Week 17- Activity 1 My Reflective Practice
At my school we write our reflections on Interlead Appraisal Connector. Interlead is an online journal where you write your reflections and share with the people who you like to especially the people you work with. This is something that we started this year at our school. My first experience with Interlead was very frightening. I struggled to keep up with my journal because of time constraints. We had to reflect continuously on the Professional Developments we attend at school. Here is a snapshot of what interlead looks like.
We can choose different template for different contexts, for example if I want to reflect about my team meeting I have a template for that and if I want to reflect on what I learnt by observing a colleague, I have a template for that. For every journal we write we have to mark it against the 12 teacher registration criterias to show which ones my learning relates to . Each template is guided by questions like, what am I currently doing in my practice and how can I improve and what difference will I notice in my students. Sometimes I feel I am wasting my time writing journals on interlead as I never use it in my teaching. It is something teachers at my school are required to do.
During my classroom teaching time I use the first three levels of Zeichner and Liston's Reflecting model. I do a lot of Rapid Reflection, Repair and Review . I believe this is more useful than writing journals on Interlead. Rapid reflection is immediate, ongoing and automatic action by the teacher. Repair is when a teacher makes decisions to alter their teaching to suit the needs of her students. Sometimes what I plan to teach for the week doesn't always work as I review on yesterday's lesson and work from there, Zeichner and Liston's(cited in Finlay,2008, p.4).
We all know that teachers are busy people so I believe we need a simple reflection model that doesn't take much of our time. Talking to my colleagues and observing my students' behaviour is something that I regularly do to inform my teaching. I have looked at Gibbs Reflective cycle and I quite like it. It is simple and easy to follow. I believe you can use different reflective models depending on the situation as Finlay (2008, p.10) has said, that "different models are needed,at different levels, for different individuals, disciplines and organisations, to use in different contexts".
Finlay, (2008, p.4) explains that reflection is "recapturing practice experiences and reflecting critically on your action in order to gain new understandings and so to improve future practice".
After reading Finlay's article on Reflecting on 'Reflective practice' I have changed my perception about Interlead Appraisal. All this time I was struggling and stressed about writing journals but now I am more confident at writing reflections on Interlead and now I know that if reflection is done well and effectively, it can be an enormously powerful tool to examine and transform practice (Finlay, 2008, p.10).
References
Finlay, L.(2008). Reflecting on Reflective practice. PBPL.Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opensetl/file...
During my classroom teaching time I use the first three levels of Zeichner and Liston's Reflecting model. I do a lot of Rapid Reflection, Repair and Review . I believe this is more useful than writing journals on Interlead. Rapid reflection is immediate, ongoing and automatic action by the teacher. Repair is when a teacher makes decisions to alter their teaching to suit the needs of her students. Sometimes what I plan to teach for the week doesn't always work as I review on yesterday's lesson and work from there, Zeichner and Liston's(cited in Finlay,2008, p.4).
We all know that teachers are busy people so I believe we need a simple reflection model that doesn't take much of our time. Talking to my colleagues and observing my students' behaviour is something that I regularly do to inform my teaching. I have looked at Gibbs Reflective cycle and I quite like it. It is simple and easy to follow. I believe you can use different reflective models depending on the situation as Finlay (2008, p.10) has said, that "different models are needed,at different levels, for different individuals, disciplines and organisations, to use in different contexts".
Finlay, (2008, p.4) explains that reflection is "recapturing practice experiences and reflecting critically on your action in order to gain new understandings and so to improve future practice".
After reading Finlay's article on Reflecting on 'Reflective practice' I have changed my perception about Interlead Appraisal. All this time I was struggling and stressed about writing journals but now I am more confident at writing reflections on Interlead and now I know that if reflection is done well and effectively, it can be an enormously powerful tool to examine and transform practice (Finlay, 2008, p.10).
References
Finlay, L.(2008). Reflecting on Reflective practice. PBPL.Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opensetl/file...
Thank you for sharing your reflection. I am 100% in agreeance with you about writing down reflections and then not using them. Sometimes it all just become about ticking boxes. However, I do feel, like you, that discussing collaboratively with colleagues has a far greater outcome than writing reflections independently.
ReplyDeleteKia ora Ashweni......I like the way you are reflective and practive with your teaching and in particular how you take note of what has happened yesterday as to what you would do about it the next day or in the near future. This practice to me is precisely what Finlay (2008) refers to "recapturing practice experiences and reflecting critically on your action in order to gain new understandings and so to improve future practice" The emphasis here for me would appear to be your 'automatic action' to alter your teaching approach and address the needs of the students. As mentioned by Venessa, collaboratively discussing concerns with colleagues for me is 'powerful' and 'effective' especially given the time constraints busy teachers have. Writing reflections has a place surely, however . I do wonder about...'who looks at them' a lot of the time. It's a bit like a lot of things we are expected to do as teachers....and then it's 'how often' are these referred to?...But in saying that we are compelled to meeting "professional standards' and need to remain professional and proactive. All the best with future models of recording reflections.
DeleteAshweni and I are in the same school. This is a better way to keep track of our learning as part of our appraisal than our old way of Appraising teachers. I also felt the same way as Ashweni when Interlead was introduced to our school. I felt that we didn't have enough support and having only one PD about Interlead was not enough. We are still struggling with Interlead and now they are thinking of changing to another system.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to know that there are other teachers out there who feel the same as me.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your blog it was open and honest. I agree with you about the "first three levels of Zeichner and Liston's Reflecting model" being more useful than journals. Reacting to what is happening right now in class and getting a feel for the overall lesson flow is often more important than journal reflections. The research and retheorising aspects are important for research informed teaching, but often my best made plans go out the window in response to what is actually happening in class. We have amazing research labs available to us, they are called classrooms.
ReplyDelete