Reflective Practice in Teaching

Introduction

Educational researchers have long promoted the use of reflecting on practice to support student learning and staff development. Reflection is a basic part of teaching and learning. It aims to make you more aware of your own professional knowledge and action by ‘challenging misconceptions and critically evaluate practitioners own responses to practice situations (Finlay, 2002, p.12). As a result, the reflective process encourages individuals to work with others and share best practice and as well, draw from others. The reflective practice assists teachers to understand how students learn and help them to be accountable for their progress. Additionally, Finlay (2003, p.23) states that reflective practice is ‘learning through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self and practice’. There are many different models of reflective practice which all seem to share similar ideas; assisting students to achieve the best results. This paper reviews some literature behind the reflective practice, discuss its benefits and limitations, and how I have been able to include reflective practice in my own teaching.

Behavior

Whilst pursuing my first-year teacher training course, I came to understand that good behavior management require hard work to maintain. Toney (2010, p.1) writes that in her first year of teaching she had issues controlling her classroom behavior and this led to students gaining control of her and the classroom. Coincidently similar behavior occurred to me during my practice. In order to improve behaviour and control of my classroom, I started using a time-out strategy in my lesson more often: When a student failed to follow classroom expectations I would them to leave the classroom for a few minutes in order to regain the focus necessary for the lesson to be as effective as possible and therefore limit disruptions. Dutton et al., (2010, p.129) states that the key objective of this strategy is to remove that individual from an enriched, enjoyable environment, and therefore lead to the extinction of the offending behavior. Using the time-out strategy more often has helped students regain composure; and the ability to listen to teacher instructions. Additionally, performances have improved as students were able to pay attention to what I was teaching them. Often my start to the lessons was at times slow in pace: a number of students tended not to comply with the behavior expectations set by the school, which caused even further disruption to the whole class when given a ‘Do now’ activity. Lemov (2010, pp. 138) suggests that “a strong and energetic start to a lesson helps build momentum: it increases student engagement, creates disciplines and urgency. Through lesson feedback, I have now been able to improve the pace of my ‘Do now’ by introducing a countdown timer into my lesson plan. Richardson (2010, p.23) states that Countdown timers are fantastic elements in maintaining a good pace in lessons and keeping learners focused. As a result, students has increased their focus and completion of the activity, which had a positive effect on their ability to recall previous lessons and topics. In addition, when carrying out Afl questioning students were able to confidently engage with the questions asked to them which was highlighted by my mentor as a real positive.

As I recall in one of my lessons on my second placement, I had given a warning to one of the students for using a slang term towards me. I had earlier warned the students that I did not appreciate colloquial language being used during lessons. This action was based on Schon’s reflective model. In his description, Farrell (2012, P.7) defines reflection as knowing-in-action, and explains, "When an individual reflects-in-action in a case he/she sees as unique, paying attention to phenomena and surfacing his intuitive understanding of them. Schon’s reflective model suggests that professionals can ‘reflect in action’. This requires practitioners to reflect on their feet and be able to work using their instinct by drawing on similar experiences to solve a problem and make a final decision. In addition, Schon’s 2012 theory suggests that reflection happens only after the occurrence has taken place. From this knowledge, I decided to plan my lesson while setting clear rules at the start of the lesson. This was also reinforced with clear classroom instructions signs displayed in the classroom for students to use as a reference point. As a result, students began to improve in their behavior and only a few cases of students calling out, and chewing gum during the lesson existed. They knew the expectations I had for all my classes.

Assessment and Inclusive practice

The skills to check student understanding during my lesson seemed quite a challenge to me as a beginning teacher. This year I have learned the difference between summative and formative assessment and how they can help teachers paint a clearer picture of how well student have retained information. During my first months, I had difficulties In assessing since I had little knowledge of their benefit and modes of assessments. This year, I have worked really hard to improve my approach when formative assessing students during lesson time. Black (2019, p. 39-44) argues that when teachers use formative assessments as part of their teaching, students are able to learn at double their rate. For instance, I carried out Afl through questioning and I was able to identify when learners needed to spend extra time. Other times, a simple ‘Open question’ is what I used to assess student learning, for example: ‘Why is branding important?’ Why are some brands considered better than others?’. Fraenkel et al., (2011, p.49) states that an open-ended question is meant to encourage a meaningful as well as the full answer using the subject's own knowledge. In my experience, open questions like this enable student to consider their own thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Another positive impact of using this technique is that students developed their ability to answers questions and creativity was also promoted as witnessed on the subsequent assessments. I would not have believed that a major improvement in my teaching would have been made by employing targeted questioning. Through the use of targeted questioning, I was able to replace unreliable forms of questioning such as: “Does everyone get it?” this form of questioning helped very little in understand if students understood a topic. Lemov (2015, p.207) explains that targeted questions should take less than a minute or two. Moreover, he writes that most teachers struggle to direct specific questions with efficiency and precision since it requires them to think in advance. As a result, teachers who are able to consistently pose targeted questions during their lessons are able to prevent disruption of the flow of each instruction or change the objective of the lesson. In order to improve the use of targeted questioning in my lessons, I began to pre-plan my questioning and select the best approach in order to promote classroom talk and harmony; prepare ‘open’ and ‘high-challenge’ questions; pre-determine the level and type of challenge I wished to set in the classroom and the name of students that I would specifically target. As per Lemov (2010, p.29), this strategy is a Teach Like a Champion Strategy whose objective is to ensure all learners understand the most important aspects of a lesson. As a result, pupils were able to inspect their existing knowledge and experience to create new understanding; by articulating their understanding, it was clear that most of the knowledge was retained.

Differentiation

My classes are made of students with mixed ability. This meat that there was a need to differentiate my lessons in order to ensure that all students understand the lessons and make progress. At the start of my teaching training, I struggled with differentiation: I used to think that differentiation could be creating division and disadvantages; mainly towards lower ability students who I worried could become withdrawn and disengagement during my lessons. Tomlinson (2010, p.44) argues that differentiated instructions use flexible grouping, and helps meet different learning styles, giving students a real choice, and allowing for alternative activities and assessments to take place in the classroom. I decided to try differentiation but carefully assessing its effectiveness. Through the process of reflection, I was able to scaffold main activity, and pair students into groups based on their capabilities- assessments of the previous outcome on a similar activity. The process becomes highly successful and students were able to improve their performance. Additionally, class participation increased. At times I struggled to explain the aim of a task and the steps that students needed to take in order to succeed. As a result, there was a lot of confusion with the task that learners were undertaking. Fortunately, I did my research and I was able to verbally explained all the tasks to the whole class. As per Woodley (2019, p.98-100), teachers with the simplest and quickest ideas may be the most effective in explaining what a pupil needs to do in a lesson. As per the study, teachers who are able to introduce simple and quick ideas have more ability to reinforce learning and improve their teaching practice. To improve on this, I used to observe my mentor’s lessons. Additionally, she assisted me with a number of strategies that I could use to improve on explaining tasks. For example, I began writing tasks that students needed to do on the board or presentation slide; this decreased teacher talk time. This was beneficial since it improved the behavior of the students and as well, improved outcomes of lessons. Moreover, I began recording my lessons using a video camera. This assisted me to understand what I needed to work on and how best to improve my pace when directing or explaining a topic to students. Frankly, this assisted in students understanding and performance was greatly improved. During my first weeks of teaching, differentiation by the outcome was a challenge. I used to give all my students similar question hoping they were able to understand and perform similarly. This turned out to be completely different from my expectations. Beadle (2010, p34) confirms that, differentiation by the outcome is no differentiation at all, and that differentiation by the outcome is actually a definition of low expectations. After failing several targets with a focus on differentiation during my lesson observations; I have now begun experimenting with new methods of differentiation: setting scaffolded activities for lower, mid and higher ability students. As a result, students were able to retain key information a bit faster. This means that students were able to recall information making it easier for them to recall the same information when presented to them in the future.

Conclusion

It is not strange for teachers to care for their students and invest in their respective growth. I have employed a reflective approach to my teaching process and have found that every reflective action impacts my students. Regardless of the challenges faced, the results have been incredibly positive. Therefore, by assessing what does not work and discarding them, I have been able to fine-tune the strategies that bring out the best in my pupils and repeat them for more positive outcomes. Working with students who have different strength can be a challenge, and this is common to every classroom regardless of their size. Applying a different task tailored to test each pupil’s ability have shown positive results as per my experiments and the literature provided by Hill (2019, p.33). As per my experience, children seemed to perform better, and this means more technique can be used to changes students’ performance and focus. Students are not the only individuals that benefit from the reflective practice but also teachers. Personally, I have seen myself improve to be more knowledgeable and accommodative to changes. In addition, my decision-making process has improved as I find myself reflecting on most choices before taking action. This has helped shaped me into a better teacher and students tremulously improvement in their performance which indicates a positive impact.

Lastly, the process of reflection has enabled me to self-assess the effect of my teaching on students learning and consider new ways of teaching that can improve the quality of learning. For example, I have now started to include reflection in my lesson plan; leaving a blank space at the bottom of my lesson plan has helped me to evaluate and reflect on my planning process. Moreover, consistently writing down comments and observations, has helped me to identify the errors or similar misconceptions that students have in a specific topic that I previously taught. As a result, I was then able to teach the topic with a different format; with aims to improve students learning and improve their ability to recall key information. I cannot deny that some techniques that I tried never worked, this means that my reflection will enable me to gain a better grasp of the things that positively impact student progress.

References

Beadle, P. (2010). How to teach: Differentiation by peer support, crown house publishing ltd, p.195.

Dutton Tillery, A., Varjas, K., Meyers, J. and Collins, A.S., 2010. General education teachers’ perceptions of behavior management and intervention strategies. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 12(2), pp.86-102.

Ekebergh, M. (2007) Lifeworld-based reflection and learning: a contribution to the reflective practice in nursing and nursing education. Reflective Practice, 8(3), 331-343.

Farrell, T.S., 2012. Reflecting on reflective practice:(Re) visiting Dewey and Schön. Tesol Journal, 3(1), pp.7-16.

Finlay, L. (2002) Negotiating the swamp: the opportunity and challenge of reflexivity in research practice. Qualitative Research, 2(2), 209-230.

Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E., & Hyun, H. H. (2011). How to design and evaluate research in education. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.

Gianna Knowles, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010. Supporting Inclusive Practice, edited by ProQuest

Julian Webb. The Ambitious Modesty of Harry Arthurs Humane Professionalism. Osgoode Hall L.J, 2006, pp 119-151.

Lemov, D., 2010. Teach like a champion: 49 techniques that put students on the path to college (K-12). John Wiley & Sons.

Richardson, W., 2010. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. Corwin press.

Tomlinson, C. (2001), How to differentiate instructions in a mixed ability classroom, (2nd ed.), Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.