"Reflecting on reflective practice" by Linda Finlay
The first key point I can relate to my own teaching practice appears in "Defining Reflective Practice" and that is the process of Schon's (1983) 'Reflection in action' (as cited in Finlay, 2008, p. 3). . Despite the criticism of Schon that follows i.e. that it is not possible to distance oneself enough from live situations to be able to reflect on practice, my own experience fully confirms that this is indeed what occurs in almost every lesson that I teach.
As a teacher of students with a wide range of abilities and/or high behavioural needs, I have an expectation that activities, approaches or student engagement may need to be amended and decisions about what should be happening in the classroom have to be made on the job. Colloqually known as "tweaking" the lesson, students understand that while the learning outcome(s) of lessons remain the same, the path to those outcomes for each student may be slightly varied. A good example of this may be deciding that an instructional video with headphones and a "back" button may be better for certain students, than a teacher giving a set of instructions once, following their participation in a physically demanding lunch hour.
The second key point I can relate to my own HOD practice appears in the section "Critiquing Reflective Practice" under the heading "Pedagogic Concerns". As a Head of Department I was fully aware that a few in my department were, and remain antagonistic towards reflection and saw it as something that was only done to fulfill appraisal. This usually meant that such reflections were minimalist and just enough writing to get "passed". One way that I have tried to balance this perception has been teacher conferencing and modelling as suggested in Finlay's article; discussing incidents as a group to promote more general reflection and my staff appreciated the incidents being raised by me, making the whole process less personal. I have definitely been aware of the variance of reflection approaches by teachers at different stages of their careers i.e. the novice relying on more mechanical forms of reflection and the "expert" more reliant on the notion of Schon's (1983) 'professional artistry' (as cited in Finlay, 2008, p. 3).
Teaching as Inquiry Model
With Teaching as Inquiry having been the "flavour of the month" at our school for the last three years, the resulting reflections on practice have generally been either extremely useful (if teachers can share their reflections in a way that is not wholly tied to appraisal) or just as mechanical.
The first year we used the model it was fully supported by UC Plus advisors and it was run across three departments as a trial. The end of year powerpoint presentations of each teacher's reflections were both informative and critical. At the start of the following year the whole school ditched our previous "appraisal booklet" on the basis of the success and effectiveness of the Inquiry Model. During the second year the context and personnel changed. There was less support from UC Plus, however current staff members stepped up to fill the "mentor" role to enable careful and consistent modelling of the reflective process. I believe the second year was just as effective, if not more so than the first as it was a whole school roll out of the process. Teacher reflections were celebrated in "public" presentations and these gave other teachers the opportunity to engage in reflective discussions.
At the end of our third cycle of using the Teaching as Inquiry model for appraisal(at the end of Term 1 2016), teachers will continue to reflect on their practice in their own ways until Aranui High School closes. This final cycle has highlighted areas for improvement including the need to keep the reflective conversations going throughout the cycle, rather than leaving them to the "presentation" at the end. Time to model reflective practise by mentor teachers must be increased, especially for novice teachers. This will help to reduce the possibility of emotional harm, suggested in Finlay's (2008) article, that comes with challenging assumptions when we truly reflect (p. 11).
My own experience has been that the more teachers talk about teaching with other teachers, the more teachers realise that every situation is not new and there will be an "expert", usually on staff who has been there before, learned from it and can offer advice. My mantra to teachers is always, "it's not the first time," and taking the time to reflect, then act on this can only serve to strengthen teachers' practice and ultimately, the teaching profession.
References:
Finlay, L., (2008). Reflecting on 'Reflective Practice'. (Article, Practice-based Professional Learning Centre, The Open University).
Ministry of Education. (n.d.). Teaching as Inquiry Model. Retrieved from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Teachers-as-learners-Inquiry/Teaching-as-inquiry
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