How do we become reflective practitioners who actively, persistently, and carefully think about how we teach?
After each lesson, sit down quietly in the staff room and add a note to the lesson plan on how to improve it next year.
after we create habits with the help of all the tools that we have
Methods for teaching evaluation are here. And with the help of any one like self evaluation the journey may be possible pleasant and more productive.
How do we become reflective practitioners who actively, persistently, and carefully think about how we teach?
By actively, persistently and carefully inquiring and thinking about how they learn, I would say.
Hi Senad,
Don´t forget the point of view that our students and peers could give us. ¿Why don´t invite a colleague to see how we teach and then talk about it? Kind Regards.
There should be a constant EYE on the institutions, teachers, students, needs of a country. Teaching requires of constant reviewing because it is an active and continuos process.
We become reflective practitioners when we carefully and actively think of the learning outcome(feed back) of the students persistently to help review our teaching methods or styles.
Dear Jose, Malan, and Henrietta,
Thank you very much for your contributions.
All best,
Senad
To be aware of "how" we teach. But how do we express in words this "how"? What are the observable signs of the way we act to make them learn ? How do we record these acts as a corpus for analysis ? How do we analyse and evaluate these acts ? according to which criteria ? What are the observable signs of what they did learn ? Why do you teach ?
After each lesson, sit down quietly in the staff room and add a note to the lesson plan on how to improve it next year.
Hello,
IMHO, teaching skills are partially transferred. Therefore, you need to listen to others’ lectures, then learn from their strengths and weaknesses to improve your teaching skills. On the other hand, the considered topics in a course are based on the scientific level of the lecturer/professor. Good topics should be valuable from national, and international point of view as well as their scientific depth, and future use.
Reflective practitioners are very rare. There are instructors who are fond of themselves so they will imagine that they are doing well all the time. i.e. they do not want to improve their methods of teaching.
In a university in our country (not ours), the instructors are addicted to overtime work(more money) with each one of them having more than 4 lectures & practical sessions per day for 5 days. They neither reflect nor try to change in a positive way. Needless to say, they produce very low quality graduates.
A teacher, with conscience, will always look at what was done in each lecture & will try to get better in coming semesters.
Through quality assurance and timely feedback. The feedback from the class is good, but when you get poll outcomes, reviews of your classes done by your colleagues it give a lot of ideas to improve your classes. Constant ideas exchange through methodology seminars is another good practice for teachers to start reflect and improve.
We started a FWG (Faculty Writing Group) at the teacher-led STEM high school we founded in 2009. We met on Sat. mornings at the coffee shop near the school, since most of us came in to work in classrooms prepping for next week. (I was the principal) We generated truly valuable qualitative data that documented our start-up year with an unusual governance structure. We took turns bringing pastries and supplying writing prompts. It was also cathartic and comic relief from the overwhelming stress we all felt from the pressures of inventing a new model for establishing “STEM for ALL” in a large, 88% poverty-level urban high school. This environment of collective support drove all our expectations higher and was a foundation that gave the seal of approval to teachers discussing actual teaching and co-leadership practices, which then became a norm.
Dear Virginia,
Thank you very much for sharing your experience.
All best,
Senad
We must engage in debate of the most effective ways of teaching. These debates must be led by the leading experts in teaching.
I think it's a practice that needs to be developed individually, and it's something that has to be done intentionally too.
Teachers are all busy people, so sometimes it's hard to really sit down to reflect and journal down all our thoughts.
Perhaps one practical way can be to start simple, like to jot down one main take away from the day's lessons. Or something that could have been done better. From there, start to develop the disposition to constantly reflect throughout the day.
In our experience, it was the social atmosphere of a joint writing session that turned the desire and intention to write into actual production. If you are a leader trying to stimulate reflective writing, remember that many if not most teachers are extroverts, who derive energy from interactive settings.
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