Teachers as Reflective

Practitioners /PGDT 422/

Reflective Thinking and

Reflective practice
 BY AKLILU Y.

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 UNIT 1

REFLECTIVE THINKING

AND

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

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• Brainstorming
• Have you ever afraid of
becoming a teacher? Why?
• What kind of difficulties you
think you will face by being a
teacher?
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 Learning outcomes
By the end of this module, the students should be able to:
– Define the concept of reflective practice;
– Understand the meanings of reflection-for-action,
reflection-in-action, and reflection-on-action;
– Analyze the relationship between professional knowledge
and reflection in action;
– Discuss the crisis of confidence in professional
knowledge
– Explain the idea of ‘reflection in action’
– Understand professional contexts for reflection-in-
action;
– Analyze the structure of reflection-in-action;
 Understand the reflection-on-action;

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 Activity
• What is reflection?
• What is reflective thinking?
• How to become a Reflective Thinker?
1. Attempt individually
2. compare your definition
a. in pair/2/
b. in two pairs/4/

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 Section One Reflection

• The term "reflection" is derived

from the Latin term reflectere --
meaning "to bend back."
• A mirror does precisely(exactly)
this, bend back the light, making
visible what is apparent to others,
but a mystery to us -- namely,
what our faces look like.

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07/11/22 8
 Reflection
• Reflection is an aspect of thinking,
where thinking is a skill. ‘Like any
other skill’ the skill for reflection can
only develop when the learners directly
involve in it.
• How can you define reflection in your
own words?

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 Reflection
• Reflection is an everyday process.
We reflect on a range of everyday
problems and situations all the
time:
What went well?
What didn’t? Why?
How do I feel about it?

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 Reflection involves…
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• Reflective Teaching (RT) is a self-
assessment of teaching, wherein
an instructor examines His/Her
Pedagogy articulates reasons
and strengths for their strategies,
and identifies areas for revision or
improvement.

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• When teachers practice reflective
teaching, they look back at their
teaching,
• student responses, student success and
student behavior.
• They evaluate the lesson and how the
students received it.
• They become more aware of not only
what they teach but also why and how
they teach it.
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 Reflection
• Reflection is the key that opens the
door to understanding ourselves in
relation to core ethical values”
• Ultimately, the outcome of reflection is
learning (Meziros, 1981).
1.It widens our perspective on a problem
(broadens knowledge)
2.It helps us develop strategies for
dealing with it (develop skills)
3.It helps us acquire new insights into
our behaviour (changes attitudes)
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 Cont’d
Reflective—Searching for information and
solutions to problems that arise in the
classroom;
•identifying the strengths and needs of
individual students.
•This can be done in the midst (the middle
or central part of something)of an activity
or as an activity in itself.
•The key to reflection is learning how to
take perspective on one’s own actions
and experience—in other words, to
examine that experience rather than just
living it.
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 Cont’d
• Dewey,1933) defined reflection as the
active, persistent and careful
consideration of any belief or supposed
form of knowledge in the light of the
grounds that support it and the further
conclusions to which it tends.
• Reflection is ‘An activity in which people
recapture /recall/ their experience, think
about it, mull /think over/ consider/ it over and
evaluate it.’

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• Reflection means thinking about what
one is doing.
• It entails a process of contemplation
(filling or attitud) with openness to
being changed, a willingness to learn,
and a sense of responsibility for doing
one’s best. ( Jay, 2003)

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 Cont’d
• The term reflection may be used to
refer to deliberate thinking about
something that has already taken
place.
• A thinking process begins with a
dilemma that suggests alternatives,
and so thinking is evoked by confusion.
• Reflection involves working toward a
better understanding of the problem
and ways of solving it.

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• Why We Reflect?

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 Why We Reflect?
Reflection can help us to feel more aware of
and confident in ourselves generally, and in
our teaching role.
It can help us to:
 Make the best use of the knowledge
available.
 Be conscious of our potential for bias &
discrimination.
 Challenge & develop the existing
professional knowledge base
 Maximize our own opportunities for
learning.
 Recognize what we do well so that we can
apply these skills in other situations

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 Cont’d
• Improve professional judgment
• Learn from successes and mistakes to
enhance development
• Plan for future situations and therefore
respond more positively to change
• In general "Reflection leads to growth of the
individual –
 morally,
 personally,
 psychologically, and
 emotionally, as well as cognitively".

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 Reflection can help us to:
• better understand our strengths
and weaknesses
• identify and question our
underlying values and beliefs
• acknowledge and challenge possible
assumptions on which we base our
ideas, feelings and actions

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 Cont’d
• recognize areas of potential bias or
discrimination
• acknowledge our fears, and
• identify possible inadequacies or areas for
improvement.
• Learning Through Reflection
We learn by experiences that allow us to
– Absorb (read, hear, feel)
– Do (activity)
– Interact (socialize)

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 Activity

• What is Reflective thinking?

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 What is Reflective thinking?
• Theorists and researchers from
different fields maintain different
perspectives on the meaning of
reflection; however, the notion
usually refers to the foundation of
higher-order thinking and learning.

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 Cont’d
• Reflective thinking is a series of
logical rational steps based on
the scientific method of defining,
analyzing, and solving a problem.
• There must be resources that are
already active in the mind, since
we cannot force a brain to think
out of nothing.

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 Cont’d
• There is a natural resource that
‘activates’ the mind.
• We may recapitulate by saying
that the origin of thinking is some
perplexity (lack of understanding),
confusion, or doubt.

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• Thinking is not a case of
spontaneous combustion (the
process of burrning); it does not
occur just on “general principles."
There is something specific which
occasions and evokes it.

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 Cont’d
• Critical thinking and reflective thinking
are often used synonymously.
• Critical thinking is used to describe "...
the use of those cognitive skills or
strategies that increase the probability
of a desirable outcome...
• thinking that is
– purposeful,
– reasoned and goal directed

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 Cont’d
• the kind of thinking involved in
– solving problems,
– formulating inferences,
– calculating likelihoods, and
– making decisions when the thinker is
using skills that are thoughtful and
effective for the particular context
and type of thinking task.

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 Cont’d
• Critical thinking is sometimes called
directed thinking because it focuses
on a desired outcome.
• Critical thinking, in general, refers to
higher-order thinking that questions
assumptions. Critical thinking is
“thinking about thinking.”
• It is a way of deciding whether a
claim is true, false or sometimes
true and sometimes false, or partly
true and partly false.

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 Cont’d
• The list of core critical thinking skills
includes
 observation,
 interpretation,
 analysis,
 inference,
 evaluation,
 explanation, and
 meta-cognition.
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• Critical thinking employs not only logic but
broad intellectual criteria such as
 clarity,
 credibility,
 accuracy,
 precision,
 relevance,
 depth,
 breadth,
 significance, and fairness.

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 Critical thinking calls for the ability to:

• Recognize problems, to find workable

means for meeting those problems
• Understanding the importance of
prioritization and order of precedence in
problem solving
• Gather pertinent(relevant) information
• Recognize unstated assumptions and
values
• Comprehend and use language with
accuracy, clarity, and discernment

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 Cont’d
• Interpret data, to appraise evidence and
evaluate arguments
• Draw warranted conclusions and
generalizations
• Put to test the conclusions and
generalizations at which one arrives
• Reconstruct one’s patterns of beliefs on
the basis of wider experience
• Render accurate judgments about
specific things and qualities in everyday
life.
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• “Reflective thinking is the process of creating
and clarifying the meaning of experience
(past or present) in terms of self (self in
relation to self and self in relation to the
world.)”
• Reflective thinking is a part of the critical
thinking process referring specifically to the
processes of
• analyzing,
• evaluating, and
• making judgments about what has happened.

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 Cont’d
• Reflective thinking is an active,
persistent, and careful consideration of
a belief or supposed form of
knowledge, of the grounds that support
that knowledge, and the further
conclusions to which that knowledge
leads.

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• Reflective thinking, on the other hand, is a part of the
critical thinking process referring specifically to the
processes of analyzing and making judgments about
what has happened.
• In summary, critical thinking involves a wide range
of thinking skills leading toward desirable outcomes
and reflective thinking focuses on the process of
making judgments about what has happened.

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 Cont’d
• Learners are aware of and control their
learning by actively participating in
reflective thinking –
• assessing
 what they know,
 what they need to know, and
 how they bridge that gap – during
learning situations.

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 Good reflective thinking is a process
where an individual:

• Determines what information is needed

for understanding the issue at hand
• Accesses and gathers the available
information.
• Gathers the opinions of reliable
sources in related fields
• Synthesizes /produce/ the information
and opinions

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 Cont’d
• Considers the synthesis from all
perspectives and frames of
reference
• Finally, creates some reasonable
temporary meaning that maybe
reconsidered and modified as one
learns more relevant information
and opinions.

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 Reflective thinking

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 General features of reflective thinking

• Perplexity/puzzle, confusion, doubt.

• The teacher has to provide a problem
or scenario
• Conjectural anticipation/guessing the
reasons behind.
• The teacher provides many
opportunities to engage students in
gathering information to look for
possible causes and solutions.

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• Careful survey
(examination ,inspection,
exploration, analysis)
• The teacher will give activity
sheets to help students evaluate
the evidence they gather and
questions that prompt them to
consider alternatives and
implications of their ideas
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• Consequent elaboration of the tentative
hypothesis/suggest solutions.
• The teacher will prepare questions and
activities that prompt students to draw
conclusions from the evidence they
gathered and pose solutions

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• Taking one stand upon the
projected hypothesis as a plan of
action,
• doing something overtly to bring about the
anticipated result and thereby testing the
hypothesis/
• evaluate and monitor the
implementation of the solution.

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 • What is reflective
practice?

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• A ‘reflective practitioner’ is
someone who, at regular
intervals, looks back at the work
they do, and
• the work process, and considers
how they can improve. 
• They ‘reflect’ on the work they
have done.

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• You need to learn from the experiences, and
mistakes of others, you need to look at what
you are doing and how others are doing the
same thing;
• can anything be improved?
• Can anything be done better?

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• Reflective practice
• A process that helps teachers think
about
• what happened,
• why it happened, and
• what else could have been done
• to reach their goals (Cruickshank &
Applegate, 1981).

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• Reflective practice is the ability
to reflect on one's actions so as
to engage in a process of
continuous learning
• Your engagement with reflective
practice is an essential part of
your success in your profession.

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• Reflective practice can be an
important tool in
practice-based professional learni
ng

• settings where people learn from their

own professional experiences, rather
than from formal learning or
knowledge transfer
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• The practice of analyzing one’s
 actions,
 decisions, or
 products by focusing on one’s process
for achieving them (Killion&Todnem, 1991).

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• Reflective practice can help you –
as a new practitioner –
• to identify how to review and improve
your own teaching.
• As an experienced practitioner,
you may use reflective practice as
an aid to lifelong learning and
continuous improvement.

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 Cont’d
• A practice for reflection can vary in terms of
how often,
• how much, and
• why reflection gets done.
• Reflective practice involves learning
from experience.

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 Cont’d
• It is important to remember that
reflection is not the same as reflective
practice.
• Reflective practice is an extension of
reflection:
• while reflection may lead to thinking
about an event in great detail and
gaining new knowledge,

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 Reflective practice is…

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 Process of reflection
• Reflection engages in the process of carrying back and
forth between thinking and action.
• However, the process may appear differently in
different situations.
• One useful way to understand this complexity is to
consider when it takes place.
• There are Three categories that
simplify the concept:
• Reflection-in-action (thinking on your feet)
• Reflection-on-action (retrospective thinking//thinking back).

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• Reflection-in-action is defined as
the ability of professionals to
‘think what they are doing while
they are doing it’.
• It is the ability to think on your
feet, and apply previous
experience to new situations.

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 Cont’d
• Reflection-on-action is a reflection after the
event consciously undertaken, and often
documented. 
• Reflection-on-action is defined as a process
in which individuals reflect on actions and
thoughts after they have taken place.

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 Reflection process

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 Cont’d
• Reflective in action is that process that
allows us to reshape what we are
working on, while we are working on it.
• It is that on-going experimentation that
helps us find a viable solution.
• In this, we do not use a “trial-and-error”
method.
• Rather, our actions are much more
reasoned and purposeful than that.

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Facets of classroom teaching in
Reflection
• Explanation: provide thorough and
justifiable accounts of facts and data.
• Interpretation: tell meaningful stories,
offer aproprt translations, provide a
revealing historical
• Application: effectively use and adapt
what they know in diverse contexts.
• Having perspectives: See and hear
points of view through critical eyes and
ears.
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• Empathizing: search for values that
others might find it odd, alien or
implausible and perceive sensitively.
• Have self-knowledge: perceive the
personal style, prejudices, projections
and habits of mind that both shape and
impede our own understanding.
• Comment: additionally, read the text of
facets of inquiry based teaching.

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 Level of Reflection
• There are three major levels of
reflective practice .They are:
• An initial level focused on teaching
functions, actions or skills, generally
considering teaching episodes 9one
part of story) as isolated events.
• A more advanced level considering the
theory and rationale for current
practice.

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• A higher order
• where teachers examine the ethical,
social and political consequences of
their teaching, grappling with the
ultimate purposes of schooling.
• to foster consistency between
supported theory
• (what they say they do and believe) and
theory-in-use (what they actually do in
the classroom).
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• Technical Reflection
• At the first level, teachers’ reflections
focus on strategies and methods used
to reach predetermined goals.
• It is the lowest level of reflection.

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• At the first level, teachers’ reflections focus on
strategies and methods used to reach
predetermined goals.
• They are concerned with what works in the
classroom to keep students quiet and to
maintain order, rather than with any
consideration of the value of such goals as ends
in themselves.
• It is the lowest level of reflection.
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• Typical questions the teacher asks at the
level of technical reflection are:
• Did I spend too much time on group work
today?
• How can I keep students on-task?
• Did I have enough (too many) activities?
• How can I get students to pay better
attention?

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• Contextual Reflection
• Teachers engaging in Contextual
reflection attempt to understand the
theoretical basis for classroom
practice and to foster consistency
between supported theory
• (what they say they do and believe)
and theory-in-use (what they actually
do in the classroom).

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• Teachers reflecting at this level can determine
when there is conflict between what they
practice and what they preach (e.g., seeing
themselves as humanistic yet belittling
students when they persist in disobeying
rules).

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• Typical questions the teacher asks at the level
of pedagogical reflection are:
• How can I improve learning for all my
students?
• How can I build in better accountability for
cooperative learning tasks?
• Am I giving my students the opportunity to
develop decision-making skills?

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• Critical Reflection
• Critical reflectivity is interchangeably used as the
dialectical level.
• At this stage, teachers reflect on the moral and
ethical implications and consequences of classroom
practices on students.
• Critical reflection is mostly considered as a higher-
order level of reflection. It adds the following
dimensions:

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• Typical questions the teacher asks at the level
of critical reflection are:
• Do all students in my class have daily opportunities
to be successful?
• Who is being included and who is being excluded in
this classroom practice?
• How might the ways I group students affect
individual student’s opportunity for success?
• Does this classroom practice promote equity?
• Do I have practices that differentially favor particular
groups of students (e.g., males, females)?
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 Reflective level

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• Case 1.
• Zemen is very intellectual High school
biology teacher. She believed that
education has to equip students not only
with theoretical knowledge but also the
life skills that help them to survive
outside of the school, as result, in most of
her lesson, she manages to prepare
examples and cases accordingly in order
to aware students the current challenges
like gender stereotypes and HIV/AID and
their impacts.
• 1. Which level of reflection Zemen has
practiced? Why?
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• Case 2.
• Ayele is a teacher in primary school. After
each of his class, he evaluates his and his
students actual activities against his lesson
plan to know whether he achieved them or
not. Which of level of reflection Ayele has
practice? Why? 

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 • Discuss the benefits of
reflection for
teacher
and
students?

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• The benefits of reflection for learners
• Reflection helps learners to:
• understand what they already know (individual).

• Students improve their basic academic skills.

• identify what they need to know in order to advance
understanding of the subject (contextual).
• Students develop a deeper understanding of subject
matter

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The benefits of reflection for teacher
• Reflection enables a teacher to:
• Make the best use of the knowledge
available.
• Avoid past mistakes.
• solve a problem or address an issue in the
classroom
• Maximise our own opportunities for learning.
• It can improve the quality of your work.
• It helps you to plan for the future.
• It helps you respond more positively to
change.
• You can learn from the experience of others.
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 Typology of reflection
• Three dimensions of reflective
thought: descriptive, comparative,
and critical.
I. Descriptive reflection
• Descriptive reflection, the first dimension
of reflection in our typology, involves the
intellectual process of’ setting the
problem;’’ that is, determining what it is
that will become the matter for reflection.

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 Cont’d
• Descriptive describe the matter for
reflection
– what is happening?
– Is this working, and for whom?
– For whom is it not working?
– How do I know?
– How am I feeling?
– What am I pleased and/or concerned about?
– What do I not understand?
Fundamentally, description involves answering
the question, ‘‘what’s happening?’’

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 II. Comparative reflection
• It involves thinking about the matter for
reflection from a number of different frame or
perspectives.
• As compared to a technical approach
to teaching, in which a teacher
accepts a problem immediately and
sets about trying to solve it,

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 III. Critical reflection
• Critical reflection, the third dimension of
reflection in our typology, describes the
result of carefully considering a problem that
has been set in light of multiple perspectives.
• critical reflection is rather the constant
returning to one’s own understanding of the
problem at hand.
• This is the process in which, one ‘‘may then
find a way of integrating, or choosing among,
the values at stake in the situation’’.

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 There are three types of nature of
reflection.
• Returning to experience
• It refers to recollection / recalling of
memory situations, events and
activities that happened in the past.
• description of what you did or plan to
do (and why)
• description of how you approached something
or how it worked and how it did not.

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 Connections
• Reflective connections are the most frequent
source of influence on teachers’ practical
decision making.
• In these moments of reflection, teachers
connect a particular aspect of their teaching
experience with plans for instruction, moving
from experience to reflection to action.
• The teacher may back to his/her experience
as student and ask questions to connect his
past experience to his/her presence .
• For instance:

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• How do I want to be learned in high school
the same subject I am teaching?
• What was the feeling back there as a
student?
• Did you feel good or bad when you think of
your experience as a student? Why?
• Which teacher was my favorite? Why?
• Am I teaching my students the same way that
I loved to be learned as student?

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 Evaluation
• It refers to evaluation of experiences and development
of a teacher.
• The subcategories of evaluation are:
• giving an opinion
• examining what you have learned.
• drawing conclusions about your own development
• evaluating your knowledge or functioning
• investigating whether you have achieved your learning
objective
• examining what you found difficult and progressing

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 Reflection as thinking process

• The domain of thinking Processes encompasses a range

of cognitive, affective and meta cognitive knowledge,
skills and behaviors.
• It is organized in three dimensions:
• Reasoning, processing and inquiry
• Creativity
• Reflection, evaluation and meta cognition.
• Means (knowledge about own thinking:
• knowledge of your own thoughts and
• the factors that influence your thinking

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 Reasoning, processing and inquiry

• The Reasoning, processing and inquiry

• dimension encompasses the knowledge, skills
and behaviours required to enable teacher
students to find out the world around them, and
to use critical thinking to analyse and evaluate
information they encounter.
• Students learn to assemble and question
information and develop opinions based on
informed judgments.
• They also develop the capacity to transform
information into coherent knowledge
structures.
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 Creativity

• The capacity to think creatively is a central

component of being able to solve problems
and be innovative.
• In the Creativity dimension, teacher students
learn to seek innovative alternatives and use
their imagination to generate possibilities.
• They learn to take risks with their thinking
and make new connections.

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 Reflection, evaluation and meta cognition

• Learning is enhanced when individuals develop the

capacity to reflect on, and improve their existing ideas
and beliefs.
• In the Reflection, evaluation and meta cognition
dimension, teacher students learn to reflect on what
they know and develop awareness that there is more to
know.
• They learn to question their perspectives and those of
others.
• They evaluate the validity of their own and others’
ideas.
• They also develop their meta cognitive skills in
planning, monitoring and evaluating their own thinking
processes and strategies.

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 Some strategies to help with daily
reflection
• Daily reflections have five major roles. 
• They:act as a record or diary of things
that were done each day
a. give program leaders and assistants
feedback about the relative success of
an activity is
b. give participants an opportunity to
practice their writing skills

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C. give participants an opportunity to ask
questions, seek clarity, express concerns:
which activities did you like and why?  which ones did
you not like and why?  do you have any questions
about the activities?
d. develop and increase meta cognitive
awareness in participants

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Some possible question that can be used during
daily reflections are

1) What were my strengths/weaknesses?

How have I improved?
2) What can I continue to work on?
3) How do I feel about my lesson? Why?
4) How effective was the pacing of my lesson?
5) How much of a chance did the students have
to speak?
6) What did I notice in the class?
7) What would I do next time?

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 Unit Two

Reflective Teaching

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 Reflective Teaching
Different scholars define teaching in
different ways. Some of the definitions
are teaching is
• “… an interaction process, primarily
involving classroom talk, which takes
place between teacher and students
and occurs during certain definable
activities”
• “ … interpersonal activity directed towards
learning by one or more persons “

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• Contemporary educators prefer to
describe teaching based on the
common attributes suggested by many
authorities than defining it.
Accordingly teaching is
– An activity or action. You can see teaching
take place; you need not (and. Some would
argue, should not) infer it from learning.
– A process. It involves a series of actions
and decisions of the teacher

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• An interpersonal activity and/or
process. Interpersonal refers to the
fact that teaching involves interactions
between a teacher and one or more
students. Most often the interactions
are verbal and two-way.

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 Characteristics of A good teacher
• From that consultation, and from
other professional discussions in
Ethiopia, the following profile of a
Good Teacher is proposed:
• Has a love of the profession
• Has a wide and up-to-date subject
knowledge
• Maintains an attractive and
supportive learning environment
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• Creates a safe and ordered environment in
which all students are able to learn
• Plans effectively for student involvement and
learning
• Forms excellent working relationships with
colleagues
• Cares for the progress and wellbeing of
students

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 Reflective teaching
• Reflective teaching means
– looking at what you do in the classroom,
– thinking about why you do it, and
– thinking about if it works - a process of
self-observation and self-evaluation.
• By collecting information about what goes on
in our classroom, and by analyzing and
evaluating this information, we identify and
explore our own practices and underlying
beliefs.

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• This may then lead to changes
and improvements in our
teaching.
• Reflective teaching is therefore a
means of professional
development which begins in our
classroom.

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 characteristics of reflective practice

1 Reflective teaching implies an

active concern with aims and
consequences, as well as means
and technical efficiency.
2 Reflective teaching is applied in a
cyclical or spiraling process, in
which teachers monitor, evaluate
and revise their own practice
continuously.
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3 Reflective teaching requires
competence in methods of evidence ‑
based classroom enquiry, to support
the progressive development of higher
standards of teaching.
4 Reflective teaching requires attitudes
of open ‑ mindedness, responsibility
and wholeheartedness.

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5. Reflective teaching, professional
learning and personal fulfilment are
enhanced through collaboration and
dialogue with colleagues .
6. Reflective Teaching enables teachers
to creatively mediate externally
developed frameworks for teaching and
learning .

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 The Reflective Teacher

• Each level of reflection is structured to parallel

Bloom's taxonomy
• Assume that a teacher looked back on a lesson
(or project, unit, course, etc) they have just
taught.
• What sample questions might they ask
themselves as they move from lower to higher
order reflection?

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• (Note: it does mean that all questions are
asked after lesson - feel free to pick a few that
work for you.) 
• Remember that each level can be used to
support mastery of the new Common Core
standards.

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• Bloom's Remembering: What did I do?
Teacher Reflection: What was the lesson? Did
it address all the content? Was it completed
on time? How did students "score" on the
assessment?

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• Bloom's Understanding: What was important
about what I did? Did I meet my goals?
• Teacher Reflection:
– Can I explain the major components of the lesson?  
– Do I understand how they connect with the
previous / next unit of study?
– Where does this unit fit into the curriculum?
– What instructional strategies were used?
– Did I follow best practices and address the
standards?

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• Bloom's Application: When did I do this
before? Where could I use this again?
Teacher Reflection: Did I build on content,
product or process from previous lessons?
How does this lesson scaffold the learning for
the next lesson? How could I adapt the
instructional approach to another lesson?
How could this lesson be modified for
different learners?
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• Bloom's Analysis: Do I see any patterns or
relationships in what I did?
Teacher Reflection: What background knowledge and
skills did I assume students were bringing to the
lesson? Were the instructional strategies I used the
right ones for this assignment? Do I see any patterns
in how I approached the lesson - such as pacing,
grouping? Do I see patterns in my teaching style - for
example do I comment after every student reply?
What were the results of the approach I used - was it
effective, or could I have eliminated or reorganized
steps?
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• Bloom's Evaluation: How well did I do? What
worked? What do I need to improve?
Teacher Reflection: What are we learning and is it
important? Were my assumptions about student
background knowledge and skills accurate? Were
any elements of the lesson more effective than other
elements? Did some aspects need improvement?
Were the needs of all learners met? What levels of
mastery did students reach?  What have I learned
about my strengths and my areas in need of
improvement?  How am I progressing as a teacher?

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• Bloom's Creation: What should I do next? What's my
plan / design?
Teacher Reflection: How would I incorporate the best
aspects of this lesson in the future? What changes
would I make to correct areas in need of
improvement? How can I best use my strengths to
improve? What steps should I take or resources
should I use to meet my challenges? Is there training
or networking that would help me to meet my
professional goals? What suggestions do I have for our
leadership or my peers to improve our learning
environment?
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• Reflective teaching therefore implies a more
systematic process of collecting, recording
and analyzing our thoughts and observations,
as well as those of our students, and then
going on to making changes.
• If a lesson went well we can describe it and
think about why it was successful.

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• If the students didn't understand a language
point we introduced we need to think about
what we did and why it may have been
unclear.
• If students are misbehaving - what were they
doing, when and why?

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Beginning the process of reflection
• You may begin a process of reflection in
response to a particular problem that has
arisen with one or your classes, or simply as a
way of finding out more about your teaching.
• You may decide to focus on a particular class of
students, for example how you deal with
incidents of misbehavior or how you can
encourage your students to speak more English
in class.
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• The first step is to gather information about
what happens in the class. Here are some
different ways of doing this.
• Teacher diary 
This is the easiest way to begin a process of
reflection since it is purely personal. After
each lesson you write in a notebook about
what happened.

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• You may also describe your own reactions and
feelings and those you observed on the part
of the students.
• You are likely to begin to pose questions
about what you have observed.
• Diary writing does require a certain discipline
in taking the time to do it on a regular basis. 

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 Peer observation
• Invite a colleague to come into your class to collect
information about your lesson.
• This may be with a simple observation task or through
note taking.
• This will relate back to the area you have identified to
reflect upon.
• For example, you might ask your colleague to focus on
which students contribute most in the lesson, what
different patterns of interaction occur or how you deal
with errors.
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• Recording lessons
Video or audio recordings of lessons can
provide very useful information for reflection.
You may do things in class you are not aware
of or there may be things happening in the
class that as the teacher you do not normally
see.

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• Video recordings can be useful in showing you
aspects of your own behaviour.
– Where do you stand?
– Who do you speak to?
– How do you come across to the students?

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• Student feedback
You can also ask your students what they
think about what goes on in the classroom.
• Their opinions and perceptions can add a
different and valuable perspective.
• This can be done with simple questionnaires
or learning diaries for example.

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• What to do next
Once you have some information recorded
about what goes on in your classroom, what
do you do?

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• Audio recordings can be useful for considering
aspects of teacher talk.
– How much do you talk?
– What about?
– Are instructions and explanations clear?
– How much time do you allocate to student talk?
– How do you respond to student talk?

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• Think
You may have noticed patterns occurring in
your teaching through your observation.
• You may also have noticed things that you
were previously unaware of.
• You may have been surprised by some of your
students' feedback. You may already have
ideas for changes to implement.

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• Talk
Just by talking about what you have
discovered - to a supportive colleague or even
a friend - you may be able to come up with
some ideas for how to do things differently.
– If you have colleagues who also wish to develop
their teaching using reflection as a tool, you can
meet to discuss issues. Discussion can be based
around scenarios from your own classes.

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• Using a list of statements about teaching beliefs (for
example, pairwork is a valuable activity in the
language class or lexis is more important than
grammar) you can discuss which ones you agree or
disagree with, and which ones are reflected in your
own teaching giving evidence from your self-
observation.

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 Read
• You may decide that you need to find out
more about a certain area.
• There are plenty of websites for teachers of
English now where you can find useful
teaching ideas, or more academic articles.
• There are also magazines for teachers where
you can find articles on a wide range of topics.

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• Or if you have access to a library or bookshop,
there are plenty of books for English language
teachers.
Ask
Pose questions to websites or magazines to get
ideas from other teachers. Or if you have a
local teachers' association or other
opportunities for in-service training, ask for a
session on an area that interests you.
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 Conclusion
• Reflective teaching is a cyclical process, because
once you start to implement changes, then 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?

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• 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 way. And that is what professional
development is all about.

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 How to become a Reflective Thinker?
• Good reflective thinking is a process where an
individual:
– determines what information is needed for understanding
the issue at hand
– accesses and gathers the available information
– gathers the opinions of reliable sources in related fields
– synthesizes the information and opinions
– considers the synthesis from all perspectives and frames
of reference
– finally, creates some plausible temporary meaning that
may be reconsidered and modified as one learns more
relevant information and opinions
Cynthia Mazow: Learning, Design, and Technology Stamford University

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 Reflective Thinking Dimensions
The most complete listing of reflective skills is found in Weast (1996)
and were arragned and modified in a way to help us reflect:
• Identify the reasons and the evidence
– Identify the author's conclusion
– Identify vague and ambiguous language
– Identify value assumptions and value conflicts
– Identify descriptive assumptions
– Evaluate statistical reasoning
– Evaluate sampling and measurements
– Identify omitted information
– Gathers available information of reliable sources
• Evaluate logical reasoning
– Synthesizes the information and opinions from all perspectives and fremes
of reference
• Makes appropriate judgements
– Articulate one's own values in thoughtful, fair-minded way (objective, well
balanced, and suffient complex)
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