Week 17- My
Reflective Practice.
1St
April 2018
Descriptive Stage.
For years’ reflective practice in my learning area
consisted of the three of us in our department “chewing the fat” each day at
lunchtime talking about our lessons, what went wrong, what was good and how we
could use one another’s good ideas and not make the same mistakes and also come
back and share how it went if we were trying something for the first time. Nowadays
reflective practice seems more formal and very constructed and there needs to
be a paper trail proving that you are doing it in your classes and you are
taking the students feedback as part of the reflective process by gathering
student voice.I think as teachers we should always be prepared to learn from
our mistakes and successes thus Reflecting should be ongoing and a daily or
weekly activity that we should be doing. The only problem is making time to
actually do it properly.
Comparative
I have never been afraid to voice my
opinion or share my thoughts about how things went in a lesson with my
Colleagues in our department but I shudder when I think about sharing with
people that I do not know or know well. I am amazed at how brave and honest
people are that blog and use all the technology of today to talk to the world
their thoughts and ideas. Funny enough I do find it helpful to read peoples
sharings and I nod to myself in agreement when they talk about similar things
that I have experienced in a classroom. I thus tend to agree with Boud
when he talks about reflective practice.
In general reflective practice is understood as the process of learning through
and from experiences towards gaining new insights of self and or practice (
Boud et al 1985;Boyd and Fales 1983; Mezirow,1981,Jarvis, 1992) Reflecting can also give me an opportunity to examine what is not
working in the classroom and lead me to make improvements to rectify the
situation and also to get student voice to make sure I have solved or improved
it.
Critical
Reflection
After reading Linda Finlays
article on reflective practice (2009)and working with my Community of
Learning Colleagues at our school I have come to the realisation that
reflective practice is not bound to your subject area and the teachers in your
department but is more of a teaching collaboration and putting our heads
together and nutting out solutions that teachers could use in their classrooms and
blogging though personally uncomfortable for me is just another change process
that I have to adapt to in my teaching practice and I should use it as my students
are adapting and changing all the time so why should I remain the same.
REFERENCES
Findlay (2009) Reflecting on reflective practices,
Boud (1985) Reflection .Turning experience into
learning.
Congratulations on overcoming your initial blogging fear and making your reflections public. I am certain that you will inspire a few shy fellow-bloggers to do likewise.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your talk to me about your blogging experience it has sort of eased the fears that i had about blogging and being judged.
DeleteA very honest blog post Dean. I found it interesting to hear your views about how opening up about our practice has changed in recent years. Do you think the inquiry process and openness between colleagues has supported your practice more or less than other educational changes you have experienced since first starting to teach?
ReplyDeleteWell done Dean, I can sympathize with you when it comes to blogging. When getting student voice, are you as equally as apprehensive with student comments by putting yourself out there as well? Using your CoL group and sharing this could have potential on building the relationships with your members. As Lance mentioned in his earlier post openness between colleagues can be invaluable with reassuring yourself with your practice.
ReplyDelete