How Reflection Improves My Teaching Practice?

We do not learn from experience…. We learn from reflecting on experience” John Dewey.

Thoughtful reflection is a part of every day. 50 minutes to work and 50 minutes home gives me opportunities to improve my practice.

I work through lesson planning that did not achieve the goals I had set. I think about the student who I observed who has more socks than shoes under his feet.  I consider the disengaged student and wonder what is going on in their life that is causing them to come in day after day and engage minimally in my programme.

One of the things I don’t do well is write down reflections. When I write reflections, usually in my plan book, I note that I am repeating some of the issues day after day that I have observed, or that I have not come up with a sustainable change that I can make to my practice. This issue will be a major focus for 2018 as I believe that spending more written time at the end of the day will have the biggest effect on student achievement that I can make.

My mobile reflections give me the time to change my practice such as introduce different games e.g 20% time in Year 10.  How I can make the best of the technology rotation and make it work for our department as we have sacrificed quite a bit of skill development, in order to meet the needs of the technology curriculum?  How can I achieve more indepth, higher quality work out of my Year 13 students?

I use the gibbs-cycle of reflection method in my Deaning practice when I am dealing with students in a restorative conference situation.  I always think if I come across the situation again how can I challenge the student not to repeat their mistakes?  I think about what really caused that situation?  How can I cut off at the pass the incidence of social medial use?

Zeicher and Liston (1996) detail five different levels of reflection that occurs during teaching. During class after instruction I am able to rapidly reflect when I determine who is on task. 

Those who are not engaging in the learning give me an opportunity to repair any misunderstanding.  At the time of the preparation of the next lesson I would review the results of my rapid reflection and plan to include strategies that will reduce the incidence of negative rapid reflection.

  

Zeichner, K.M. and Liston. D.P. (1996) Reflective Teaching: An Introduction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Week 28 Influence of Law and Ethics in Practice