The benefits of reflective practice? Reflective practice helps create confident teachers Reflective practice develops your ability to understand how your students learn and the best ways to teach them. By reflecting on your teaching, you identify any barriers to learning that your students have. You then create lessons which reteach any content which your students have not been able to access to allow them to overcome any obstacles and develop. Being reflective will also make sure you have a wider range of skills as you find new ways to teach. This will develop your confidence in the classroom as you find the best ways to deliver your knowledge of a subject. By reflecting, you will develop abilities to solve problems. Through questioning and changing the way you deliver your lessons, you will find new solutions and become more flexible with your teaching. It allows you to take time to assess and appreciate your own teaching. Reflective practice also helps create confident students. As a result of reflecting, students are challenged as you use new methods in the classroom. From reflection, you should encourage your students to take new challenges in learning, developing a secure and confident knowledge base. Reflective practice makes sure you are responsible for yourself and your students Reflecting on your teaching will help you to understand how your students best learn and will allow you to be accountable for their progress. By assessing the strengths and weaknesses in your own teaching, you will develop an awareness of the factors that control and prevent learning. The reflection process will also help you to understand yourself and the way you teach. By asking yourself questions and self-assessing, you will understand what your strengths are and any areas where development might be needed. Reflecting allows you to understand how you have helped others to achieve and what this looks like in a practical learning environment. By asking your students for their thoughts and feelings on the learning, they play an active part in the learning cycle. This allows them to take ownership of their learning and also work with you and give feedback, which creates selfaware and responsible students. Once the student starts to play an active part in the learning cycle, they become more aware of different learning styles and tasks. They become more aware of how they learn and they develop key skills and strategies to become lifelong learners. Reflective practice encourages innovation Reflective practice allows you to adapt lessons to suit your classes. You can create and experiment with new ideas and approaches to your teaching to gain maximum success. By varying learning and experimenting with new approaches, students have a richer learning experience. They will think more creatively, imaginatively and resourcefully, and be ready to adapt to new ways and methods of thinking. Reflective practice encourages engagement Being reflective helps you challenge your own practice as you will justify decisions and rationalize choices you have made. It encourages you to develop an understanding of different perspectives and viewpoints. These viewpoints might be those of students, focusing on their strengths, preferences and developments, or those of other colleagues, sharing best practice and different strategies. When you become more aware of your students’ preferences and strengths, learning becomes more tailored to their needs and so they are more curious and are equipped to explore more deeply. Reflective practice benefits all By reflecting, you create an environment which centres on the learner. This environment will support students and teachers all around you to become innovative, confident, engaged and responsible. Once you start the reflective process, your quality of teaching and learning will improve. You will take account of students’ various learning styles and individual needs, and plan new lessons based on these. Reflection helps focus on the learning process, so learning outcomes and results will improve as you reflect on how your learners are learning. By getting involved in the reflective process, you will create an environment of partnership-working as you question and adapt both your own practice and that of your students and other colleagues. The learning process then becomes an active one as you are more aware of what you want your students to achieve, delivering results which can be shared throughout the institution. By working with other colleagues and students, relationships become positive and demonstrate mutual respect. Students feel part of the learning cycle and are more self-aware. Colleagues can ‘team up’, drawing on expertise and support. This will develop the whole institution’s best practice. All of these things together result in a productive working environment. Reflective practice in practice As a reflective practitioner you will continuously review the learning process to make sure all students make maximum progress. While working through this document you may have identified a model which appeals to you. As well as using a model of reflection, you can carry out other reflective activities to develop your practice. These can include the following. Self-questioning Asking yourself questions can help you understand the effect and efficiency of your teaching. Experimenting with new ideas Trying out new methods or approaches in the classroom can create new learning opportunities. These changes can be as simple as varying a small activity or as adventurous as changing your whole approach or plan. Discussing with other colleagues drawing on support from colleagues will allow you to cement understanding and get involved with others’ ideas and best practice. Discussing with students drawing on student feedback will make sure your reflections are focused on your students. By reflecting with students, you allow them to play an active part in their learning and gain insight into what needs to improve to support student development. Observations and feedback being observed by colleagues will allow you to gain others’ perspectives into your practice and provide feedback and ideas on how to improve. Observing your colleagues can also provide new ideas and approaches which you can try in your own practice. All these approaches are explained in the ‘Next steps’ section and provide a guide of how to carry out reflective practice, using the following. • Learning journal • Lesson evaluations • Observations • Student dialogue • Shared planning Listen to these educators talking about how they reflect. How could you use their techniques in your practice? Transcript Checklist There are five main principles that will make sure you get the most out of your reflections − reacting, recording, reviewing, revising, reworking and reassessing. These are sometimes referred to as the five Rs. If you are new to reflective practice, it will help to ask yourself the following questions. Reacting How will I decide what area of my practice I need to focus on? Will this be decided by looking at data, each learner’s performance or an aspect of the curriculum? Recording (logging your reflections) How will I assess my performance? Will this take the form of an observation, discussion or shared planning? How will I record this? Will this be recorded by yourself, a peer or a student? How will I log this? What documents will you use to record your reflections? For example, a journal, notebook or form provided by your school or institution. When will I log this? Will your reflections be logged straight after the lesson, during or before the lesson? How often will you record these reflections? Reviewing (understanding your current teaching methods) What worked well and how do I know this? Consider what the students really understood and enjoyed about the lesson, and why. How do you know improvements have been made? What did not work as planned? Consider what the students did not get involved with or find challenging, and why. What could I try next time? How could you adapt the activity? Some practical ideas include introducing a different task, clearer instructions, timebased activities and activities which appeal to different learning styles. Revising (adapting your teaching by trying new strategies) What will I change or adapt? This could be a whole task or something specific about a task. Some practical ideas include changing the task from independent work to paired work, adding a scaffold to a challenging task, providing instructions step by step, and making activities time based. Reworking (action plan of how you can put these ideas in place in a practical way) How will I put this in place? Consider what will you need to do before and during the lesson to make sure your changes happen. What will the students be doing differently to make sure they make progress? What materials do I need? What things will you need to put your revised ideas into practice? Some practical examples include coloured pens, larger paper, handouts, cut-up activities, specialised equipment. Reassessing (understanding how these new strategies affected learning) How successful were the new strategies? Once you have redelivered the lesson, consider how engaged the students were. How well did they understand this time? What changed? Consider the following areas of potential change: delivery, planning and assessment. Next steps Here are some activities to help you to further explore reflective practice. Learning journal What is it? A learning journal is a collection of notes, observations, thoughts and other relevant materials built up over a period of time and recorded together. What happens? After each lesson you record your thoughts and feelings regarding the lesson. Use the five Rs in the Checklist section to help focus your journal. Lesson evaluations What are they? Evaluations require you to think back on the lesson, assessing its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for development. To help focus your evaluation, consider the following questions: • What went well in this lesson? Why? • What problems did I experience? Why? • How engaged and active were the students? • How much learning took place? How do I know? • What could I have done differently? • What did I learn from this experience that will help me in future lessons? What happens? Once you have taught your lesson, record your reflections on the lesson as soon as possible. This will help you keep track of your progress as a developing reflective practitioner and also help you track your students’ progress. Observations What are they? Observations are when someone assesses your practice through watching it in action. These observations should have a very specific focus, for example the quality of questioning or the quality of student-led activities. This focus can then be specific, measured, reflected upon and revised to make sure your students make progress. What happens? Once you have set the specific focus or target area, a colleague will watch you deliver the lesson and give feedback on the strengths of your practice or some possible ideas for development. These observations could also be carried out over a block of lessons to show progression. Student dialogue What is it? This is where you make sure students play an active part in their learning. You will ask them to carry out a short reflection on how well they felt the lesson went and to assess the lesson’s strengths and possible ideas for development. What happens? Ask a student to keep a learning journal of their lessons. This journal could include what they enjoyed, how they felt in the lesson, what they understood and engaged with, what they still need more help with, what they liked about the lesson and things they thought could have been better. Shared planning What is it? Shared planning is where you draw on support from colleagues to plan lessons together. You draw on each other’s best practice to help create innovative and improved lessons. What happens? Shared planning can take many forms: • Planning a lesson with another colleague together from start to finish. • Using a lesson a colleague has produced and adapting it to suit your style and class. • Planning a lesson and asking another colleague to review it. The shared-planning process should encourage talking and co-operation. You should draw on support from colleagues to help develop practice and share ideas. Want to know more? Here is a printable list of interesting books, articles and websites on the topics that we have looked at.
