Goal 3: Develop my knowledge and skills of reflective practices through structured reflective writing to produce productive reflections
Page overview:
This page includes details on my third goal for this semester, including the purpose, plan, and evidence.
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Click to view my lesson reflections:
Teaching Competency: Reflection on Practice
SMART Goal
In order to make goals more attainable, a specific criteria must be followed, and this criteria uses the acronym SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-based) (University of California, 2016).
Justification
Reflections must be done with a conscious mind. I would like to use reflective writing to enhance the quality of my reflective practices. In my previous reflections, I emphasized the description of events rather than critically analyzing them. According to theorist John Dewey, reflecting on our experiences is the way to formulating better solutions to problems (Warwick, 2007). Implementing structured reflections will result in concrete solutions.
Previous Mentoring School Teacher (MST)'s Comment
My previous MST commented on how I must continuously monitor my own and students’ reactions to content when determining what the best practice is. Therefore, it is important to conduct ample reflection over past practices.
Teaching Philosophy
Part of my teaching philosophy highlights the importance of feedback. Feedback can take many forms, and it often leads to the act of reflection, in which an individual monitors their behavior based on the comments of others, and tries to improve themselves. Just like reflecting is important for learners, it is just as vital for teachers in order to improve our pedagogical approaches.
Find my teaching philosophy by clicking the following button:
Goal Implementation Steps
Step 1: Use a reflection checklist
Using a reflection checklist helps guide reflections and ensures that all points are covered.
Step 2: Write lesson reflections
I wrote an overall reflection of how I felt the lesson went, including reflections on various aspects such as what I did well, and what I can improve.
Step 3: Use Gibb's Reflective Cycle
Gibb's reflective cycle acts as a structured reflective guide.
Step 4: Create an action plan
Whenever I discover a specific issue I need to create a solution for, I design an action plan to target that area with a tangible solution.
Step 5: Write weekly journals
The ABC-123 method is a journaling guide that encompasses three dimensions of reflection, which are the personal level, the other level, and the social level.
Evidence of Progress
Strategy 1: Lesson Reflection
Step 6: Receive feedback
After sharing my reflections with my MST, I asked her to evaluate how specific and productive my writing is.
Description
Lesson reflections were written after every lesson that I taught and they involved discussions and analysis of various aspects of the lesson, including things I did well, areas for improvement, and how I implemented my PDP goals.
Rationale
Theorist John Dewey sees reflection as an active process that aids us in knowing where to direct our actions (Warwick, 2007). By writing lesson reflections, I could clearly focus on what I wanted to improve.
Strategy 2: Gibb's Reflective Cycle
Description
I used Gibb's reflective cycle to answer specific questions about an area for development. During this lesson, I reflected on a particular aspect, which was that students were not being active, and therefore I came up with a concrete solution.
Rationale
Behaviorist B.F. Skinner’s theory of reinforcement highlights the likeliness of a behavior to be repeated if reinforcement was provided (O. Omomia & T.A. Omomia, 2014). Therefore, I realized that in order for students to be more active I must constantly reinforce a set of rules.
Strategy 3: Action Plan
Participation Rules
Increased Participation
Description
After writing a reflection, and identifying an area for improvement, I wrote an action plan. Based on the action plan, I created strategies to increase students' participation, which resulted in students being more active.
Rationale
The writing of reflection must go beyond the descriptive level and requires the production of new, concrete solutions (Mena-Marcos & García-Rodríguez & Tillema, 2013). Writing the action plan helped me to make my interventions more tangible.
Strategy 4: Weekly Journal
Feedback
Mentoring School Teacher (MST)
After sharing my writings with my MST, and constantly asking for feedback, she praised my ability to build on feedback and create better lessons.
Ward and McCotter’s levels of reflection include the Dialogic level which encompasses the involvement of other people’s perspectives during reflection (Ward & McCotter, 2004). I now recognize that it is not only important to listen to the perspectives of those around us, but also those of society and educational researchers.
Rationale
Reflection Quality Rubric
My MCT commented on my ability to reflect on a deeper level, which includes structured writing through the use of a specific cycle.
Mentoring College Teacher (MCT)
Reflection
Structured writing is an extremely useful method in producing productive reflections. As a teacher, it is really important to be reflective in order to continuously improve our practice. Writing reflections is a way to get better, more concrete solutions (Warwick, 2007). By implementing the strategies to achieve this goal, I believe my reflections have become much more specific and they lead to concrete solutions.
All my weekly journals can be found by clicking the following button:
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References
Mena-Marcos, J., García-Rodríguez, M.-U., & Tillema, H. (2013). Student
teacher reflective writing:what does it reveal? European Journal of Teacher
Education, 36(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2012.713933
Omomia, O. A., & Omomia, T. A. (2014). Relevance of Skinner's theory of
reinforcement on effective school evaluaution and management [PDF].
European Journal of Psychological Studies, 4(4), 174-180.
https://doi.org/10.13187/ejps.2014.4.174
University of California. (2016). SMART goals: A how to guide. Retrieved April
29, 2020, from https://www.ucop.edu/local-human-resources/_files/
performance-appraisal/How%20to%20write%20SMART%20Goals%20v2.pdf
Ward, J. R., & McCotter, S. S. (2004). Reflection as a visible outcome for
preservice teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(3), 243-257.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2004.02.004
Warwick, P. (2007). Reflective practice: Some notes on the development of the
notion of professional reflection. In Reflective practice: Some notes on
the development of the notion of professional reflection. University of
Bristol. Retrieved August 30, 2020, from https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/13026/1/
3573.pdf
My mentor believed that my reflections were thoroughly written, thoughtful, and logical, leading to clear conclusions.
Using the ABC-123 method to write weekly journals enables me to reflect on comments that I have received from my mentors. In addition, it includes taking in views based on a social level, and views shared by society or governing bodies.