach and I feel that as a result I am learning more. The process or reflection, evaluation and adaptation is truly a cyclic one.