As part of my weekly Read, Review and Respond exercise for my MA, I read a paper entitled Re-learning through e-learning: Changing conceptions of teaching through online experience.
The paper examines, amongst other things, the importance of reflective practice in improving the teaching and learning experience. It acknowledges, however, that reflection is not easily achieved in our day to day professional practice for a multitude of reasons, notwithstanding the amount of work a teacher has to do. Reflective practice is by nature a metacognitive process, one by which we examine the process of teaching and the reasoning behind our practice, as well as its outcome, and it is essential to our professional development. Reflection during teaching and immediately after teaching informs the changes that we make to our practice in order to improve it.
It is understandable however, from my point of view as a busy secondary teacher, that good reflective practice can often be an aspiration rather than an integral part of our professional practice. Arguably all teachers engage in some sort of reflection: remembering what has worked and what has not in a lesson, for example. But, in all honesty, I cannot remember the last time I sat down to analyse and dissect my teaching practice in an academic fashion. My personal reflection tends to take place in simpler terms of instinct, reckoning and experience at a more subconscious level: metacognition for me is not achieved consciously.
Reflective practice for me and many of my colleagues entails a chat about the horrible year eights over a quick cup of coffee in the staffroom at second break. It involves talking about good starter activities, activities that really worked well on the interactive whiteboard and, of course, all those that didn’t.
I cannot help but be left feeling a little inadequate and disappointed with myself when I realise that this is all reflective practice means to me. Perhaps I am not a good teacher but it is more likely, in my opinion, that the reality of teaching means that good reflective practice is more of an aspiration for most teachers, at best a subconscious act of analysis but certainly not an activity that has a regular slot in our busy timetables.
Must go now, I have double year eight followed by Metacognition…
