Activity 3:​​Responses to Finlay’s (2008) article

In Findlay's article Loughran points out that in order for change to happen good reflective practice is done through practical experiences and practice. This endorses the coaching that happens in my school, as teachers watch a colleagues’ lesson and later sits with the colleague to reflect on that lesson, a ‘critical friend’. The coach is also supported by a professional from outside the school who assists the coach to learn how to work collaboratively with the colleague and bring the skills of listening, questioning and paraphrasing to the conversations about practice and to make meaning of classroom observation data. This coaching is cooperative and reflective, not just telling or following advice. The power is that the locus of control for the learning needs is with the teacher.

I agree with Findlay in terms of needing different models in order to develop reflective models which allow there to be growth in individuals. There are however so many variables to consider when reflecting about your practice including the purpose for the reflection. 

As educators we often find differentiated learning caters for individual needs, therefore there is always differentiated learning for different styles of learning too. Dewey's (1933) consideration around reflection being directly from the experienced situation and making reflection purposeful and resolving problems resonates in some ways to my own situation and how this needs to impact on student outcomes and inquiring into teaching.

Dewey also conceptualised reflection as starting with experience and stressing how we learn from 'doing', ie. practice. However, I also reflect on the work of Schon (1983) where the implicit knowledge can be used alongside the experiences of the practitioner. The combination of the two types of reflection: reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action is evident within our school dependent upon the experiences and the purpose for the reflection. In terms of our teaching or our strategic plan, we would be able to inquire into our practice, revise and then rework the plan to engage students within their learning for better achievement. The ongoing cyclic plan we follow for our organic inquiries is always reviewed twice a term for teachers which is for better levels of achievement for our students and our staff in order to improve student outcomes. 

Gibbs' (1988) Reflective Cycle seemed quite simple and evolved from Kolb's experiential learning cycle.

It was easy to follow and is similar in some ways to the NZ Curriculum or the Teaching as inquiry model.

All our students follow a system for inquiring into their learning therefore it becomes more prevalent as to why there is a need to follow up with different ways to reflect.

In this article, there were two areas which interested me more than any other as there is much research about Reflective Practice with some debate but all very similar in ideas however, I found the Pedagogic Concerns to be interesting, especially where 'developmental readiness' and the extent to which forcing students to reflect became possibly counterproductive. I feel it only becomes counter productive if it is tokenism or perhaps a surface feature to fill a gap as opposed to being purposeful reflection which has been taught well. After all, how many of us were taught the importance or significance of reflection? 

The practical means by which Loughran did point out with reflective practice happening within experiences and experiments. These activities all endorsed and becoming part and parcel of learner learning cycles. 'Coaching' becomes more apparent with anyone being the teacher as is the case on many occasions in our school. Classroom observations and appraisals being done by buddy teachers, tutor teachers, mentors, senior management, facilitators of learning which can be specific to any chosen area of need. The Numeracy Project facilitators are a good example of this.

The second area of interest in this article I found was the section which talks about presenting reflective practice(s) with care. It discusses the concept of how reflective practice needs to be given with some care to motivate students to want to engage the process. I especially find this encouraging when trying to do research around 'gathering student voice'. The key I have found is also engaging not only the pedagogy behind the reflections, but also the use of more than one way or more than one tool to gather that information. There are a vast range of digital tools to gather ‘student voice’, such as Google microphone for dictation for reluctant writers, apps such as Show Me and Educreations, which enable text, image and voice presentations. Students I work with are encouraged to ask the why question, which is always prevalent to new learning. 

This has become important with leading change in the school and our pedagogy around having student voice along with the development of a ‘growth min dset’.

Finlay, L. (2008). Reflecting on 'Reflective practice'. Retrieved from: http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file/ecms/web-content...

Ministry of Education. (2007). The New Zealand Curriculum Retrieved from: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-stories/Case-studies/Teac...