Week 17 - Reflective Practice

Reflective Practise: Week 17

Descriptive:

Being a reflective practitioner is something I’ve prided myself in the few short years
I’ve been teaching. Reflective practice can be an enormously powerful tool to examine and transform one's practice (Finlay, 2008). During my teaching induction period, I was praised for being constantly reflective, willing to accept criticism and feed-forward, and looked for ways to implement change constantly to better my practice. During this induction period, my tutor teacher and I would meet weekly to discuss matters such as this. Fast forward two years, with ERO visits conducted in our school this year, I made one very interesting and powerful revelation. When approached by ERO and asked for anecdotal evidence, and documentation pertaining to my reflective practice, I was embarrassed to say I didn’t have any tangible evidence. Although I was continuously reflective, verbally, mentally, with both myself and my colleagues, I lacked the documentation and formality of recording my thought processes. I had not yet adopted a formal, or explicit means of reflection, using it in a more fluid, ongoing, and tacit fashion (Finlay, 2008). Upon completing the Mindlab reflection survey, I found the results to reflect exactly the same - although I considered reflective pedagogy as a powerful and necessary function for my practice, I was not yet engaging in these authentic reflective practices as suggested by relevant research. I had found the prospect of recording my reflection to be too taxing and difficult (Finlay, 2008) and hard to implement as a habit in my practice.

Comparative:

Research suggests a myriad of different models and approaches can be adopted and
implemented to better enhance the reflective process. Jay and Johnsons’ 2002 reflective
model will be the method of reflective process that I’ll be using to inform my practice.
Reflective practice is understood as the process of learning through experience, with
the goal to gain new insights into self and one's practice (ref). It involves the practitioner
to be self-aware and critically evaluate, with frequency.  Research argues that reflective
thinking moved people away from routine thinking/action, towards reflective action.
Dewey (1933) refers to two particular modes of reflections - reflection-in-action
(thinking while doing), and reflection-on-action (reflecting after the event)
(as cited in Finlay, 2008, pp.10)

Critical Reflection:

After considering the relevant research, I’ve reached the conclusion that I do need to
develop my reflective practices further; particularly in regards to the documentation
of my reflections. According to Fook, White and Gardener (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.6),
critical reflection should be informed by reliable resources. I’ve also recognized the need
to develop a pedagogy that is based on research, and evidence, as opposed to self-made
assumptions, as referenced by Finlay (2008). Dewey (1933) also explains that practitioners
connect their feelings and attend to relevant theory; another facet of reflection I’m yet to
incorporate (as cited in Finlay, 2008, pp.3). I look forward to developing and establishing
better reflective methods into my current practice.

References:

Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. Practice-based Professional Learning  

Centre. Open University. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites /www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf