Sunday 12 November 2017
Activity 1 - My Reflective Practice
In the past I have always felt too busy to be spending time to sit and formally reflect on my practice.
My formal reflective practice until reasonably recently has been as prescribed by factors such as our Teaching as Inquiry. Comparing my usual practice to Zeichner and Liston's (cited in Finlay, 2008 Pg.7 ) five levels of reflection, I was using either:
Rapid reflection - immediate, ongoing and automatic action
Repair – decisions to make modifications in response to students’ cues
or
Review – thinking about or discussing some element of my teaching.
All these methods were internal and ongoing.
It has only been in the past two and a half years when I have been involved in Post Graduate studies, that I have been involved in research and have had the insight to make use of:
Research – more systematic and sustained thinking over time, perhaps by collecting data or reading research.
Retheorizing and reformulating – critically examining my own practice and theories in the
My usual written reflection style is to use a PMI.
• Trigger - Based on readings, viewings, professional development or teaching
• What went well?
• What was not working?
• What other information is there? (readings, research)
• Where to from here? or So What?
A very descriptive method with lots of what, when, who and where and very little feelings and some thoughts about what is happening. But it was not only looking back and thinking about the event retrospectively, but there are ideas about how the ‘subject matter’ could be put into practice.
According to the reading (Finlay 2008) there needs to be more factors brought into a "self reflective" reflections such as “critically analysing and evaluating the actions and feelings associated with the experience, using theoretical perspectives;” (Finlay, 2008 Pg.7) So my PMI needs to be expanded to include how I was feeling at each stage. This was reinforced in the video Reflective Writing (2:23), they again talk about writing about not only your thoughts, but how you feel, the why, the how and so what. (University of Hull, 2014) The descriptive should be brief and the majority of the reflection should be about the thinking and feelings that were going on at the time.
After looking at the possible models for reflecting, I like the thought of something comprehensive and useful, but clean and easy to use so that regularly reflecting does not become burdensome. I like Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle:
• Experience
• What? (Reflection) Description
• So What? (Analysis) Thoughts and feelings
• Now What? (Planning) Action
I can incorporate all the elements of a good self-reflection as well as incorporating any data, research and readings to inform future actions.
References:
Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/resources/pbpl-resources/finlay-l-2008-reflecting-reflective-practice-pbpl-paper-52
Non Formal Education Manual (Peace Corps). (1989). Theory: David Kolb: experiential learning cycle. Retrieved from http://www.nzdl.org/gsdlmod?e=d-00000-00---off-0envl--00-0----0-10-0---0---
University of Hull. (2014, March 3). Reflective Writing [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=367&v=QoI67VeE3ds
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I found it interesting to read that you will be expanding your reflections to include how you felt. I think that will make it more personal and also help others relate to your experiences and analysis. I haven't shared my reflections in such a public space before (about to write my reflections for MindLab), however, my favourite bloggers include their feelings in their writing, so maybe I should too. Getting the balance right between formality and informality will be the challenge. Reading your post has helped me in my thinking around reflection - thanks.
ReplyDeleteHi Shona,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. I agree, sitting down and actually writing reflections usually go out the window, I don't make time to do it. I totally forgot about the good old PMI. When I taught Year 5, I used it all the time, but now you have inspired me to try and use it with my juniors to help develop their reflective practice.
Hi, I really enjoyed reading your post! I agree with not having the time for formal reflections, but I think by reworking how you naturally do your reflections efficiently using your time would make a big difference!
ReplyDeleteResearch is great but can become daunting, remember to ask others' for their advice too :) or even suggesting for readings.
Hi Shona, I am grateful to you for supplying the reference and link to Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle. I have been using this with our Kaiako as I was given it by Stuart Manners when we first began, as young Kaiako, to do our own HOD data analysis at Te Wharekura o Mauao. We were mostly sole charge and some of us had not taught NCEA before. We used 'What happened? So what? What now? to meta analyse our data and experience in different departments. Awesome to see that we where using a theorist!
ReplyDeleteOh Stuart Manners was the person in charge of data analysis at Bethlehem College at the time, and still teaches there as a reliever- thanks Mr Manners!
ReplyDelete