All teachers are expected to reflect on their practice as part of the Registered Teacher Criteria. According to Finlay (2008), reflective practices enable life long learning, allow teachers/students to gain new understandings and enable practitioners to learn through and from experiences.
The article claims that there is a need for people to be able to revise on and in practice. Schon (1983, cited in Finlay, 2008, p3-4) states that "professionals have to be able to do more than follow a set of procedures. They draw on both practical experiences and theory as they think on their feet and improvise. They act both intuitively and creatively." Practitioners need to be able to monitor, modify and refine their practice in response to the experiences and contexts they encounter.
But how professionals reflect has drawn criticism from some theorists. Zeicher and Liston (1996, cited in Finlay, 2008) identify 5 levels of reflection - rapid reflection, repair, review, research and retheorizing and reformulating. This captivated my attention as I would argue that all 5 of these levels are needed if a teacher is to truly inquire into their practice. Finlay and Gough (2003, cited in Finaly, 2008) refer to this process as existing on a continuum and argue that reflection, critical reflection and reflexivity are not interchangeable.
Reflective practices, when done well can be a powerful and empowering tool. However, this is often not the case when busy, over-worked professionals are expected to reflect at specific times. This can often lead to ineffective and inappropriate reflections, devaluing the purpose of the exercise. Quinn (1988/2000, cited in Finlay 2008, p11) argues that ineffective reflections "may actually devalue practitioners professional work instead of promoting it."
In busy school environments where teachers are required to reflect on aspects of their practice in order to meet specified regulations, the quality and effectiveness needs to be questioned. As is happening at our school, teachers are reflecting against prescribed benchmark questions. How deeply are teachers inquiring into their own practice? What shifts should we expect to see in the students results? With this prescribed set of reflective questions are we at risk of becoming complacent and accepting of unduly simple reflections?
The biggest barrier educators face to effectively inquiring into their own practice is time, a want for practitioners to engage in critical reflection and the careful development of the skills of critical analysis.
WHAT REFLECTIVE MODEL IS MOST SUITABLE?
Eby (2000, cited in Finlay, 2008) presents a model of reflection, self-awareness and critical thinking. This model resonates with me because it is underpinned by the key themes of self-awareness - knowing yourself as a teacher and your students as learners; links theory to practice and engages teachers in exploring alternative options for specific contexts.
As someone who has been teaching for the past 10 years both locally and internationally, I have a vast number of experiences that allow me cognitive ability to evaluate a situation through intuition and self-awareness. I also like how this model calls for any action implemented to be linked to theory, something I feel is critical when trialling new approaches in the classroom. However, within this context it also promotes the idea of generating and testing new ideas, which as McKee (2003) states can lead to innovation and improvement.
REFERENCES
Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on reflective practice. (Online) available
at https://app.themindlab.com/media/6818/view
McKee, B. (2003). Why do we need research?. (Online) Available at http://eprints.rclis.org/6086/1/88_mcKee.pdf
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