Reflective Teaching

Reflection-on-action on teachers practices

Teachers Training Seminar, Mallorca 2003 Fernando M. S. Alexandre

Rational Teaching
The teacher is seen as essentially a means-ends broker and teaching is conceived as a technical exercise, an applied science, concerned with, and judged according to, the criteria of means-end efficiency. Rational teaching relies upon a range of meansenhancing devices such as psychometric analysis, isolated technical competence, linear thinking and instrumental reason.

An Educational Paradigm
Education is a delivery system within which the worth of teacheroperatives is defined entirely in terms of their possession of a prescribed set of skills or competences and professional beliefs require justification by technical-rational procedures of investigation.

A Major Contradiction
Teachers as inquirers and critical thinkers

Teachers: blurred between professional and personal domains

Standards for the award of QTS

Teachers as discriminators

Requirements for courses of initial teacher training

Technocratically oriented curriculum focussing on competencies Approaches that tend to highlight teaching in terms of performance standards for individual subjects

Limits of Technical-Rationalism
Complexity Uncertainty Instability Singularity Conflict of Values

The Reflective Approach

Goes beyond the assumption which states the existence of a linear and mechanical relation between teachers scientific and technical knowledge and their classroom practices.

Reflective Teaching
Involves thinking about ones teaching, an account of which will include use of such cognate terms as reasoning, and reasons, critical thinking and analysis, as well as planning and evaluating.

Reflectivity - Different Approaches

Social reconstructionist - viewed as a political act which contributes towards or hinders the realisation of a more just and human society; the action is focused both on practice and on the social conditions in which they were developed.

Reflective Teaching is not

identical to reasoning about teaching or analysing and evaluating ones teaching. just any old example of thinking about what one is doing.

Teachers as Decision Makers

Once teachers make decisions 9 Concerning educational outcomes 9 Concerning the matter of education 9 Concerning the manner of education It is reasonable to expect a teacher to be able to justify his or her decisions and actions in the classroom - provide good reasons or grounds for that course of action He or she must think about what is taking place, what the options are, and so on, in a critical, analytic way

Teachers as Decision Makers

Reflection
When there is a real problem to be solved

Empowerment

Teachers as Decision Makers

An empowered teacher is a reflective decision maker who finds joy in learning and in investigating the teaching/learning process - one who views learning as construction and teaching as a facilitating process to enhance and enrich development

Reflective Action and Practice

Reflection-for-action Reflection-in-action Reflection-on-action

A process that
Involves what the teacher does before entering the classroom, and retrospectively, after leaving the classroom. Can be defined as a spiral, in which we begin with reflection-for-practice, move into reflection-in-practice, and then to reflectionon-practice (inevitably leading us back to reflection-for-practice in an ongoing process).

The Process of Reflective Teaching

Reflect Reflect Evaluate Evaluate data data Plan Plan

Analysedata data Analyse

Make Makeprovision provision

Collectdata data Collect

Act Act

(Pollard, 2002: 16)

Being a Reflective Teacher

Is a process structured around three main elements: cognitive (knowledge that teachers need), critical (moral and ethical aspects), and narrative (teachers accounts of their own experiences).

Reflective Activities
A few examples
(Pollard, 2002)

Knowing Ourselves as Teachers

Aim: to analyse dimensions of our selves. Evidence and reflection: think of specific and memorable incidents in which you were centrally involved. Try to identify the most prominent characteristics of your self which they reveal. It may be helpful to situate your reflection (e.g. as a parent, as a child, as a pupil, as a trainee, as a teacher). It would probably be beneficial to do this exercise with a friend. It could help you to deepen your understandings, share and explain your perceptions, whilst providing mutual support.

Students Perceptions of Teachers

Aim: to find out students criteria for a good teacher. Evidence and reflection: hold a discussion (with the whole class, or in small groups which can then report back to the whole class) on what makes a good teacher. Perhaps the discussion could be couched in terms of suggestions for a trainee on how to become a good teacher. Discussions with students on such a topic must obviously be handled very carefully and only with the agreement of any teachers who are involved.

Relationships: Teachers Perspectives

Aim: to monitor and place in perspective our own feeling on classroom relationships. Evidence and reflection: probably the best way to do this is by keeping a diary, not an elaborate one, but simply a personal statement of how things have gone and how we felt. It is very common for such reflections to focus in more detail on particular disciplinary issues or on interaction with specific individuals. It should be written with awareness of ethical issues and the feelings of other classroom participants. Diary-keeping supplies a document which can be of great value in reviewing events.

Learning Process
Aim: to consider the influence and strengths of different learning approaches when applied to students learning and school practice. Evidence and reflection: review a selection of major learning situations and teaching methods, which your class has experienced during a school day. Note each learning situation, each teaching approach and then consider the psychological rationale for its use. Consider if you are drawing effectively on the strengths of each approach. Does this activity have any implications for the repertoire of teaching strategies that you use?

Developing an Official Curriculum

Aim: to examine statements of aims and values presented in national documentation. Evidence and reflection: are aims and values stated within the national curriculum documentation at your disposal? If so, are the aims consistently supported by the stated underlying values? What vision of an education system do you derive from reading these statements? If not, can you derive some of the core aims and values from an examination of the curriculum advice presented in the documentation? Do they reflect your own views?

Developing an Official Curriculum (2)

Aim: to consider the influence of views of knowledge on a part of a national curriculum. Evidence and reflection: this is a potentially large activity which needs to be scaled down and made specific. We suggest that you study the official, national documentation of a single subject - history or geography are often good choices. Consider, how is knowledge viewed? Is it seen as an established body of subject content and skills to be transferred or as something to be created?

Behaviour: the Unexpected

Aim: to monitor responses to a classroom crisis. Evidence and reflection: after a crisis has arisen, a diary-type account of it and of how it was handled could be written. This might describe the event, and also reflect the feelings which were experienced as the events unfolded. It might be valuable to encourage students to record and talk about a similar account and reflection after the event, so that you can gain an insight into why they behaved as they did. Did you minimize disturbance? Did you maximize reassurance? Did you make appropriate judgements on how to act?

Beyond Classroom Reflection

Aim: to consider micro-politics in school. Evidence and reflection: thinking of a school in which you have worked, reflect on the various groups of staff and their perspectives and actions within the school. What relationships exist between these groups? Thinking of a significant incident or event, what variations were there in the responses of different individuals and groups? What strategies does the leadership team use in managing the different positions? To what extent do you feel that the culture of the school is affected by the influence which particular groups or individuals exert?

Beyond Classroom Reflection (2)

Aim: to investigate processes of political activity and decision making with regard to an educational issue. Evidence and reflection: the basic strategy here is to focus on one issue and to trace the debates in the media and elsewhere. The issue could be local or national. Newspapers provide useful sources of easily retrievable information (e.g. through an index). Having gathered statements about the issue in question, an attempt should be made to classify them so that the competing positions are identified (e.g. to gather policy statements). Then, the decision-point can be studied: were the public arguments influential? What interests seem to have prevailed when decisions were taken?

The Reflective Process

An example from research

Reconnaissance (e. g. narratives)

Presents the results of the content analysis from the narratives, stressing patterns, themes and categories that emerged from the data; each teacher is confronted with the perspectives he or she expressed in their discourses. End and beginning of the reflective cycle

Evaluation of the global process in order to understand and assess its effectiveness, and to identify both what kind of changes, if any, occurred in the teachers practices, and the obstacles that might have unable those same changes.

Personal narratives of school practices

Analysis and identification of discourse divergences, among the teachers, as well as between them and other social actors; clarification of the conceptual nature of such differences.

Identification of the ideologies and social paradigms expressed through the various discourses, namely in what way they mean a break with traditional approaches to education.

(Project POLITEIA, 2003)

Analysis of core concepts, introducing other sources of information (e. g. official documents and texts, articles from experts), as an attempt to identify the frame of reference to which they can be related.

References
Liston, D. & Zeichner, K. (1996). Culture and Teaching. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaun. Parker, S. (1999). Reflective Teaching in the Postmodern World. Buckingham: Open University Press. Perrenoud, P. (1994). La Formation des Enseignants entre Thorie et Pratique. Paris: LHarmattan. Pollard, A. (2002). Reflective Teaching: effective and evidence-informed professional practice. London: Continuum. Reagan, T. et al. (2000). Becoming a Reflective Educator. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Ritchie, J. & Wilson, D. (2000). Teacher Narrative as Critical Inquiry. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Schn, D. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: how professionals think in action. New York, NY: Basic Books. Schn, D. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Zeichner, K. & Liston, D. (1996). Reflective Teaching: an introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaun. Usher, R. et al. (1997). Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge. London: Routledge. Other reference Journals on this subject: Teaching Education (Carfax Publishing), Reflective Practice and Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice (both from Taylor & Francis).

Contact and Address

Fernando M. S. Alexandre Faculdade de Cincias e Tecnologia - UNL Cincias e Tecnologia da Educao e da Formao/SACSA Quinta da Torre, Monte da Caparica 2829-516 CAPARICA PORTUGAL Tel. (+351) 21 294 83 94 Fax. (+351) 21 294 85 92 e.mail: fma@fct.unl.pt / fmalexandre@hotmail.com