Reflective Practice
Reflective Practice
Reflective practice helps people understand the connection between what they do and how they might enhance their effectiveness. Reflective practice plays a crucial role in learning and teaching. Schools encourage reflective practice while teaching and learning. Teachers can reflect on their own or reflect with other educators (Ghaye, 2011). Ghaye has examined reflective practice and identified various benefits associated with reflective practice. Reflective practice enables a person to develop new ideas and understanding that assists them in improving their actions. Reflect practice refers to the ability to reflect on actions in order to facilitate continuous learning. People pay attention to values and theories that inform their daily actions. This results to developmental insights. Reflective practice is important in practice based professional learning. It enables individuals to learn from their experience as professionals. In education, teachers can reflect on their own or with co workers (Monica, 2011).
In individual reflective practice, educators reflect a wide range of things on their own. They reflect on their own teaching methods and determine which method work best for learners. In addition, the teachers determine the effect of classroom procedures on learners. Teaching and learning are complicated, and there is not appropriate method for teaching and learning. Therefore, reflecting on the different methods of teaching and experiences helps improve teaching practices. Reflective practice moves educators from a knowledge base of different skills to a state where they are able to modify their skills to suit different situations. Moreover, teachers can talk to their coworkers about education problems. They can talk with their colleagues during free time or weekly meetings. Educators can discuss teaching methods and student learning methods with their friends in order to get new ideas. Peer observation can help teachers reflect on their own practices and experience through the lenses of their colleagues (Monica, 2011).
Individual reflective practice has a lot of benefits. First, individual reflective practice leads to the development of an individual professional development plan. Teachers are able to develop professional development plans that meet their individual needs when they reflect alone. This ensures the educators attain their professional goals. Second, individual reflective practice enables teachers to deeply understand their teaching styles and improve their effectiveness as an educator. Third, the teachers also validate their ideals and understand their values and beliefs. Most teachers struggle to understand their beliefs and practices and what entails good teaching. Individual reflective practice enables teachers to understand their beliefs, ideals and values and hence what makes good teaching. Fourth, reflecting alone is easy as one can reflect anytime as he does not require arranging a meeting. This ensures the teacher reflects regularly. Fifth, reflecting alone encourages truthfulness in the reflection as one thought and ideas are not influenced by other people. Hence, the educator develops the professional development plan based on his ideas(Monica, 2011).
However, educators experience various challenges when reflecting alone which affect the reflection process. Educators might not be able to reflect because of loneliness and lack of motivation. Educators should be motivated in order to reflect on their experiences and teaching practices. Also, lack of concentration can affect the reflection process as the attention of the educator may wander. In addition, the educator is not able to have new perspectives as he or she does not reflect with other people. In this case, the educator goes over the same thoughts, and this affects the reflection process. This is because the educator does not have a deep thoughtfulness of his practices and experiences. The effectiveness of individual reflection depends on the educator’s level of self awareness. Therefore, the educator should be aware of himself or herself to ensure the reflection process is effective (Raenee, 2011).
Educators can reflect with others. They can reflect with their coworkers. Reflecting with others has a lot of benefits. Reflecting with other educators enables one to see things from multiple perspectives, and this provides a different perspective on the problem being discussed. Educators have different views regarding education issues such as teaching and reflecting with their peers enables them to look at issues from different a point of view. In individual reflective practice, the educator does not have an opportunity to share with his fellow educator and only relies on his/her view. This limits understanding of issues. Reflect with others motivates one to reflect. Also, an educator reflects with other educators on experiences shared by all educators. This improves his understanding and gains knowledge from others experiences. Educators have varying experiences when teaching students and this provides knowledge to educators during reflection. However, reflecting with other educators might not be easy as several factors affect the reflection process. Time affects the reflection process as the educators have to arrange for a meeting.
Confidentiality and privacy issues affect the reflection process. This is because educators might not be free to share their reflection with other people. Educators only share a reflection with educators they can trust and who are able to keep the information confidential. Therefore, they should be guaranteed of privacy and confidentiality before sharing reflections. This prevents the educators from understanding themselves deeply and affects their professional development. Besides, an educator might not have the knowledge and experience needed to learn effectively from the reflective discussion. Lastly, the reflection process can be affected by judgment. Educators are not willing to share their reflections with their coworkers if they know they will judge and criticize them. Failure to set boundaries and have rules for reflective practice affects the reflective practice as it educators do not attain their goals (Kraft, 2002).
A reflective practice partner should have different qualities to ensure the reflective process is effective. The reflective practice partner should be competent. He should have competence in different education and classroom areas. Educators need reflective practice partners who can help them in professional development and hence they should be competent in education and classroom practices. Moreover, the reflective practice partner should be opening minded and responsible. The reflective practice partner should be open to different ideas. Open mindedness helps in noticing, understanding working towards enhancing practice and policy. The reflective practice partner should be open minded to facilitate reflection and also improve teaching practice and policy. Reflection requires open minded as it enables one to accept ideas from other people. Responsibility is vital in reflection. Reflective practice partners should be able to reflect about the consequences of their behaviors and actions. Another quality reflective practice partners should have is wholeheartedness. Wholeheartedness is the dedication to reflection. The reflective practice partners should be willing to learn new insights via reflection. Lastly, the reflective practice partner should be able to collaborate and dialogue with other people. Reflective practice entails dialogue and collaboration as educators share their reflections with their friends. The qualities above ensure the reflective process is successful, and educators benefit from the reflective process (Ghaye, 2011).
Reference
Ghaye, T. (2011). Teaching and learning through reflective practice. Routledge
Kraft, N.P. (2002). Teacher research as a way to engage in critical reflection: a case study.
Monica, J.L. (2011). Reflective Thinking: A Tool for Professional Development in Educational Practice. ProQuest LLC
Raenee, C.R. (2011). Reflective Practice: The Teacher in the Mirror. ProQuest LLC
Reflective Practice. Vol3, issue no 2, p 175-189.
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