Reflective Practice

International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives

ISSN: 1462-3943 (Print) 1470-1103 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crep20

One teacher’s reflective journey and the evolution

of a lesson: Systematic reflection as a catalyst for
adaptive expertise

H. Emily Hayden , Deborah Moore-Russo & Mark R. Marino

To cite this article: H. Emily Hayden , Deborah Moore-Russo & Mark R. Marino (2013) One
teacher’s reflective journey and the evolution of a lesson: Systematic reflection as a catalyst for
adaptive expertise, Reflective Practice, 14:1, 144-156, DOI: 10.1080/14623943.2012.732950

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2012.732950

Published online: 30 Oct 2012.

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Reflective Practice
Vol. 14, No. 1, February 2013, 144–156

One teacher’s reflective journey and the evolution of a lesson:

Systematic reflection as a catalyst for adaptive expertise
H. Emily Haydena*, Deborah Moore-Russoa and Mark R. Marinob
a
University at Buffalo, Learning and Instruction, 584 Christopher Baldy Hall, Buffalo
14260, USA; bErie Community College, Williamsville, New York, NY, USA

This conceptual article provides a classroom-based example of the ways system-

atic reflection can improve teaching practice, impact student learning, and be a
catalyst for adaptive expertise and the development of pedagogical content
knowledge for high school mathematics teaching. Mark, a novice mathematics
teacher, used a cycle of systematic reflection to adapt one basic statistics lesson
over several years. An administrator’s observation and a professional develop-
ment opportunity served as critical incidents that focused Mark’s reflective
inquiry on improving student engagement. In several cycles of noticing, reflect-
ing, and making adaptations he worked to balance student engagement with deep
application of core mathematical principles. Mark’s progression from descriptive
reflection to comparative and critical reflection resulted in improvements in his
students’ engagement with and application of the core mathematical principles, as
well as changes in the focus of his reflection: from a novice focus on his own per-
formance in the classroom to a focus on the ways he could transform his teaching
to honor both the mathematical content and the learners at hand.
Keywords: reflective practice; adaptive expertise

Introduction
In Effective Teaching (2010) the Gates Foundation asserted that, “in the absence of
useful feedback, most teachers’ performances plateau by their third or fourth year
on the job” (p. 3). Henry, Bastian, and Fortner (2011) concur, but add “it is clear
that teachers have a tremendous capacity for on-the-job development” (p. 278).
How do teachers tap into this capacity for development? What are the catalysts for
change in teaching practice, and how can teachers use the feedback they receive
from school leaders, students, and colleagues to develop practices that are respon-
sive to student needs and optimally effective for student learning?
Reflection on critical incidents in teaching and on feedback received can become
the catalyst for transformative change in teaching practice. Most teacher education
programs emphasize the importance of reflective practice, but it is critically impor-
tant to recognize and support the ongoing development of such practice for teachers
in the field, since reflective practice provides a space for thinking about the class-
room day and about the creative tension (Senge et al., 2012) between “what is …
[and] what [teachers] wish were so” (Rodgers, 2002b, p. 231). This conceptual
report follows Mark, a mathematics teacher and co-author of this paper, and the
evolution of one of his lessons and of his practice over several years.

*Corresponding author. Email: emilyh@buffalo.edu

ISSN 1462-3943 print/ISSN 1470-1103 online

Ó 2013 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2012.732950
http://www.tandfonline.com
 Reflective Practice 145

This paper began as an informal conversation between Mark, the third author of
this paper, and Deborah, the second author. Mark had developed a math lesson over
time that had become a powerful teaching and learning tool, and he shared the
lesson and his experiences with Deborah, one of his former mathematics education
instructors from his teacher education program. Asked how he had come to the
lesson, Mark began to tell his story of systematic reflection and adaptation. The
development of this lesson was both intriguing and of potential benefit to other
students in Deborah’s classes so she embarked on a series of conversations with
Mark in order to gather more information about his reflective journey.
An administrator’s observation provided the critical incident that first prompted
Mark to make changes in the lesson and in his practice. Reflection on the adminis-
trator’s useful feedback and on a subsequent professional development activity
resulted in shifts in Mark’s teaching focus: from a novice’s focus on his own perfor-
mance to a more nuanced focus on instructional choices that would allow students
to interact with mathematics in meaningful ways and encourage deeper levels of
thought about principles and applications. This shift in focus presaged Mark’s
developing pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986). Rather than becoming
entrenched, reflection and instructional adaptations over time helped Mark emerge
from his novice years with a focus on transforming mathematics content in ways
that honored both the content and his students.

Literature review
Developing reflective inquiry over time
Teachers may view administrator observations as necessary, but of questionable use-
fulness: a time to brush off your best lesson, perhaps coach your students, and get
through the observation with minimal damage. Models of teacher evaluation can
lack precision and rely on discrete, observable behaviors that are poor indicators of
practice as a whole. Because novice teachers are evaluated on the same standards
as more experienced teachers, administrative observations may do little to provide
specific developmental feedback to move novice practice forward. But when obser-
vation and evaluation are linked to reflective inquiry, professional learning and
change in teaching practice can result (Danielson, 2000).
While the necessity of developing reflective practices of pre-service teachers is
well documented (Hayden & Chiu, 2012; Bransford, Derry, Berliner, Hammerness,
& Beckett, 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2006; Hammerness et al., 2005; Porter, Youngs,
& Odden, 2001) reflection as a part of practice once a teaching career has begun is
more complex (Loughran, 2010; Nilsson, 2009; Ostorga, 2006). Teachers in training
receive guidance in using reflection as an analytic tool, (Korthagen, Kessels, Koster,
Lagerwerf, & Wubbels, 2001; Korthagen & Vasalos, 2005; Loughran, 2010) but this
guidance alone is not sufficient for transfer to practice. Both teacher education and
professional development must prepare teachers to reflect on their own, once they are
in practice.
The initial focus of novice teachers is essentially inward. Novices enter pre-
service experiences with images of themselves as teachers that stem in part from
their experiences as learners (Lortie, 1975). Once in the classroom, novices use
growing knowledge of students and classrooms to modify, adapt, and reconstruct
their images of self as teacher. Additionally, novices work to master the common-
places of teaching (Berliner, 1988), and are so focused on rules and procedures that
146 H.E. Hayden et al.

feedback from students goes unnoticed. Only after novices resolve their images of
self as teacher and gain skill in management are they able to concentrate on the
responses and feedback they receive from students and from instructional interac-
tions (Hayden, Rundell, & Smyntek-Gworek, 2012). Still, “there is no magical, lin-
ear line from novice to expert, but rather many false starts, recursive thinking,
reflective moments, and problem solving episodes” (Roskos, Risko, & Vukelich,
1998, p. 234).
During teacher education problem solving is often introduced through guided
reflection, led by teacher educators, on critical incidents in practicum experiences
that cause some disequilibrium (García, Sánchez, Escudero, & Llinares, 2006;
Hartford & MacRuairc, 2008; McDuffie, 2004). For adaptation and growth to occur
a novice needs such disequilibria experiences, first, to gain some comfort with
disequilibria as a part of teaching and second, to learn processes for resolving
disequilibria through reflection and responsive instructional adaptation (Shulman &
Shulman, 2004).
Conversely, practicing teachers live in the classroom moment and are greatly
affected by their teaching environments, which often demand quick responses and
may inadvertently privilege the “quick fix”. Over time practicing teachers run the risk
of minimizing reflective inquiry to quick solutions. This abbreviated use of reflection
can lead to stagnation in development, resulting in repeated use of unmodified, unex-
amined lesson plans and presentations. At the very least, there is little time during the
teaching day for reflection on instructional issues that impact student gains.
Hence, the ability to notice important events and feedback from teaching inter-
actions, and to adapt in response, to remain fresh, is an indicator of teacher devel-
opment (Berliner, 1988; Hammerness et al., 2005) and an ongoing career challenge.
Systematic reflection on teaching practice provides an avenue for identifying and
exploring important events in teaching, developing hypotheses and instructional
adaptations, trying them out, and evaluating effectiveness.

Systematic reflection defined

Rodgers (2002a) distills four elements from Dewey (1933) that distinguish reflection
from other habits of thought. Reflection is (1) “a meaning-making process that moves
a learner from one experience into the next with deeper understanding”, (2) system-
atic, rigorous, disciplined, with “roots in scientific inquiry”, (3) a result of interaction
with others, and (4) habits of mind that value personal and intellectual growth of self
and others (Rodgers, 2002a, p. 845). Stockero (2008) defined reflection for mathe-
matics teachers as “analyzing classroom events … to identify often subtle differences
in students’ mathematical understandings and the ways … the teacher’s actions
contributed to them” (p. 374–375). Systematic reflection begins when teachers notice
important elements in instructional events that can help develop their own content
knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, or pedagogical content knowledge.

Noticing
Daily demands of teaching can stymie efforts at noticing and reflecting (Rodgers,
2002b) especially for early career novice teachers. Out of necessity, novices spend
much time mastering classroom management, schedules, lesson planning and effec-
tive delivery and often have difficulty noticing, interpreting, and reflecting on
 Reflective Practice 147

students’ responses. To complicate matters, novices have few experiences to draw

from, and typically lack skill in inferring, drawing conclusions, evaluating, and
adapting their teaching (Berliner, 1988).
As novices assimilate more practical knowledge and gain proficiency with com-
monplaces they are freed up to notice and take responsibility for student responses
to instruction. They become more flexible and can make analytical, adaptive plans
that build on this new awareness (Berliner, 1988). Over time and with experience
teachers can become adaptive experts (Hammerness et al., 2005) who identify
instructional roadblocks, then generate and enact responses that lead to student
growth. Development of adaptive expertise requires reflection in order to accom-
plish the complex combination of first noticing, then analyzing, and most impor-
tantly, taking action.

Taking action
Systematic reflection is aimed at taking action (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999,
Korthagen & Vasalos, 2005) and is embodied in practice (Kinsella, 2007). Since
some of the most efficacious learning experiences for teachers at any level come
when they encounter “puzzling, troubling or interesting phenomenon” (Schön,
1983, p. 50), systematic reflection offers a space specifically for thinking deeply
about such events and choosing actions based on analysis. Adaptive experts view
such puzzling and troubling events as critical incidents that initiate systematic
reflection, and they focus their reflection on developing instructional adaptations
(Gooddell, 2006; Hole & McEntee, 1999; Tripp, 1993).
Reflection at its basic level is descriptive: naming the critical incident, asking
questions, describing key elements, and evaluating current practice in light of
student responses. Reflection becomes more productive when it is comparative,
viewing a critical incident from different perspectives; or critical, taking questioning
perspectives that lead to new ideas. Comparative and critical reflections are more
likely to lead to action via instructional adaptation (Risko, Roskos, & Vukelich,
2005; Jay & Johnson, 2002).
The ALACT model (Korthagen & Kessels, 1999) codifies this process for
practicing teachers. A teaching Action is followed by Looking back to reflect.
Awareness expands by naming, questioning, describing and evaluating (descriptive
and comparative reflection). Creating alternative instructional adaptations is
followed by Trial and review (critical reflection). When adaptations are noticed and
reflected on the reflective cycle continues. Systematic reflection develops both
agency and efficacy because teachers “[shape] practice deliberately based on inten-
tions” (Bronkhorst, Meijer, Koster, & Vermunt, 2011, p. 1127).
Efficacy for teaching improves rankings on two correlates to student learning
and motivation: teacher knowledge scales and autonomy scales (Haverback &
Parault, 2008). Efficacy also reduces teachers’ perceptions of burnout (Skaalvik &
Skaalvik, 2007) and increases professional commitment (Ware & Kitsantas, 2007).
Reflective cycles of adaptation and revision open opportunities for going beyond
script: planning to respond contingently, challenge, and extend student reasoning
(Boyd & Rubin, 2006) and making “on-the-spot responses to students’ emerging
understandings.” (Duffy, 2005, p. 299) Thus, teachers who practice systematic
reflection positively impact their students’ learning and construct their own knowl-
edge as well.
148 H.E. Hayden et al.

Mark’s case
Novices are egocentric in their teaching and planning, and early career reflection is
often descriptive: focused on personal improvement. As novices gain experience
and begin to notice and feel responsibility for their students’ responses, their focus
shifts from self to students (Berliner, 1988) and the critical incidents that initiate
reflection shift from teacher-centered (“did I deliver all lesson components?”) to stu-
dent-centered (“were the students engaged?”). They move beyond self to consider
context as it impacts instructional interactions and student responses (Rodgers,
2002b). Thus, systematic reflection leads teachers to respond contingently, consider-
ing their students’ specific needs and the dynamic contributions of context, and live
out Vygotsky’s directive for pedagogy based “not on the past, but on the next day
of [a student’s] development” (cited in Shepel, 1995, p. 429).
We describe Mark’s case within the following framing questions:

(1) How does Mark enact reflection in his novice practice? In particular, what
critical incidents initiate reflection?
(2) How does reflection impact Mark’s lesson and his teaching practice?

We looked specifically for times when Mark engaged in descriptive, comparative,

or critical reflection (Jay & Johnson, 2002) and used parts of the ALACT
(Korthagen & Kessels, 1999) cycle.

Initial lesson
In his first year of teaching, Mark developed a lesson to introduce basic statistical
concepts of error and correlation typically covered in high school mathematics. He
used a graphing calculator to display a prepared set of “real world” data: deprecia-
tion of a car as a function of its age. This lesson addressed the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 2000) Connections standard: recognizing, using,
and understanding connections between mathematical ideas in order to produce a
coherent whole, in contexts outside of mathematics.

First reflective cycle

Mark reflected on the statistics lesson after teaching it to different sections of the
same class during his first year. Reflection on practice was something Mark had
learned during teacher preparation, and he viewed reflection as something any open-
minded, responsible teacher should do. When he looked back on the instructional
interaction he realized his students were passive observers, no more engaged than if
he had written a table on the board and plotted the ordered pairs to form a graph
without the aid of the calculator or a real world context. He decided to adapt the les-
son for better student engagement. In his second year of teaching Mark abandoned
the car depreciation data and made two adaptations. First, he asked his students to
contribute their heights and shoe sizes as data for the lesson. His students seemed to
enjoy using personal data. Second, instead of Mark creating the graph of the data the
students used this common data set to enter ordered pairs into a table and then prac-
ticed creating the corresponding graph on their own calculators. Mark’s goal for the
lesson was still for students to find the correct answer: the one he displayed at the
front of the room. This correct answer served as a springboard for his prepared
 Reflective Practice 149

lecture, delivered after the height/shoe size activity. Mark believed that this lesson
addressed both NCTM’s (2000) Representation standard, by creating representations
to organize and record mathematical ideas, and modeling and interpreting physical
and mathematical phenomena; and the Technology principle through use of the
graphing calculator to enable students to exercise a basic procedure quickly and
accurately. He was satisfied with the lesson and the level of involvement of his stu-
dents, so he continued teaching this lesson in this format for two more years.
At this stage in his teaching of the statistics lesson, Mark’s reflection seems
descriptive, with limited incorporation of comparative views (Jay & Johnson, 2002).
After personalizing the data with height/shoe size and incorporating more student
activity (using their own calculators), Mark finished with a lecture as before. His
reflection utilized parts of the ALACT cycle: he explored his teaching Action and
Looked back with enough Awareness to make adaptations to increase personalization
(height/shoe size) and student activity during the lesson. His reflection ended at that
point. He still expected students to find his correct answer, and he did not follow his
adaptation of the initial stages of the lesson with tasks that actively involved students
in the remainder of the lesson. Since he did not reflect on student responses to the
lecture in a way that resulted in any further adaptation, Creation and Trial of learner-
focused adaptations for the remainder of the lesson did not occur.

Critical incident
Mark viewed this lesson as one of his best, so he taught it during an administrator’s
observation during his third teaching year. Mark earned the highest marks on the
observation ratings in every category except one. Under teacher stimulates student
interests, his administrator noted that when Mark asked students to analyze, evalu-
ate, and interpret information they gave only brief responses. This comment caused
Mark to pause (Dewey, 1933). He recognized that opportunities for students to
think deeply and personally about mathematical principles and applications were
missing from this lesson in its present form. As a result of this realization, Mark
shifted his reflection to focus particularly on how this lesson could promote greater
student engagement and connection. He realized that helping his students develop
strong understanding of these fundamentals of statistics was crucial for later learn-
ing. Taking a broader, comparative view by looking at the context of his students’
learning beyond his classroom and this one lesson was new to Mark.

Next reflective cycle

Not long after this critical incident Mark attended a state mathematics education con-
ference and saw a presentation by one of the creators of the websites mathbits.com
and regentsprep.org. The presenter used celebrities’ names and prediction of their ages
to present the statistical fundamentals of error terms and correlation. Mark down-
loaded the original presentation from the mathbits.com website and used the activity
from the Texas Instruments website (Smeltz, 2008). He implemented the activity in
his class exactly as it had been presented at the conference. Using the same celebrity
names, he had his students guess each celebrity’s age, guiding the group to come to a
majority consensus on the age of each celebrity. He recorded this information on the
board in the first column of a table and then wrote the celebrities’ actual ages in the
corresponding rows of a second column. Once students had entered the data in their
150 H.E. Hayden et al.

calculators Mark used the results on one student’s calculator connected to an overhead
display to show the data to the entire class. Again, Mark ended the lesson with a
lecture that allowed for limited student discussion.
Mark judged that his students’ engagement increased with this adaptation.
Although the height/shoe size data set had done a fair job of keeping their attention,
students were much more interested in the celebrity data set. After Mark and his
students created the list of predicted and actual celebrity ages as a class, the
students graphed this data as a scatter plot. Mark used the scatter plot to discuss
various types of correlation. He showed students how to calculate correlation coeffi-
cients and how to interpret them. As he looked back on the lesson, it became clear
that even though the celebrity data were more engaging for the students, his instruc-
tion and lecture were still the focal points of the lesson, rather than the students’
active involvement and application of what they were learning.
This time, Mark’s reflection involved a more critical view of his teaching. His
awareness that the focus of the lesson was still his performance was a critical shift.
Mark recognized that he did not provide opportunities during the lesson for active
student construction of the learning objectives, beyond developing consensus on
predicted ages. Although he had activated students’ interest through the celebrity
activity, and had been able to use this interest to introduce important terms and
functions, activation alone is not enough to produce deep learning. Noticing these
important features of his lesson and his students’ responses helped Mark set the
problem he was grappling with (Jay & Johnson, 2002; Schön, 1983): the teetering
balance between student engagement and deep learning.
Mark’s personal pedagogy includes his belief that students benefit when mathe-
matics is learned in a context that interests them. His reflection on the lesson in all
of its iterations, in combination with the expertise and efficacy that came from his
additional teaching experience, helped Mark realize that if deeper student under-
standing was really his goal his students had to be engaged. Such engagement
would require Mark to relinquish some control of the class. It meant focusing on
the learning rather than on his teaching, and leading from behind (Boyd & Rubin,
2006; Wells & Chang Wells, 1992). For a novice this change could be threatening,
but for a more experienced teacher the way to relinquish some control but still
guide the learning could be found. Repetitions of the reflection cycle helped Mark
differentiate between entertaining students and engaging students, and look beyond
his own performance to comparatively consider his students’ learning and their
future applications of the content.

Current lesson
Currently, Mark teaches this lesson in a way that is more interactive, allowing stu-
dents to construct content more deeply via active engagement throughout the lesson.
Mark has adapted the celebrity activity that forms the data set for the lesson. Stu-
dents now submit two to three celebrity names the day before the lesson. Mark
includes at least one name from each student’s submission in a list of 20 celebrities,
and uses web resources to collect celebrity birthdays. He combines this information
with recent photographs for the presentation. To begin the lesson the name and a
recent picture of each celebrity are projected. The students’ engagement levels
increase when they see the name and photo of a celebrity they submitted appear in
the presentation.
 Reflective Practice 151

While displaying a celebrity’s photograph, Mark asks the students to guess his/
her age, entering it into a list on their graphing calculators. Students are now using
their individual predictions for the celebrity’s age, not a class consensus. After pre-
dicting ages for all 20 celebrities, Mark gives the students each celebrity’s actual
age to enter into a second list. Next, the students graph the data from the two lists
with the calculator, displaying it in a scatter plot of predicted ages vs. actual ages.
Mark organizes small groups to discuss and analyze their individual graphs. First,
the small groups usually compare each member’s data, noticing only those plots
where the data have a noticeably different arrangement. The students then start
interpreting the data by moving between the tables of predicted/actual ages and their
corresponding graphs. Moving between groups, Mark nudges his students toward
deeper application of the mathematical principles with prompts like, “Where would
perfect guesses (the same as the actual ages) be?” Once students discover that the
y = x line serves as a reference (where actual and predicted ages are the same), their
discussions start to include expressions like “I guessed way over”, “fell below”,
“wasn’t even close”, “was way off”. The students analyze the graph by considering
the placement of data, constructing the conclusion that if they have a data point
above y = x, then they overestimated the age of the celebrity; if it is below, then
they underestimated. Mark transitions from their group discussions by starting with
their own wording for their errors in guessing ages and introducing the term outlier.
(In order to have outliers, he always includes at least one celebrity in the list who
is less familiar to the students: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or Nelson Mandela.)
Up to this point a graphical approach has been emphasized, but Mark’s goal is for
students to transfer the knowledge gained from the graphical representation to the
more abstract algebraic representation of the problem, and to understand the connec-
tions between the two representations. To gain this transfer and understanding, Mark
asks students who was the best guesser. It is a low-risk challenge and the students
tend to have a good sense of who it was in their group. They start to look around at
the data plots from other groups, quickly realizing that an algebraic method is needed
to express the answer. Without direct instruction or lecture, the students usually deter-
mine that they need to know the difference between their guesses and the actual
celebrity ages. At this stage, a student will often suggest that they use the average of
the guessed ages and the average of the actual ages and calculate the difference of
these two averages. After discussion, often quite lively, students begin to understand
that a person could guess poorly but still have the same average for the guessed ages
as the actual ages, if the guesses were equally above and below the actual ages.
Once students come to this realization, Mark asks them to work in pairs and
calculate the difference between guessed and actual ages for each celebrity. Students
think and discuss for a while. Mark asks the pairs to consider what the numbers
mean. What does a zero represent? A positive number? A negative number? After-
wards, it is a smooth transition to guide students to discover that it is the absolute
value of the difference between guessed and actual ages that gives the “error” term
for each guess, regardless if the guess was above or below the actual celebrity age.
During discussion, Mark introduces key vocabulary then returns to the problem of
trying to identify the student who was the best guesser. He asks students to find a
single number to determine the best class guesser. Without prompting, a couple of
students will find the sum of the errors, either in their heads or on paper. As a class
Mark guides the students to talk about what this sum means and why better
guessers have lower sums of errors.
152 H.E. Hayden et al.

Because this lesson is now interactive Mark uses formative assessment, listening
to the students’ group conversations as they discuss the problem, to determine their
understanding of the concepts, their use of mathematical terminology, and their
fluency with the graphing functions. For more formal assessment, he typically
extends the lesson to an abstract, less personal example by giving students a few
problems with prepared data (car depreciation) as homework. Mark continues to use
a reflective cycle, deciding exactly which concepts to cover next based on how the
students respond and interact during the celebrity age activity and on the subsequent
assessments described above.

Discussion
Mark’s view
Mark identifies the evolution of this particular lesson as the motivating force in
helping him become a reflective practitioner, and he continues to engage in system-
atic reflection on a regular basis, even for lessons he judges as good. Systematic
reflection on his lessons has led him to use less lecturing, transmission mode teach-
ing, and to make more adaptations that actively involve students in constructing
their knowledge through inclusion of high-interest applications and opportunities for
students to determine the direction of the learning activities.
Mark feels that systematic reflection has helped him better understand, appreci-
ate, and put into practice the ideas from educational research fields that underscored
his training as a teacher. He believes that without the solid theoretical underpinnings
that his training provided, including suggestions about the role of reflection, his pro-
cess of development would have been much more challenging and would not have
supported the evolution of this lesson. He recalls that within a couple of years of
beginning teaching he felt satisfied with most of his lessons and quit reflecting on
his practice. It was the obligatory administrative observation that served as a critical
incident that motivated him to re-engage in reflection. This reflection-on-action
(Schön, 1983) coupled with additional years of teaching experience helped Mark
appreciate the dramatic impact on student learning that subtle changes in instruction
can make. Now, Mark consciously focuses on how students will respond to a les-
son, if it will interest them, which concepts and procedures will be most difficult,
and how he could adapt the lesson to better address student needs. He focuses
beyond his performance to consider the entire, dynamic teaching-learning process
that involves not just the teacher but, more importantly, the individual students and
the context. This synthesis of pedagogy with content knowledge marks the develop-
ment of adaptive expertise in teaching (Hammerness et al., 2005; Milner, 2010).

Enactment and change

Mark’s initial, novice reflections were primarily descriptive: the type of reflection
typically practiced during teacher preparation. His earliest adaptation (using height/
shoe size data) was simply designed as a way to increase student interest. In his
early reflections Mark recognized that his students were not as engaged as he
wanted them to be, but he did not move beyond this surface-level adaptation until
he encountered a critical incident. Mark’s vision of his “best lesson” was shaken by
the administrator’s observation, prompting him to reflect over a longer period of
time and make a series of adaptations to the lesson. This systematic reflection on
 Reflective Practice 153

the lesson became more comparative in nature, as Mark looked beyond his role as
transmitter of knowledge to think about how he could relinquish some control of
the lesson and allow students to engage in more of the knowledge construction. By
relinquishing some control Mark was able to enact critical reflection: establishing
new ideas for his lesson and his practice and taking action, teaching in a way that
allowed deeper construction of knowledge for his students.
In this case, systematic reflection transformed a lecture-based lesson to an activ-
ity that allowed students to co-construct their knowledge in a setting that was both
engaging and instructionally beneficial. By adapting the celebrity activity from a
professional development session and continuing to adapt based on student
responses and the awareness he gained through his reflection, Mark was able to
develop a lesson that resulted in deeper student involvement and more personalized
learning and application of mathematics content.

Conclusions
Both school leaders and teacher educators play a crucial role in supporting the
development of novice teachers’ reflective practices. The critical incident that initi-
ated Mark’s systematic reflection was the administrator observation and comment
on students’ engagement in what Mark considered his best lesson. That one mean-
ingful comment led Mark to a series of reflective adaptations for the lesson and to
changes in his reflection on his teaching practice. This type of practice-strengthen-
ing reflection is the goal of administrator observations, but it is not always the
result. What can administrators and schools of educational leadership do to structure
administrator feedback so that it can provide critical incidents for this type of reflec-
tive cycle for novice teachers?
One way to develop reflection is to provide novice and practicing teachers with
classroom experiences that display both best practices and opportunities for
improvement in practice. In mathematics education, animations have recently been
used with novice and practicing teachers (Moore-Russo & Viglietti, 2011; Herbst,
Nachieli, & Chazan, 2011) to portray the richness and complexity of classroom
practice while paring down the teaching and learning represented to the most funda-
mental classroom elements (e.g. the chalkboard, instructor, and students). Such ani-
mations have provided opportunities for teachers to have experiences that minimize
extraneous elements and allow them to focus and reflect on the teacher and student
actions and responses.
Another option is to provide opportunities to deconstruct instructional interac-
tions in order to guide novices to take note of critical incidents that cause one to
pause or wonder. This pause may not always be triggered from an external source,
but may be as simple as a teacher noticing something in the interaction, either a
personal internal reaction or a student response, that causes him/her to wonder.
Once any such critical incidents are noticed, the process for setting the problem can
be practiced through description of the incident (i.e. describing, questioning, and
evaluating) with a shift to noticing student learning and reactions, the most impor-
tant instructional outcomes. The next crucial juncture is to develop comparative and
critical reflection techniques by taking different perspectives, then creating and try-
ing appropriate instructional adaptations.
Finally, teacher education programs must plan explicit ways to guide novices to
enact these processes on their own once they are teaching. Programs that provide
154 H.E. Hayden et al.

explicit development of systematic reflection and prepare novices to transfer these

practices to their early career teaching will produce teachers who “know that the
applications of what they are learning will have variable results, depending on the
context; that teaching is complex; that learning to teach is a continuous process;
[and] that it requires interpretation from multiple points of view … to make sense
of it.” (Roskos et al., 1998, p. 234).

Notes on contributors
Emily Hayden is an assistant professor of literacy education at the University at Buffalo,
New York. Her current research interests focus on teachers’ reflective practices for the
development of adaptive expertise, issues of teacher agency, and discourse around problems
and dilemmas encountered in teaching practice. Her publications include: Adaptive
expertise: A view from the top, and the ascent; with T. D. Rundell and S. Smyntek-Gworek,
(Teaching Education, 2012, in press) and How will it help my students? What teachers
consider when they consider participation in classroom intervention research (Research in
the Schools, 2012, in press).

Deborah Moore-Russo is an assistant professor of mathematics education at the University at

Buffalo. In addition to spatial literacy, she also studies teachers’ reflection and their sense of
obligation to the discipline of mathematics.

Mark R. Marino is a full-time instructor in the Department of Mathematics & Computer

Science at SUNY Erie Community College in Buffalo, NY. He has over 10 years of
teaching experience working with diverse student populations – college, university,
community college, high school, middle school, and adults – in both urban and suburban
situations. He is frequently invited to speak at international, national, and state conferences
about his research interests: mathematics education, online teaching & learning, distance
education, and computer literacy. He has received numerous teaching and scholarly awards.

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