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A practitioner's response:I'm the retired (ha!) director of the Willamette University School of Education where I gave numerous assignment for student/student teachers to 'reflect' on either what they saw in a observation of another teacher or on their own practice as a student teacher. Our program was heavy in requiring reflective tasks. From that experience comes this caution - the reflective practices of your students may not be done under the same definition you are proposing. If I use hindsight to define reflection as used by the vast majority of our students, it was to describe what they saw or remembered, with a cautious evaluative conclusion.
Again in hindsight, I don't think the faculty had a clear definition of reflection, certainly not a common one, and I don't believe, based on the outcomes, that we make the task of reflection clear to the students.
As I 'reflected' on my career in teacher education (reviewing what I had done, what was effective/not effective, identifying a central theme to my practices, and what I would change were I to start over) - my post retirement definition that I wish I had used with students - I concluded that my efforts to improve their teaching skills through praise, criticism, and offering of various solutions to their teaching problems was largely ineffective. It wasn't until I took a more objective role in observation/evaluation that I found success, both in the depth of teacher reflection and in effective change in teaching practices.
I found that when I shifted from feedback in the form of anecdotal notes to providing objective data on what was happening in the classroom, the students/student teachers shifted from a defensive/deflective or accommodative response to one of independent reflection (definition above), problem solving, and change.
In my now failed retirement, and initially as a mental exercise, I developed the Data-Based Observation Method and then wrote a software program to support it. The software is not necessary, but make it much easier.
In the Data-Base Observation Method the focus of an observation is collaboratively determined between observer and observee - "What do you want to know about your classroom?". Guiding questions can be used to focus the process on categories such as content delivery, class management, student relations, etc. Once the focus has been determined, the observer will gather objective frequency and duration data on classroom behaviors of teacher and/or students.
Here's where the reflection come in. The data is provided to the teacher with these questions "Is this what you thought was happening in your classroom? Is a change needed? If so, what will you change?" When this external, objective picture of what had happened in their classroom (part one of my definition - reviewing what I had done) is presented, the teachers make the determination of whether the teaching/learning was effective/not effective (part two of the definition).
Professional level discussion ensues, based on the objective data, to determine if and/or what changes should be made (part four of the definition - part three, identifying a central theme, comes after a number of the data-based discussions).
There now has been five years of implementation of this method by me, school administrators, and peer coaches and I have found that it builds the skill of reflection in teachers, a skill I am coming to see as a critical element in becoming a long-term successful teacher. I believe that 'reflection' is shallow and surface when the person does not have the factual basis for understanding what occurred and when the reflective task is to be either self or externally evaluative in nature. The question is not "How did I do?" (Answer: good, poor, passed, a 6 out of 10, I liked it, etc), but "What happened and was it effective?"
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2 comments:
Dr. Tenny,
I am quite interested in your experience working with reflection and in this data-based observation method. As I work to refine my focus for my dissertation research, I am landing on a rationale for the research that you allude to. It isn't that we don't think reflection is valuable or approach using it with a some kind of theoretical basis, but our understanding of what reflection is and how it works is haphazard and ill-defined. The inclusion and then cutting of reflection in the TTU Composition program is one example of the ambiguity surrounding the use of this kind of "in-task" reflection. It sounds like your previous use of reflection was similarly ambiguous. It is this lack of clarity that I am using as my rationale for the need for a theory for what happens when we ask students to reflect in this way. I don't know of any other theoretical understanding of reflection that comes out of a grounded theory research study, so I am hopeful that my work will be a bit different and useful.
What I hear you saying made a difference in your evolved use of reflection is that productive reflection didn't really come until there was some objective "mirror" through which they could see their teaching/practice. It took this objective view to give them a level of distance through which to see themselves better. This method of gaining distance (or distantiation) is really crucial. I agree.
I also hear you saying that reflection didn't really do anything if the student didn't have the knowledge framework to see and understand their actions and situation. How could a student, for example, perceive that they really have problems in their Introductory paragraph that they need to work on if they don't have any understanding of how to write an Introduction. I agree again.
Thanks for you comment on my ongoing work, and I will be interested to learn more about your work.
Yours,
Lennie
Hey John,
I appreciate your comment on my proposal and your thoughts on reflection. I am hopeful that my "theory generation" research will do something about addressing some of the ambiguity surrounding why and how we use reflection. There has been a lot of theorizing about reflection coming from experience and philosophic thinking (as well as some research), but I don't know of anyone who has attempted a grounded theory study like I am proposing.
I wanted to echo two things I think I hear you saying about your evolution in your use of reflection. First, that the data-based observations provide a different kind of "mirror" that helps the teacher-reflectors gain more distance and perspective on themselves. This kind of distance and perspective are crucial for productive reflection. I agree. Part of the rational for doing reflection in writing is that the act of representing experience and thoughts through language and writing is a kind distance by definition. Louise Wetherbee Phelps has a great book Composition as a Human Science in which she talks about "distantiation" (horrible word) and how it is a key component of reflection.
The second interesting thing I heard in your post was how important it is for reflectors to have the knowledge framework in order to reflect productively. For example, how could a student through reflection perceive that they have a problematic Introduction to a paper and then problem-solve how to improve it if they don't have any understanding about what makes a good introduction?
I appreciate your comment, and I'll be interested in learning more about your views on reflection.
Sincerely Yours,
Lennie
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