Week 17 - My Reflective Practice

I have always been quite a reflective person often analysing (and probably often over-thinking) and asking questions to gain a view from many perspectives which I have often found useful. However, using a formal model is probably a great idea at this point as I have been finding it difficult to teach this to our learners and so looking at this from a more structured point of view might be quite helpful in sharing strategies with students and other colleagues.

Today I will use the suggested reflective model from Jay and Johnson (2002) to critically evaluate my current reflective practice as shown below:


Step 1 - Descriptive Stage
At the start of this course I have been writing weekly blogs to reflect on my learning and enjoy reading and discussing research, problems, challenges and improvements. Over the past few years I also started using Twitter to learn from other educators and gather interesting professional articles and readings. I think over the past few years I have become more open to new ways of thinking and teaching and more reflective than ever thanks to being part of a newly opened school. I am constantly working through many professional challenges in my leadership and teaching practices and am continuing to try to make sense of these challenges through reflection which at times can be quite confronting. I think this quote from Ghaye (2000) sums up fairly well the day in the life of a teacher “Maybe reflective practices offer us a way of trying to make sense of the uncertainty in our workplaces and the courage to work competently and ethically at the edge of order and chaos…”

Step 2 - Comparative Stage
In discussions with other colleagues and learners etc I would say they would agree that I am usually quite open to discussions about what is working or not and that teaching and learning is a complex issue. I am currently finding that this course a great way to reflect on my practice and have already learnt so much from the process of completing the assignments and undertaking research and making changes to my teaching and leadership practice. Some new ideas and perspectives I have been able to apply straight away and others are more long term and I am taking steps forward in a more future focused long term view of changes to my practice. I have also realised that I am sometimes much more comfortable gaining feedback from students than from my colleagues at times. I am also very aware of my blog being public and so maybe I am reluctant to truly share some of my major struggles and concerns given the public nature of a blog so I would also like to explore a more private platform like a reflective journal that I could share with a trusted mentor or critical friend to voice more private concerns, doubts, struggles, successful and unsuccessful learning experiences as Yang (2009) suggests sharing these with others who have shared similar situations. I could also be more brave in sharing these experiences with a wider audience through my blog and via Twitter. I should walk the walk more as I am helping students to become creators and constructor of knowledge vs being a consumer, I should do this more often in terms of my professional learning. I often worry and wonder if I am like many people who are simply confirming their own biases rather than truly exploring other perspectives on the truth and realities of professional practice and coming to new understandings given our unique situation.

Stage 3 - Critical Reflection
I think this 3 stage process has been useful to reflect broadly on my current practices and what it might take for my reflection to reach the next level. I think using this process regularly might help me in terms of the varied roles I have in my current job. I would like to go through this process with my e-elearning hat and IWI leader hat on and see what new insights might be uncovered. I also wonder what this model might look like for our students to use to reflect on their learning? Can this be slightly modified for student use or is there already a student version of this? I wonder if there is an opportunity to do this in the upcoming weeks? I would appreciate any comments on these ideas. Thanks for reading this!

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am excited to start the new journey of the second half of this course and have already learnt so much about the reflection process. I hope I am able to transfer some of these ideas to help our learners and colleagues become more thoughtful and active in their reflections to become even more successful learners and leaders.


References

Ghaye, T. (2000) Into the reflective mode: bridging the stagnant moat. Reflective Practice, 1(1) 5-9.

Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.

Yang, S., H. (2009). Using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. Educational Technology & Society, 12(2), 11-21.