Teachers Role as Reflective Practitioners

Reflective practice is a concept used in education studies and pedagogy. It was introduced by Donald Schön in his book The Reflective Practitioner in 1983.

Reflective practice is a continuous process and involves the learner considering critical incidents in his or her life's experiences. As defined by Schön, reflective practice involves thoughtfully considering one's own experiences in applying knowledge to practice while being coached by professionals in the discipline. It has been described as an unstructured approach directing understanding and learning, a self regulated process, commonly used in Health and Teaching professions, though applicable to all.

In education, it refers to the process of the educator studying his or her own teaching methods and determining what works best for the students. Reflective practice can help an individual to develop personally.

The impact of Donald Schon's work on reflective practice has been significant - with many training and education programs for teachers, and informal educators adopting his core notions both in organizing experiences and in the teaching content.

A group of educators was founded, allowing teachers time and space to reflect and generate meaningful conversations on pedagogy. The reflective practitioner is thus able to lead positive changes in his/her classroom through reflection and collaborative learning.³

Encourage teachers to be reflective practitioners

Collaboratively identify and solve problems in our instructional practice

Publish findings and share new insights with fellow professionals.

The Role of Teachers as Reflective Practitioner

Catawba College’s Conceptual Framework

“The Mission of the Teacher Education Unit is to prepare reflective teachers who possess the professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for effectively teaching students in a diverse and global society.”

The vision of the Department of Teacher Education is to provide a conceptually coherent teacher education program, which prepares teachers to understand the world’s interconnectedness and to create classrooms that reflect a culture of learning and empower all students to contribute to our diverse and global society. This vision is translated into action as we conduct our mission of preparing reflective teachers who possess the professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for becoming effective teachers who engage in practical action in order to contribute to the transformation of schooling and learning.

They also identified five different traditions of reflective practice as described by Zeichner and Liston (1996).

The Generic Tradition describes reflection as an end in itself.

The Academic Tradition stresses teacher knowledge of the academic content including the structures of the discipline and its tools of inquiry.

The Social Efficiency Tradition stresses awareness of what research says and appropriate application of generic teaching models based on an individual’s teaching experience, intuition, and values.

The Developmentalist Tradition emphasizes reflection upon what and how pupils should be taught based on their backgrounds, interests, understandings, and developmental levels.

The Social Reconstructionist Tradition emphasizes social, political, and ideological realities that influence classroom procedures as well as the overall learning community.

Educational implications

Reflecting on their own experiences as a means of contextualizing the lenses through which they will approach teaching is one means of examining who these future teachers will be in the classroom and how this will impact the students they teach. It is hoped that the reflections reviewed here will give us insight into the ways in which we, as teacher education instructors, can facilitate our pre-service teachers’ growth as they.

Conclusion

A teacher that can embody the past events during her/his career and can reflect in those events in appositive way, can definitely help the students in their own travel. These past experience that happened had a purpose in applying the knowledge gained beforehand. A teacher that enables to surpass the experience and learned through it by reflection is a great accomplishment in the part of a teacher. And he can teach well to the students with another knowledge he discovered or recovered.

References:

Educational Implications [Online] Available at: http://www.hiceducation.org/edu_proceedings/Patricia%20L.%20Prado-Olmos.pdf [Accessed 24 July 2009].

Farell, T., (2008). Reflective Practice in the Professional Development of Teachers of Adult English Language Learner. CAELA Network Brief. [Online] Available at: http://www.teslontario.org/uploads/research/ReflectivePracticeFinalWeb%20Farrell.pdf [Accessed 24 July 2009].

Hagney, J., (2003). Reflection: Effective Teachers are reflective practitioners. E-Portfolio. [Online] Available at: http://csusap.csu.edu.au/~jhagne01/html/Reflection.html [Accessed 24 July 2009].

Ministry of Education. Teachers Network: To Build a fraternity of reflective teachers [Online] Available at: http://sam11.moe.gov.sg/tn/pro_devt.html [Accessed 24 July 2009].

Schön, D., (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. American Educational Research Association. [URL]: http://educ.queensu.ca/~russellt/howteach/schon87.htm.

Smith, M., (2001). The Reflective Practitioner – reflection-in-and-on-action. Donald Schon (Schön): Learning, Reflection and Change [Online] Available at: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-schon.htm#cite [Accessed 24 July 2009].

Zeichner, K., & Liston, D. (1996). Reflective teaching: An introduction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Catawba College Conceptual Work [Online] Available at: http://www.catawba.edu/academic/teachereducation/conceptual_framework.pdf [Accessed 24 July 2009].