The points that I can relate to my reflective practice:
“Unless teachers develop the practice of critical reflection, they stay trapped in unexamined judgments, interpretations, assumptions, and expectations. Approaching teaching as a reflective practitioner involves fusing personal beliefs and values into a professional identity” (Larrivee, 2000, p.293).
Schon believed that as professionals become more expert in their practice, they developed the skill of being able to monitor and adapt their practice simultaneously, perhaps even intuitively. In contrast, novice practitioners, lacking knowing-in-action (tacit knowledge), tended to cling to rules and procedures, which they are inclined to apply mechanically. Schon argued that novices needed to step back and, from a distance, take time to think through situations. Whether expert or novice, all professionals should reflect on practice – both in general and with regard to specific situations.
For the first part of my teaching career I have taught at face to face to school, in classrooms for many years and then for more than last ten years I have been teaching at Te Kura - The Correspondence School, Wellington, New Zealand - a distance education providing school.
In both the teaching environment I have witnessed several teaching professionals in action. I can easily relate to the quote above, in (Larrivee, 2000, p.293).
I still remember the first half of my first year of teaching, as a novice, in front of senior secondary classes I used to be a little nervous and unconfident. In those situations I used to hold on to my own beliefs about teaching and learning in my classes, assumption about students, discipline and overall classroom environment, my own expectations of my teaching and I mostly followed the same routine/pattern of teaching rigidly, lesson by lesson. The breakthrough came in my practice in the second half of my first year – all the thanks to an expert teaching facilitator and mentor! I began to lookback and overview most of my lessons; which helped me address my weaknesses – (informally at that time), I began to be a reflective practitioner, this changed and improved my practice!
Reflection-on-action And Reflection-in-action:
One of Schon’s (1983) most important and enduring contributions was to identify two types of reflection: reflection-on-action (after-the-event thinking) and reflection-in-action (thinking while doing).
In 2007 – 2009 I participated in NZ MOE initiated ICT PD three year project. At present I also belong to Te Kura Online Teaching and Learning Environment (OTLE) team. In both these roles I have presented several staff training and professional development sessions.
During the planning and preparation for these presentations, intuitively I seem to go through reflection-in-action process several times, critically evaluating the aim, purpose, objective, content, application, relevance, summary and questions. During the presentation especially when the participants are practicing the activities I get a few moments to quickly review how the session has progressed so far, what and how I have presented, how the group has responded, what is next and how?
At the end of the session it is natural to lookback and think about overall performance (reflection-in-action process), what went and worked well? Did I manage to present the points in simple and meaningful way? Did the participants understand what I was presenting? How did they respond? Were they interested? Did they participate actively? How did I feel – relaxed, stressed, enjoyed it? What could have been better? What do I need to do to improve the presentation in future?
I find it interesting that after several presentations and reflection on those, my common weakness seem to be insufficient sense of humour and entertainment! I need to be more humorous and entertaining the participants. To address this issue I try hard to pick up relevant points from the presentations of educational presenters, however there is always room for improvement.
“Done well and effectively, reflective practice can be an enormously powerful tool to
examine and transform practice. Hobbs (2007) recommends that this self-development
process be encouraged in any field whose members work with people”.
The model of reflection that I tend to use, evaluations of its effectiveness, and room for improvement:
My teaching practice has been reflective around lessons, developing (teaching and assessment) resource, and presenting training and professional development sessions. However this is the first time I studied different reflective models in detail, and I feel, up to some extent, my reflective practice has been similar to Gibb’s Model for Reflection. As I have described in the section above, (under the heading ‘Reflection-on-action and Reflection-in-action’) in this activity 3, my reflective practice has been informal, simpler and shorter than Gibbs model. It also has been mostly with in me, I haven’t shared the practice with my colleagues. This practice has worked for me satisfactorily so far, however I now understand that reflective practice is the most effective when it is shared with other professionals.
After studying different models of reflection and watching reflective practice [video file] by Phillip Dawson, I have developed better understanding of the practice. I found the practice described by Phillip Dawson very realistic and practical. I can see myself using Gibbs model, combined with some practical ideas described by Phillip Dawson.
Both the types of reflection ‘Reflection-on-action and Reflection-in-action’ identified by Schon (1983) are useful in different contexts. I believe ‘Reflection-in-action’ is more suitable for longer tasks like presentations, training, professional development sessions etc. while ‘Reflection-on-action’ is suitable for short or long tasks. To improve my reflective practice I also need to make it structured and shared.
References:
Rolfe Model of reflection: Gary Rolfe and colleagues (2001)
Reflecting on ‘Reflective practice’ By: Linda Finlay
http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file/ecms/web-content/Finlay-%282008%29-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf
Reflective Practice [video file] by Phillip Dawson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1aYWbLj0U8
Schon’s (1983) Reflection-in-action and Reflection-on-action
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