Week 17 My reflective Practice


Week 17/ My Reflective Practice

I will use Jay and Johnsons reflective model (Jay and Johnson 2002) to communicate with you how I use reflection in my current teaching practice.

1.      DESCRIPTION
Currently I reflect in a very informal manner. By nature I am constantly reflecting on what I have done and how I could do it better next time and this is true for me also as a teacher. I currently do not write a lot down as I have little time to do this. I find that I do dialogue with my colleagues regularly and adapt what and how I am teaching based on what I have thought or discussed. I do not use a lot of formal research or base decisions on reliable sources but rather my own experience and input from my colleagues and students.  A lot of my reflection is immediate, ongoing and as a result of my students and the way they react to what is happening in the classroom.
2.    
         COMPARATIVE
When I think about how I currently reflect on my teaching practice I can see that it would be a more valid process if I were to do it in a more formal manner, informed by current research. Dewey(Dewey1993) identified two types of reflecting:
1.                         Reflection-on-action (after the event thinking)
2.                        Reflection-in-action (reflection-in-action)
 This is what I belief I currently do but need to do in a more formal process. As a teacher I think on my feet and react to the way my students respond to my teaching to change and adapt within a lesson and I am constantly reflecting and changing my teaching program after I have taught it for the next year as a result of what I have learnt from actually teaching the program.
Zeichner and Liston(1996) model for reflection includes five steps which I think would be more useful to follow to allow the process of reflection to have a greater impact on my teaching practice.
I currently do the first two steps of rapid reflection and repair automatically. I do the third step of review but without writing it down. The fourth and fifth step of research and retheorizing and reformulating is where my process falls down. 

3.      CRITICAL REFLECTION
From doing this reading I can see that if I were to adapt my current reflective practise I could enhance it and make it a more effective tool for improving my teaching practice.
The aspects of my current practise that I need to change is adding the final two steps as discussed above. I would like to have a more formalised process by which I reflect so that I am writing down my reflection. I will need to include more research through both collecting my own data from students and doing my own reading of current educational theory.  This will make the final step of retheorizing and reformulating easier to achieve.

I need to include reflective journal writing into my week so that I can enhance this whole process. Larrivee (2000) recommends the use of a reflective journal as an important tool to integrate knowledge, learning and the analysis of this to impact on your practice.

Reference list
Finlay,L. (2008). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/resources/pbpl-resources/finlay-l-2008-reflecting-reflective-practice-pbpl-paper-52

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.

Larrivee, B. (2000) Transforming teaching practice: becoming the critically reflective teacher, Reflective Practice, 1 (3), 293-307


Comments

  1. Anonymous2 April 2018 at 15:13

    Melanie, I too reflect in a very informal manner and have frequent dialogue with my colleagues, especially my collaborative partner. I find this way useful to discuss what worked/ did not for particular learners as we have a very open and honest conversations. We constantly review what we have done, but we too do not write a lot of it down - it feels like we are 'on' all day. I believe I also need to do more formal note taking, as I just scribble things down on paper, then can not find it or simply forget. I too "think on my feet and react to the way my students respond to my teaching to change and adapt within a lesson", especially in terms of engagement and behaviour.
    When you do this, do you think this would be valuable to record for similar lessons (this year or following years) to help yourself and others teaching the same year group?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4 April 2018 at 08:43

    Hi Melanie


    I have been teaching for 16 years and in different countries, teaching students from different cultural background and age group. I have also been reflecting in the similar manner. My definition for reflection is a mental process that bring a constructive outcome in classroom and is a cyclic process. My assumption is all teachers have thirst to enhance their teaching practice however, I usually fail to make a record of my reflection. To start with, I will collect teacher voice in my school to identify what could be the actual reason around the action of not documenting reflection on the paper. Without critically analysing my action I have been passively accepting the answer as my busy schedule. I have always practiced Atkins and Murphy's style of practicing which consist of three steps (Triggered situation, critical analysis and development of a new goal)
    I will also focus towards Zeichner and Liston(1996) model for reflection as I am keen to experience the change after conducting some RESEARCH around what I have experienced in my practice that had initiated the discomfort and what I believe should be workable strategy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous4 April 2018 at 10:29

    Hi Melanie


    I have been teaching for 16 years and in different countries, teaching students from different cultural background and age group. I have also been reflecting in the similar manner. The reflection process so far in my practice looks like a mental process that bring a constructive outcome in classroom and is a cyclic process. My assumption is all teachers have thirst to enhance their teaching practice however, I usually fail to make a record of my reflection. To start with, I will collect teacher voice in my school to identify what could be the actual reason around the action of not documenting reflection on the paper. Without critically analysing my action I have been passively accepting the answer as my busy schedule. I have always practiced Atkins and Murphy's style of practicing which consist of three steps (Triggered situation, critical analysis and development of a new goal)
    I will also focus towards Zeichner and Liston(1996) model for reflection as I am keen to experience the change after conducting some RESEARCH around what I have experienced in my practice that had initiated the discomfort and what I believe should be workable strategy.

    ReplyDelete

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