Reflective Teaching Explores Our Own Classroom Practice

Reflective teaching means looking what you do inside a classroom. It is a process of self-observation and self-evaluation. Professional growth development, which starts in the classroom looks at the following areas:

·         Things we do in the classroom

·         The reason for doing these things

·         Why and how these things work

It collects information about what goes on in our classroom. It analyzes and evaluates information. It identifies and explores our own practices and underlying beliefs that lead to changes and improvements in our teaching.

Reflective teaching is important because it can help the teachers improve their delivery of teaching. Teachers think about their teaching and talk to colleagues about it. He or she thinks or tells someone that "My lesson went well" or "My students didn't seem to understand" or "My students were so badly behaved today." Reflective teaching implies a systematic process of collecting, recording and analyzing our thoughts and observation as well as those of our students and then making changes in our teaching.  If a lesson went well, we can describe it and think why it was successful. If the students didn't understand a language point, we introduced we need to think about what we did and why it may have been unclear. If students are misbehaving, what were they doing, when and why?

Whatever is the situation inside the classroom, teachers would think on the next step in order to improve or sustain the students’ outcome. The teachers then will . . . collect data, record, analyze, plan next action to improve and implement the action identified.

Questions to ask yourself when planning instructional changes:

·         What were the learners doing?

·         Why were the learners misbehaving?

·         Why were the students not able to understand a concept that was introduced?

·         What factors made the lesson not successful?

·         Why was the lesson successful?

·         What factors made the lesson successful?

·         Why was the lesson not successful?

·         Why were they doing such things?

1.        What do you really understand about ______?

2.       What questions/uncertainties do you still have about _____?

3.       What were you most effective in _____?

o   What were you least effective in _____ ?

o   How could you improve?

o   What would you do differently next time?

o   What are you most proud of it?

o   What are you most disappointed in?

o   How difficult was this for you?

o   How hard did you work at this? How much effort did this take?

o   What are your strengths in _____ ?

o   What are your deficiencies in ______ ?

o   How does your preferred style influence ______ ?

o   What grade/score do you observe? Why?

o   What follow-up work is needed?

Next steps after reflecting on the questions and collecting data are:

·         Think of ideas

·         Talk – discuss with a colleague or friend

·         Read – professional books or magazines and internet

·         Ask – post questions on social media and ask school management

After analyzing all the information collected, teachers would think of action or solution that would best solve the problem identified.

“Reflective teaching is a cyclical process, because once you start to implement changes, the reflective and evaluative cycle begins again.”

Application

Suppose after giving an evaluation to one of your lessons delivered, strategy used and varied instructional materials utilized. You found out that many of your pupils were not able to answer your assessment correctly.  Follow the process of reflective teaching by filling-up the table below.

Education is about helping children, who are capable of self reflection and self organization, and of enjoying a life where they explore their abundant potential.