Mind Lab Week 17: Applied practice paper week 1 - My Reflective Practice
Weekly task number 1 for the Applied Practice paper was to reflect on our own reflective practice. But why I here you ask? Well to be honest to make us reflect. It is not just the concept of reflection but how we reflect and what we do with our light bulb moments and learning after reflection. Our recommended reading was 'Reflecting on Reflective Practice' Finlay, 2008. Finlay critiques the application and merits of several different reflective models. So using Jay and Johnson's (2002) 3 step model: Descriptive, Comparative and Critical, to reflect on my current reflective practice.
Just like many teachers time is a rare commodity. Most of us continually reflect to improve our teaching to improve student engagement and achievement, but we rarely take the time to sit down and actually writing it down, let alone analyse and annotate our reflections. I do believe many of us constantly action on our reflections.
Personally I feel like my teaching reflections are constantly going on in the background in my brain, if you could look inside that like working on it circle would be going round at warp speed. I regularly review lessons, units, assessments student achievement, have conversations with colleagues and comment in online Facebook groups for Science and Physics teachers in New Zealand. I do tend to write this down but it tends to be short and descriptive. These can be found as annotations in my plan book and unit plans, to editing and archiving old assessments. My reflections do get formalized as my inquiry project which is generally separate and my digital appraisal document. This appraisal document allows me to share with others and to invite feedback. I can also comment on colleagues enteries that are shared with me. We also have an opportunity as a staff at my school where once a month we meet in our inquiry focus group to reflect, share and learn.
I enjoy collaborating with peers to seek guidance and feedback on my reflective practice to help me identify what learning can be applied to other areas of my practice. During the Mind Lab flipped learning and face to face sessions I really enjoying engaging with other educators who teach different ages and content, who also give you a different perspective on your reflection and sometimes a light bulb moment.
Considering Zeichner and Liston's (1996) five different levels of reflection I would say that I regularly use the following:
Rapid reflection
Repair
Review
As I move through my mind lab journey I am begging to develop my Research and Re-theorizing as evident in Blog post yesterday regarding the impact of the Flipped learning model with my Level 2 Physics class. Moving forward with my reflective practice I think I will need to set a reminder to complete a weekly reflective entry. In addition my Mind Lab intake group are trying to organised regular meetings and encouraging each other to support each other through our Facebook group, G+ community and commenting on each others Blogs. I'm eager to learn more from them and my own reflective practice. This should allow me to implement improvements and changes with my practice.
I wonder what have you gained from your own reflective practice?
Just like many teachers time is a rare commodity. Most of us continually reflect to improve our teaching to improve student engagement and achievement, but we rarely take the time to sit down and actually writing it down, let alone analyse and annotate our reflections. I do believe many of us constantly action on our reflections.
Personally I feel like my teaching reflections are constantly going on in the background in my brain, if you could look inside that like working on it circle would be going round at warp speed. I regularly review lessons, units, assessments student achievement, have conversations with colleagues and comment in online Facebook groups for Science and Physics teachers in New Zealand. I do tend to write this down but it tends to be short and descriptive. These can be found as annotations in my plan book and unit plans, to editing and archiving old assessments. My reflections do get formalized as my inquiry project which is generally separate and my digital appraisal document. This appraisal document allows me to share with others and to invite feedback. I can also comment on colleagues enteries that are shared with me. We also have an opportunity as a staff at my school where once a month we meet in our inquiry focus group to reflect, share and learn.
I enjoy collaborating with peers to seek guidance and feedback on my reflective practice to help me identify what learning can be applied to other areas of my practice. During the Mind Lab flipped learning and face to face sessions I really enjoying engaging with other educators who teach different ages and content, who also give you a different perspective on your reflection and sometimes a light bulb moment.
Considering Zeichner and Liston's (1996) five different levels of reflection I would say that I regularly use the following:
Rapid reflection
Repair
Review
As I move through my mind lab journey I am begging to develop my Research and Re-theorizing as evident in Blog post yesterday regarding the impact of the Flipped learning model with my Level 2 Physics class. Moving forward with my reflective practice I think I will need to set a reminder to complete a weekly reflective entry. In addition my Mind Lab intake group are trying to organised regular meetings and encouraging each other to support each other through our Facebook group, G+ community and commenting on each others Blogs. I'm eager to learn more from them and my own reflective practice. This should allow me to implement improvements and changes with my practice.
I wonder what have you gained from your own reflective practice?
Hi Lisa, I really enjoyed reading your first blog post. Thinking about your question "what I have gained from my own reflective practice" has been interesting for me... I've never really thought about it before. I guess what I have gained is insight. Insight into how my practice is working for my students and how it's not. This is really helpful in moving forward and growing as a professional.
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned that you write down spur of the moment reflections in your planner etc... out of curiosity... do you ever go back to those and look at what you've done since?
Apologises for the late reply. I had tried to do this on the app on my phone and it would not sync. Yes I do get the opportunity to go back and improve. Some times it is within the week as I have usually got two classes of the same year group, this allows me to learn from one lesson to modify and improve for the next class. As TIC Junior Science I tend to have a draft 2019 document on the go as we work through units and I receive feedback re tasks and assessments. This allows for the improved practice the following year.
DeleteI also edit and update my OneNote classbook to better fit the class or from insights due to reflections. This allows me to track how things are going to.
Hello Lisa. Thanks for sharing your reflection. Teachers always try to reflect on what is working well and what needs to be changed to suit the needs of our learners. It is also nice to know that teachers at your school meet to reflect on the teacher inquiry. Most of the time we adopt Schon's work on reflection. He identified two types of reflection: reflection - on - action (after - the - event) and reflection - in - action ( thinking while doing). I think this is me, I try to reflect on my practice when things go well for a class and students show enthusiasm and if it does not work out as planned than during the lesson I think what needs to be changed to make it better for my students.
ReplyDeleteHi Poonam thank you for your thoughts. We had our professional learning groups established about 5 years ago. They tend to be fluid as to who is in what group from year to year. In recent years we have developed the spiral of inquiry as a school and linked this into our appraisal. This has led to scheduled PLG time into our calendar on a Monday meeting slot. I think this has helped encourage teachers to find the time to address their reflections. This means that the reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action, can be discussed with peers who have similar objectives.
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