Week 17: My Reflective Practice
If I viewed my previous reflective practice through the lens of Zeichner and Liston's (cited in Finlay, 2008, p.4) five levels of reflective practice, then I would have to say that my reflective practice was mainly rapid reflection and repair with a touch of review in the form of discussions with colleagues.
I certainly did not spend time writing my reflections down or sourcing and reading academic research with the view to use it to critically examine my practice.
However, in the last couple of years I have developed some understanding regarding the importance of, and need for, reflective practice. Reflective practice for me began about four years ago when I was involved with the MST programme and, when the in compliance with a school initiative, I completed my first learning inquiry and started my reflective blog.
Initially my blog read a bit like a "Dear Diary", it detailed the activities I was doing with my class and briefly outlined activities I had been involved in at various professional development days. I guess it would be fair to say that the blog was all about, as Finlay (2008) terms "surface reflection".
However, as I have grown in understanding about reflective practice, supported by completing various learning inquiries and through professional reading regarding reflective practice, I have noticed that my thinking is more reflective. My focus is less on the what, where, when and more about the why and the how, as described in the week 17 Mindlab clip "Reflective Writing".
Reflective Writing.SkillsTeamHullUni. (2014, March 3).
Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on reflective practice. The Open University.
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Kia ora Donna
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I too would not spend time writing down my reflections of what did, didn't work and how to change it. Certainly I would think about and seek some advice or have a professional conversation with a collegue about this. This year it was a compliance requirement as part of our appraisal documentation, which was unsuccessful as it was incomplete and was ad hoc 'surface reflection'. The 'Knowing the learner' inquiry was more effective, any thoughts, discussions about the learner I added to this document which is shared with all parties, learner, parent and other teachers. It was a scrolling inquiry of what I would do.
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ReplyDeleteI'm thinking back to when I first started trying to reflect, I found a previous blog from 2012, but I think back to when I first started, and I had a lot of conversations with my associate teacher. I really did ask a tonne of questions, but it was always "what didn't work well today?" and what do I need to change so it doesn't happen again? How will I do all this? That surface stuff I usually write on the planning, deal with any urgent stuff, and then my drive which was to make learning in my class fun. I have enjoyed being a part of this course as I am starting to be more aware of effective future focused learning, but more importantly how research can be used to back yourself up with your practice in your class, or acknowledge what you do! I'm not sure how much student voice I had earlier, but it is definitely more now. I should look back actually on my 2012 and see how "reflective" I was using Finlay (2008). These references certainly help with perspective on a topic don't they?
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