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As an ELT practitioner with over 18 years of experience, I have experienced days when I walked out of the classroom feeling that I had performed poorly or when I thought to myself, I could have taught that grammar part differently. This is precisely where reflective teaching comes into play.
What is Reflective Teaching?
Reflective teaching is when a teacher thinks, writes, and/or speaks about their lessons, teaching methods, and approaches. According to Thomas Farrell, “Reflective practice occurs when teachers consciously take on the role of reflective practitioners, subject their own beliefs about teaching and learning to critical analysis, take full responsibility for their actions in the classroom, and continue to improve their teaching practice.” In fact, reflection is essentially a process of self-evaluation and learning based on teaching experience.
Why is Reflective Teaching Important?
A teacher can be considered successful if they engage their students more and continuously improve their lesson plans. Teachers can evaluate their lesson plans by analyzing different aspects, such as Teacher Talking Time (TTT) or student engagement.
For example, if your students weren’t engaged during an activity, you can analyze the reasons why. Perhaps you didn’t set a clear context, or maybe you overexplained, which slowed down student collaboration. Alternatively, it might have had nothing to do with your planning, and the students simply partied the previous night and weren’t interested in discussing the differences between the present perfect and past simple.
Reflective teaching is also an essential part of Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
As teachers, we need CPD to grow and improve the effectiveness of our teaching skills. We receive various training before starting our careers, but while reflecting on our teaching, we can also think back on the training we’ve had and evaluate whether we are applying what we learned. We can share our experiences on social media platforms such as LinkedIn or Facebook. This way, we continue to develop and expand our teaching skills throughout our careers.
What are the Characteristics of Reflective Teaching?
Although reflective teaching can take many forms, some characteristics are common to all reflective practices:
- Reflective teaching considers what happens in the classroom, why it happens, and how it can be improved.
- If you practice reflective teaching, it’s rare that you will teach the same lesson in the exact same way, because reflective teaching challenges you. You’ll need to critique yourself and your go-to lesson plans.
- Although many teachers write their reflections down, not all reflective teaching needs to be written. Many teachers, instead, choose to speak about their lessons with a colleague or mentor.
- Reflective teaching is collaborative and often involves a head teacher or a colleague.
- Reflecting on and discussing how your lessons went often leads to helpful insights.
What are Some Examples of Reflective Teaching?
Some ways of practising reflective teaching include:
- Teaching journals: Write down classroom reflections in a journal.
- Classroom observations: Be observed either by a supervisor or by recording the lesson and watching it again.
- Critical friends: Discuss your classes with a friend or colleague who can offer constructive feedback.
- Action research: Research something you struggle with, and maybe even take a course to improve specific teaching skills.
- Online groups: Teachers actively post online about reflective teaching in teacher development groups like the Open Alumni Community of Practice or IATEFL forums. Posting online helps teachers gain more recognition in the industry as well as organize their reflections.
- Blogs: Many teachers choose to share their reflections by creating their own EFL blogs.
- Teacher beliefs: Continue to develop and express your beliefs about what makes good teaching.
Conclusion
Reflective teaching is a recurrent process because once you start implementing changes, the reflective and evaluative cycle begins again:
- What are you doing?
- Why are you doing it?
- How effective is it?
- How are the students responding?
- How can you do it better?
As a result of your reflection, you may decide to do something in a different way, or you may just decide that what you are doing is the best approach, and that is what professional development is all about.
About the Writer: Sina Daneshvar is an MA graduate with 18 years of experience in English language teaching and 6 years of teacher training. He has conducted numerous workshops and Teacher Training Courses (TTCs), and is dedicated to enhancing teaching practices. His professional research interests include teaching methodologies, teaching skills, interlanguage pragmatics, and continuous professional development (CPD). Outside of work, Sina is passionate about cultural travel, books, and music.