Reflective Practice For Teachers

Exploring key issues in teaching through the lens of reflective practice, in order to deepen understanding of teaching practice.

Now in its second edition, Teaching and Learning through Reflective Practice is a practical guide to enable all those involved in educational activities to learn through the practices of reflection. The book highlights the power that those responsible for teaching and learning have to appraise, understand and positively transform their teaching. Seeing the teacher as a reflective learner, the book emphasises a strengths-based approach in which positivity, resilience, optimism and high performance can help invigorate teaching, enhance learning and allow the teacher to reach their full potential. This approach busts the myth that reflection on problems and deficits is the only way to better performance. The approach of this new edition is an ‘appreciative’ one. At its heart is the exploration and illustration of four reflective questions: What’s working well? What needs changing? What are we learning? Where do we go from here? With examples drawn from UK primary teacher education, the book reveals how appreciative reflective conversations can be initiated and sustained. It also sets out a range of practical processes for amplifying success. This book will be a must have for undergraduate and PGCE students on initial teacher training programmes. It will also interest practising teachers, teacher educators and those on continuing professional development courses.

This reference tool for mastering reflective practice and initiating it in your school offers ideas for reflective practice alone, with partners, in small groups, and schoolwide.

What do we mean by reflective practice? What does it involve? How can it help you develop as a teacher? The Teacher’s Reflective Practice Handbook is an essential source of advice, guidance and ideas for both student and practising teachers. Helping you to translate pedagogical knowledge into practice, this Handbook guides you through studying your own teaching for personal development, evaluating your lessons through classroom research, and enhancing the quality of pupil learning. It offers an innovative framework which serves to prepare you for the challenges and complexities of the classroom environment, and supports the continuing improvement of your teaching. Underpinned by key theoretical concepts and contemporary research within the field of education, chapters help you to: systematically evaluate your teaching through classroom research procedures question personal theories and beliefs, and consider alternative perspectives and possibilities try out new strategies and ideas to maximise the learning potential of all students enhance the quality of, and continue to improve, your teaching. Including a range of reflective tasks, links to online resources, exemplification material and further reading to help you develop your own thinking, The Teacher’s Reflective Practice Handbook is an accessible guide which supports the facilitation of reflective practice through self and peer assessment, problem-based learning and personal development planning. The multi-dimensional framework enables you to build a meaningful, personally relevant portfolio of evidence-informed practice.

Just as successful athletes must identify strengths and weaknesses, set goals, and engage in focused practice to meet their goals, so must teachers. Learn how to combine a model of effective instruction with goal setting, focused practice, focused feedback, and observations to improve your instructional practices. Included are 280 strategies related to the 41 elements of effective teaching shown to enhance student achievement.

Reflective Practice for Professional Development provides an accessible introduction to the theory and practice of reflection. In ten concise chapters it explores how reflecting on experiences can be used for professional development and help progress knowledge and skills. Using scenarios, questions and stories, the reader is encouraged to apply the content to their own context, demonstrating the importance of reflection in helping us to make sense as well as make the most of our professional experience. Exploring key themes such as the importance of criticality, models of reflection and connections between thought, language and actions, it considers the ways in which reflection can widen perspectives, generate deeper understanding of professional challenges and enhance creativity. Full of practical tools and approaches for enriching and recording reflections, this insightful book aims to simplify reflective practice for teachers. It is an ideal guide for anyone who needs to build reflection into their practice or their studies.

This text presents a research study into the development of reflective practitioners in a pre-service teacher education programme. The teacher educator in the study modelled his own reflections on practice in the hope that it would help students to apply reflection to their own teaching.; The results of the author's research demonstrate that reflection on practice occurs in three distinct periods: before anticipatory, during contemporaneous and after retrospective a pedagogical experience. The book concludes that when student teachers' own learning situations, both within their university coursework and their school experiences, become the focus for their learning about teaching and learning, their understanding of, and practice in, teaching is enhanced.

This volume outlines the assumptions and beliefs that distinguish the concept of the reflective teacher from the view of the teacher as passive and a mere technician -- a view that teacher education programs and schools have historically promoted. The authors demonstrate how various conceptions of reflective teaching differ from one another. They believe that it is only through teachers' reflections on their own teaching that they become more skilled, more capable, and in general better teachers. This is the first volume in the "Reflective Teaching and the Social Conditions of Schooling" series. The major goal of both this book and of all of the volumes to follow in this series is to help teachers explore and define their own positions with regard to the topics and issues at hand within the context of the aims of education in a democratic society.