Week 17: Reflecting on My Reflective Practice

Looking into the Mirror

If 'experience is a wet cloth’ and the ‘purpose of reflection is to wring every last part of learning out of the situation', (SkillsTeamHullUni, 2014) I need to wring harder. When evaluating my practice using the survey in the Mindlab class notes, I understand what critical reflection is; I discuss experiences and ideas with my colleagues and reflect on my own – often late at night or in the wee small hours of the morning. As for data gathering and research, I sometimes do this. An example would be when I was trying to improve the writing skills of my Year 9 students. I surveyed them to see what they thought their problems were and almost all said the most difficult thing was coming up with ideas to write on. I then did some research and came up with ten strategies for getting ideas for writing. We used these strategies in writing exercises and applied them to creative writing. This was a successful experience for the students and me as they responded positively and were able to choose a strategy rather than complain ‘I don’t know what to write.’ Their feedback supported this. I knew the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ and I was starting to think about the ‘so what?’ What did this imply for future learning?

Zeichner and Liston’s five levels of reflection – How do I rate?

Rapid reflection – if I feel that something is not working, I am prepared to change or adapt, sometimes in the middle of a lesson or a unit of work – I think a lot of my actions have been instinctive.

Repair – again this is something I do instinctively such as allowing students to present their work in a different format or having more choice in the selection of texts.

Review –Although I am often reflecting mentally, or with others, I rarely write a reflection, unless it is for my one focused teacher inquiry for the year and is required for the registration process.

In terms of the last two of the five levels: Research; I sometimes gather data and read theory, but rarely retheorise and reformulate. As part of my experience on the Mindlab course, I have a better understanding of how research and gathering data is important to improving my teaching and to challenging my existing assumptions. Thus far, I think I have been better reflecting immediately, ‘reflection-in action’, rather than taking the long-term view ‘reflection on action’ Finlay cites Schon, (1983).

A 'powerful tool to examine and transform practice' (Finlay, 2008, p.8)

Although I have found it challenging to write a blog and expose myself to the world (or at least to the members of my Mindlab class), I can see the merits in having a place to reflect and share ideas with other teachers. Writing my reflections down will help me to reflect on a deeper level and discover lessons for myself as a learner and look ahead for implications for my professional practice and so, time poor as many teachers are, I will try to establish the reflective blog habit.

The model that I intend to use is Gibbs Reflective Cycle (1988). I like that it links well to the Spirals of Inquiry (Timperley, 2013) and the steps are clear. One of the steps in the Gibbs model is ‘feelings’ and L’Arrivee (2000) sees the importance of reflecting critically on the impact of assumptions…, feelings, behaviour’. A key point in the process for me will also be the analysis and taking the time to do this at a deeper level so that I can indeed ‘wring every last bit of learning from the situation.’ A critique of the model could be that it is not wide-ranging enough in terms of the Action plan stage. e.g. How could the new learning be applied to other areas? In my opinion, it is important to be flexible in the use of the model and I would incorporate that question into my action plan when necessary.

Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle

References:

Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file…

Timperley, H., Kaser, L., and Halbert, J. (2014, April). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry. Centre for Strategic Education, Seminar Series Paper No. 234.

Larrivee, B. (2000).Transforming teaching practice: becoming the critically reflective teacher. Reflective Practice, 1(3), 293-307.

Ministry of Education.(2009). Teaching as Inquiry. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Teachers-as-learners-Inquiry/Teaching-as-inquiry

Schon, D.A. (1983) The reflective practitioner. New York: Basic Books

SkillsTeamHullUni. (2014, March 3). Reflective writing. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v+Qol67VeE3ds