Systematic reflection

Sincerely speaking, the ability of a teacher to reflect on his/her practice for the improvement of

students’ learning is a great key skill though not easily mastered. I think this is more of reflective

writing. For the purpose of this discussion, I will focus on the methods of critical reflection in

relation to the incident which a systematic reflection was used and the lesson I learnt from it.

Systematic reflection is a learning procedure during which learners comprehensively analyze

their behavior and evaluate the contribution of its components to performance results. Systematic

reflection stands out as a prominent tool for learning from one’s experiences which could either

be successes or failures. Most times, failed experiences have been considered the most powerful

learning sources.

Many teachers already think about their teaching and talk to colleagues about it too. My might

think or tell someone that “my lesson went well” or such like. Reflective teachings imply a more

systematic process of collecting, recording, analyzing our thoughts and observations as well as

those of our students and then try to make changes. Benade (2016) suggested that teachers can

become reflective practitioners within the context of 21st Century learning. For examples, if a

lesson went well, we can describe it and think about why it was successful. The first step is to

gather information about what happens in the class. For example, sometimes I used to record

audio in my classroom especially during my teaching to be played later. So one day, I happened

to record my teaching with my mobile phone. I just put on the audio recording app and it was

recording everything going on in the class. Then, after the class lesson on that day, I decided to
play the audio because I was alone then and can concentrate. As the audio kept playing, I

discovered there was one of my students who asked question on the method I used when solving

a particular mathematical problem on the board but I could not attend to the student’s question.

Then I noted it and decided to go back to the class. To my greatest amazement, I got to the class

only to discover that the student was very sad thinking that I intentionally ignored his question.

However, necessary clarifications were made and the question attended to. UNESCO (2015)

discussed that every child has right to education.

Therefore, I learnt greatly from the above classroom scenario that as a good teacher, I need extra

carefulness to always make sure I attend to every student’s need in the classroom. Spurgeon &

Moore (n.d.) suggested that educators’ role also include helping every learner to achieve

educational goals and objectives.in order to achieve this goal, I didn’t hesitate to go back because

the students in question already thought I did not want to answer his question but other students’

questions which was very far from the truth.

References

Benade, L. (2016) Teachers’ reflective practice in the context of twenty-first-century learning.

In Open Review of Educational Research 3:1, pages 133-147. Retrieved March 27, 2018

from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23265507.2014.998159
Spurgeon, L., & Moore, G. (n.d.). The educational philosophies of training and development

professors, leaders, and practitioners. Retrieved February 21, 2018,

from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ553242.pdf

UNESCO. (2015, September). The Right to Education and the Teaching Profession (Rep. No.

8th consultation). Retrieved February 22, 2018, from UNESCO

website: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002348/234820E.pdf