Mirror mirror on the wall....

I started my pre-course preparation work today. I had to read a chapter from 'Reflective Practice for Teachers' by M Sellars. https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=sKzDDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&ots=mcfEvT0Asq&sig=QJobvsUp78VAINVB9VGuNvli7QQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Well.... where to start. It took me AGES. It was essentially a literary review on how people had defined 'reflection' and what that entails.

Teaching is a funny practice. On an average day, there are 100s of social interactions with the children and each of these often requires decisions made in a split second. Like when you have explained something to a class and they clearly don't get it, and in that moment, you mentally rejig the entire lesson. Or perhaps you're having an great discussion and a student drops a bombshell comment which you have to address before you can move on. So unlike a lot of careers, teaching doesn't just require reflection about an specific event (it needs that too!), but also all this little 'micro-reflection' throughout the day. Or some might call this 'reflection-in-action' (Schön, 1983).

In the chapter, the definition of reflection which stood out for me the most was this:

"Deliberate, purposeful, metacognitive thinking and/or action.... to improve their professional practice"

Considering the various literature around reflection is good to have a rounded understanding of what reflection is but what is useful in this chapter is the breakdown of Kolb's model for reflection (1994) and then the author puts some meat on the bones to explain what those headings mean:

My other take away from this somewhat laborious chapter is the point that reflection can be a powerful asset to a teacher but that it needs to be practiced. All. The. Time.

So, quite a full on start to my pre course prep. Maybe I should have started with the videos......