Professional characteristics include:

- Commitment, dedication, and hardworking.

- Understand the reasons for teaching.

- Ethical behavior.

- Ability to design curriculum that works.

- Effective communication skills.

I think that a reflective teacher is a ( forever student ) who doesn't stop acquiring knowledge not only about his/her specialty but from all other sciences .

A reflective teacher is who remains confident and calm when challenged by an extra gifted student or an extra disruptive one .

A reflective teacher is the one who applies changes in his teaching methods and can convince the others with his approach.

There are many other carecteristics that can describe a reflective teacher away from typical ones , however , i shall leave the space for other researchers' answers .

Good luck

Hi Reza, I conducted a PdD research some years ago, that focused on the difference between teachers that sistematically reflected on their practices, from those who didn´t. In our work, one of the most discrimating factors was recent teacher training. Those teachers who had graduated from their teacher training courses more recently were the most reflective ones. I hope this sheds some light to your question. Greetings from South America, Adriana.

A reflective teacher is the one who is thinking, meditating and ponder at the end of the day. It is how a teacher thinks of the success and challenges in teaching and finds time to make changes for the sake of other student.

Simply  reflective teachers are teachers  who always think over their teaching practices and methods, analyzing how the course was taught and how the tools might be improved or changed for better learning outcomes. 

Schratz (2014) : The European Teacher: Transnational Perspectives in Teacher Education Policy and Practice. c e p s Journal | Vol.4 | No4 |  offers an insight regarding reflection as one of the essential requisites in developing teacher professionalism which can be of help: 

Reflection and Discourse Sharing knowledge and skills refers to the capacity of regarding oneself and one’s environment with emotional involvement and with a critical and detached eye, as well as the ability to analyse one’s actions in a systematic way from different perspectives (practical experiences, theories of education, methodology, one’s own biography, etc.), and the ability to develop alternative strategies accordingly. The language for discourse requires the ability to be focused and to see things clearly by putting them into words, to be able to use a shared language for communication among colleagues.

A reflective teacher constantly updates their material. They evaluate what works and what does not in a lecture and reacts accordingly. If all of the students are missing a question on an exam, a reflective teacher looks at how the materials did not adequately inform their students or if the question was poorly written. They are problem solvers.

Thanks, Dr. Biria for posting a reflective question.                   Reflective teachers are critical thinkers and critical participants of their classroom events. They are able to identify problems, analyze and assess information, consider and evaluate alternatives, and choose the most effective solution to the problems. As Gregg mentioned, they are good problem solvers and actually, they are good researchers. Preparing such teachers is the responsibility of teacher educators. Teacher education curriculum should be designed in a way to basically develop critical professional identities in teachers. 

Your question is an interesting one that needs to be examined with some caution. Firstly, most teachers are, or at least, should be, reflective. Teachers learn all the time. The worst teacher is one who always insists on being right all the time. In my experience, a middle school teacher insisted that Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune were larger than the sun, a clear error and one that could have been checked and corrected very easily.

Another similar error, also one that the teacher did not correct, was to use the spider as an example of an insect.

A broad interest in Educational Practice as well as subject knowledge is essential. For teachers of children, a knowledge of Child Development is invaluable, as we are always needing to level, and even re-level our work. We create a syllabus expecting a certain level of student, and then find that the actual class is different to what we expected, necessitating a new approach and a new syllabus.

In terms of subject matter, the text book is useful, but not authoritative. It is up to us to keep abreast of trends and advances.

We should do our best, but be willing to accept that there may be other approaches and answers. We need to be open, so that students are encouraged to find possible answers themselves. They need to accept that answers may vary and that no teacher knows everything. Much of this is only possible if the environment is open and permitting.

Some schools are run like military regiments, and such an environment is not conducive to free inquiry. If the environment is not supportive, then an open spirit of inquiry cannot be developed.

A reflective teacher - I gather it is referred to self reflective individual. (Although there can be some, who are reflective to others but rarely look at themselves.)

A self reflective teacher needs to have enough self confidence not to mind what reflection they see when they look in the mirror of their own mind. With that kind of confidence (and mind,) they would also stand much better chance to self-correct what they see or approach others for help.

Someone who can look back at a situation and analyse. In this enough self confidence to be objective, also about own behavior and emotions. Research skills are an asset.

I think one can only learn from experiences through reflection skills. In a very simple way classic conditioning pushes people into behaviors. If you have analytic skills and are not afraid to discover how you could have done better, than the quality of the reflections is better. You are not conditioned but can make choices that are based on knowledge.

Dear Dr.Biria 

Reflective practice in teaching means a process of self-observation and self-evaluation. From this point we can get the idea. Reflective teacher is the one that always think of what he/she works in the classroom, about why he/she do it, and thinking about if it works. The whole process is about evaluation that leads to changes and improvements in teaching. It is one of the means of professional development. 

Liqaa 

Reflective teaching is a process where teachers think over their teaching practices, analyzing how something was taught and how the practice might be improved or changed for better learning outcomes. You can use reflection as way to simply learn more about your own practice, improve a certain practice (small groups and cooperative learning, for example) or to focus on a problem students are having. Reflective teaching implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analysing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, and then going on to making changes.

http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-reflective-teaching-definition-methods-quiz.html

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/reflective-teaching-exploring-our-own-classroom-practice

Reflective teachers are willing to try new things in the classroom and then to compare the results with previous results, always using this recursive strategy to improve and optimize their teaching.

Dear Reza Biria,

Professional reflection of the teacher is his ability to reflect the "inner picture of the world" of the student.

Regards, Shafagat

Reflective teachers are those who stop for a while and reflect back on their teachings, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of their lessons, and accordingly adjust their lessons for the future.

While we teach, we can get sick.

Reflection helps us to avoid the emotional illness that results from professional practice.

The reflective teacher is the flexible teacher who, (even so), manages to fulfill the objectives of his program and contributes to a better education of the new generations.

That kind of reflexive work requires pedagogical experience and professional training

There are more arguments in:

Chapter FUNDAMENTALS OF THE PREPARATION FOR THE SELF-CARE OF TEACHERS 'HEALTH

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.”

― Aristotle

One of first hand and academically proven answers to the question who are reflective teachers? can be acquired and elaborated further from van Lier's(1996, 2014). Interactional curriculum. Perhaps the book is on google scholar as well, and it highlights significance of reflective teacher on the educational principles of awareness autonomy and authenticity!

Teachers should be flexible in teaching practices, analysing, improving pedagogy.

A reflective teacher is a teacher who pays attention to the responses that learners give during and after lesson presentation. He also reflects on how he teaches and looks for better methods of teaching that can make learners be active participants in learning and at the same time embraces the 21st century skills of learning in his teaching. He does not consider himself to be all knowing and he is all the time learning even from his students.

Generally, it can be said that there are internal reflections and external reflections.

For inner reflections one needs in most cases some external input that initiate the internal process. For external reflections one needs a strong core and especially a teacher. Otherwise the students may get a distorted reflection.

Reflective teacher is the one who tries to learn how to learn consistently.

Dear Reza Biria

Qualities of a contemplative teacher:

(Dwani 2003) has demonstrated beyond any doubt the importance of meditating teacher preparation because if we adhere to our beliefs in a dogmatic way and reject the possibility of their error, then we have closed all other horizons to our progress. The Berlak model, which consists of a set of steps that helps the teacher in the contemplative analysis of the assumptions and beliefs related to the study, is presented:

1- That the teacher begins clarifying his current beliefs related to specific issues in order to test the assumptions on which they are based, such as asking the following questions:

 What knowledge and skills must be taught to different groups of students?

 - To what extent does the teacher need to transfer the summary of some values ​​and beliefs to all students?

 - For how long should the teacher address the students' cultural knowledge and previous experiences?

2- Making comparisons between the teacher's beliefs and those of others through study materials, reading and observation, and talking to others about professional and unprofessional situations.

As for Dewey, he proposed three directions that he considered essential to preparing the individual for meditation (Duane 2003):

1- The open mind

2- Self-impulsion

3- Responsibility,

This was added by Dr. Kamal Dawani

4- Technical investigation skills

5- Problem solving skills.

The meditation steps for the teacher may be the starting point of self-observation or the observation of others of some life situations that raise problems and questions ((Henderson, James, 1992) and these notes direct possible paths of actions and ideas needed to confront the situation or problem.

Dear dr. Basema Younes

Good Contribution.

Best regards

Dear dr. Sajda Taha Mahmood

I agree with you.

Best Regards

Dear Dr. Erez Grinboim

Very deep contribution.

Best regards

Good Answer Erez Grinboim

Thank you very much for your detailed contribution, dear Rita. It was an insightful response addressing the full scope underlying the question.

As Professor John Hattie's work on Visible Learning has shown the most powerful impact of teacher reflection on student achievement is when teacher reflection is focused on the impact of their chosen teaching methods on their students performance. Often this means teaching less and learning/researching more...

Reflective teachers I bet are those who apply the ELC in their teaching

In my best knowledge, reflective teachers are those who apply critical methods or critical pedagogy in their classrooms. They teach their learners to develop their habits of reflection such as metacognition.

this is a very interesting question. I think that a reflective teacher is a perfect inquirer who always ask himself/herself about what they did effective or not and how to improve the defects.

I believe that the reflexive teacher is the person who implements changes in his teaching methods and can convince others of his approach and is the teacher who reads in his field of specialization and constantly develops his abilities.

Reflective teacher is one who learns and knows to listen, also to constructive feedback. Without needing to justify themselves. And can analyze feedback in unbiased ways.

Simply reflective teachers are teachers who always think over their teaching practices and methods, analyzing how the course was taught and how the tools might be improved or changed for better learning outcomes.