Post 1: Do I really need to become a reflective practitioner?

Do I really need to become a reflective practitioner?

A reflective practitioner has the ability to reflect on personal actions in order to engage in a process of continuous learning. Becoming a reflective practitioner is a developmental process which informs the everyday actions of an individual (Cornish & Jenkins, 2011).

According to Mills, becoming a reflective practitioner is a “holistic approach” (2008). It should become an aspect of every professional life – the process of refection whether is through meditation, journaling, blogging or even a social media platform. It is important that we reflect in our daily lives, as it gives us the opportunity to think about our actions which help to improve learning outcomes. Reflective thinking can be seen as a process which involves a level of self-awareness, critical analysis, synthesis of ideas and evaluation.

As preservice teachers, it is important that we commit to becoming reflective practitioners as it will encourage us to pay greater attention to how we teach and the ways in which we aim to teach that is most suitable for the students. This is because, when we pay attention to our teaching we will be reflecting on what is positive/negative. This allows us to analyse and critically evaluate what works for teaching and what may need improvement, thus, a process of reflection. Dewey’s concept of reflective teaching was developed in the early 20th century. it was developed on the idea that learning is improved by the process of reflection, as it helps the learner develop higher-order thinking skills (Simpson, Jackson& Aycock, 2005).

The diagram below illustrates the reflective teaching practice of a preservice teacher. This is extremely important because when teachers are talking to parents, teachers need to have the ability to take on board what parents say in order to give students the best opportunities.

Figure 1: Reflective Teaching (Teaching Performance Assessment, 2019).

Reflective practice can be applied to our lives in a number of different ways. It is essential that we stop, reflect and learn from our busy lives.

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References:

Teaching Performance Assessment. (2019). Reflective Practice Cycle. Retrieved from https://www.vit.vic.edu.au/news/news/2018/teaching-performance-assessment

Cornish, L. & Jenkins, K. (2012). Encouraging teacher development through embedding reflective practice in assessment. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teaching Education, 40(2), pp 157-170

Mills, P. (2008). Becoming a Reflective Practitioner. Retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1365-2834.2000.00235-2.x

Simpson, D., Jackson, M., & Aycock, J. (2005). John Dewey and the art of teaching toward reflective and imaginative practice. Thousand Oaks, Calif. ; London: SAGE.