WOLLEGA UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION AND

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE

Teachers as Reflective
Practitioners
 Overview

Course Title :Teachers as Reflective Practitioners

Course code : PGDT422
Cr.Hr. 3
Rationale :-
 To increase the quality of education as a whole and
the teaching and learning process as a part, the
components of teacher education training program in
Ethiopia has been changed time to time to address the
current needs of the country.
 To this effect, the newly teacher education
training program has started to play a great role
in equipping and producing teacher with
necessary and timely skills.
 Teacher as reflective practitioner is one of the courses
delivered in this program.
 ---
The main purpose of this course is to create
awareness and understanding in trainees
about the basic concepts of reflection and
the effect of its practice in teaching and
learning process.
As a result, teachers are believed to be
responsible of their professional growth as
well as their students’ learning progress.
In short, the program prepares the trainee to
become a better reflective teacher.
Therefore, this course particularly gives the
candidates the opportunity to examine the
educational theories behind the application
of reflective thinking and action to
 ---
Among the core contents of the course are :
 the meaning and nature of reflection
(reflective thinking, reflection-in-action and
reflection-on-action);
 reflective thinking/action versus technical
rationality;
 traditional of reflective practices;
 levels of reflective practice;
 reflective teaching;
 the reflective teacher and strategies of
reflective teaching in secondary schools.
 Action research, as one of the tools of
reflection, will be one major part of the course.
 Learning outcomes :
 At the accomplishment of this module the trainees will :
 have developed the knowledge, values and skills
required for reflection, reflective thinking and
practice
 have started to aware the issues of teaching
 be familiar with the basic idea of teachers’ thinking ,
learning and roles
 develop the capacity and competence for evidence-
informed teaching
 be disposed towards inquiry in teaching
 develop the skills required for lifelong learning as
professional
 have characterized the best qualities of teacher as a
reflective practitioner
What is expected of the trainees :-

 Readiness
 Participation
 Submitting works/assignments given on
time
 Time management
 Attendance
 Commitment
 Unit One

REFLECTIVE THINKING AND

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
 Brainstorming Questions :-

Think Pair
Share

1.What is learning ?
2.What is teaching ?
3.What is lifelong learning ?
4.What are the best qualities of teachers ?
5.What is thinking ?
6.What is critical thinking ?
6.What is reflective thinking ?
7.What is reflective practice ?
 Definitions of Reflection by Scholars

Reflection involves “a state of doubt,

hesitation, perplexity, or mental difficulty, in
which thinking originates.”
It is “an active, persistent and careful
consideration of any belief or supposed form
of knowledge” (Dewey, 1933).
Reflection means thinking about what one is doing.
It entails a process of contemplation with
openness to being changed, a willingness to
learn, and a sense of responsibility for doing
one’s best. ( Jay, 2003)
 Considering the definitions given above, what
common things you can draw out?
 ---
Reflection is an important human activity in
which people recapture their experience, think
about it, mull over & evaluate it.
It is working with experience that is important
in learning’ (Boud, R. & Walker,1985).
‘We learn through critical reflection by putting
ourselves into the experience & exploring
personal & theoretical knowledge to
understand it & view it in different ways
(Tate and Sills, 2004).
 Cont…
Reflection means in short:
Looking back on experience and making
decisions about how to improve the practice
for the future
 Is the bridge between thinking and
acting
Thinking Reflection
Acting

Reflection
 Nature of reflection

1. Returning to experience
 It refers to recollection / recalling of memory situations, events
and activities that happened in the past.
 description of what you did or plan to do (and why)
 description of how you approached something or how it worked
and how it did not.
 Recalling ---to what happened ---
2. Connections
 connecting past experience to the presence: Eg:-How do I want to
be learned in high school the same subject I am teaching?
 What was the feeling back there as a student? Did you feel good or
bad when you think of your experience as a student? Why?
 Which teacher was my favorite? Why?
 Am I teaching my students the same way that I loved to be learned
as student?
 ---

3. Evaluation
It refers to evaluation of experiences and
development of a teacher. The subcategories of
evaluation are:
giving an opinion
examining what you have learned.
drawing conclusions about your own
development
 evaluating your knowledge or functioning
investigating whether you have achieved your
learning objective
 examining what you found difficult and
progressing
 Section 2. Process of reflection
Reflection engages in the process of carrying
back and forth between thinking and action.
However, the process may appear differently in
different situations.
One useful way to understand this complexity
is to consider when it takes place.
There are two categories that simplify the
concept:
1. Reflection-in-action (thinking on your feet)
2.Reflection-on-action (retrospective
thinking//thinking back).
 Reflection-in-action (thinking on your feet)

Reflection takes place in the midst of action ,

not after the fact
Involves a surprise (an unexpected
outcome/behavior that challenges one’s
knowing in action), a response to surprise …
conducting an action experiment on the spot by
which we seek to solve the new problems … we
test our new way of seeing the situation, and
also try to change that situation for the better.
Figure, 1.Process of
reflection
 Cont …
Reflection-on-action is:
Perhaps the most familiar image of reflection
involves a sequence of action then thought
Pausing after an activity to see:
How it went – what went well,
what did not,
what could be changed for the next time;
i.e. Looking back on the practice after
completing a task.
 Section 3. Reflection as thinking process

 The domain of thinking Processes encompasses a range of

cognitive, affective and metacognitive knowledge, skills and
behaviors.
 It is organized in three dimensions:
 1.Reasoning, processing and inquiry
 2. Creativity
 3.Reflection, evaluation and metacognition.
 1/Reasoning, processing and inquiry
 The Reasoning, processing and inquiry dimension encompasses
the knowledge, skills and behaviors required to enable teacher
students to find out the world around them, and to use critical
thinking to analyse and evaluate information they encounter.
 Students learn to assemble and question information and
develop opinions based on informed judgments.
 They also develop the capacity to transform information into
coherent knowledge structures.
 ---

 2/Creativity
The capacity to think creatively is a central
component of being able to solve problems and
be innovative.
In the Creativity dimension, teacher students
learn to seek innovative alternatives and use
their imagination to generate possibilities.
They learn to take risks with their thinking and
make new connections.
 ---
3/Reflection, evaluation and
metacognition
Learning is enhanced when individuals
develop the capacity to reflect on, and
improve their existing ideas and beliefs.
In the Reflection, evaluation and metacognition
dimension, teacher students learn to reflect on
what they know and develop awareness that
there is more to know.
They learn to question their perspectives and
those of others.
They evaluate the validity of their own and
others’ ideas.
They also develop their metacognitive skills
Section 4. Reflective thinking and reflective practice

4.1. Reflective thinking

What is reflective thinking?
Cont …
Reflective thinking is:
 a part of the critical thinking process referring specifically
to the processes of analyzing and making judgments
about what has happened.
 an active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief
or supposed form of knowledge, of the grounds that
support that knowledge, and the further conclusions to
which that knowledge leads.
 Learners are aware of and control their learning by
actively participating in reflective thinking –
assessing what they know, what they need to know,
and how they bridge that gap – during learning
situations
 the part of critical thinking process referring specifically to
the process of analyzing, evaluating, and making
judgment about what has happened
 Cont …
General features of reflective
thinking
 Perplexity/puzzle, confusion, doubt.
 The teacher has to provide a problem or scenario
 Conjectural anticipation/guessing the reasons behind.
 The teacher provides many opportunities to engage students in gathering
information to look for possible causes and solutions.
 Careful survey (examination ,inspection, exploration, analysis)
 The teacher will give activity sheets to help students evaluate the
evidence they gather and questions that prompt them to consider
alternatives and implications of their ideas
 Consequent elaboration of the tentative hypothesis/suggest
solutions.
 The teacher will prepare questions and activities that prompt students to
draw conclusions from the evidence they gathered and pose solutions
 Taking one stand upon the projected hypothesis as a plan of
action, doing something overtly to bring about the anticipated
result and thereby testing the hypothesis/evaluate and monitor the
implementation of the solution.
 Cont …
4.2. Reflective practice
What is reflective practice?
 Cont …
Reflective practice is:
 A dialogue of thinking and doing through which one becomes
more skilled (Schön, 1987).
 A process that helps teachers think about what
happened, why it happened, and what else could have
been done to reach their goals (Cruickshank & Applegate,
1981).
 An inquiry approach that involves a personal
commitment to continuous learning and improvement
(York-Barr, Sommers, Ghere, & Montie, 2001).
 The practice of analyzing one’s actions, decisions, or
products by focusing on one’s process for achieving
them (Killion & Todnem, 1991).
A critical, questioning orientation and a deep
commitment to the discovery and analysis of
information concerning the quality of a professional’s
designed action (Bright, 1996).
 ---
A willingness to accept responsibility for one’s
professional practice (Ross, 1990).
A systematic and comprehensive data-gathering
process enriched by dialogue and collaborative
effort (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2004).
The capacity to think creatively, imaginatively
and, eventually, self-critically about classroom
practice (Lasley, 1992).
An ongoing process of examining and
refining practice, variously focused on the
personal, pedagogical, curricular,
intellectual, societal, and/or ethical
contexts associated with professional work
(Cole & Knowles, 2000).
 Cont …
What is reflective practitioner?
Practitioner: somebody who practice his/her
repertoire of knowledge, attitudes, behaviors,
and skills in specific areas of performance.
For teachers, these areas include managing
the classroom, designing instruction,
establishing assessment strategies, and
interacting with students, colleagues, and
parents
 Cont …
Reflective Practitioner: person who uses deep,
careful thought in his/her practice of
knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, and skills on
specific profession.
A “reflective practitioner” is person who could both
reflect-in-action (to reshape what you are working on
while working on it) and reflect-on-action (to consider
what has been done in order to evaluate one’s own
process).
Reflective Practitioners ask questions like:
What am I observing?
What would I like to see?
How might things be different?
What am I learning?
What possibilities are there for the future?
 Section 5. Levels and traditions of reflection practice

5.1. Levels of reflection practice

 There are three major levels of reflective practice .They are:

 An initial level focused on teaching functions, actions or skills,

generally considering teaching episodes as isolated events.

A more advanced level considering the theory and

rationale for current practice.

 A higher order where teachers examine the ethical, social

and political consequences of their teaching,
grappling/struggling with the ultimate purposes of schooling.
 The conceptual framework presented here represents a
continuum of multiple levels adopting/taking the terminology of
technical reflection, contextual reflection, and critical reflection.
 Technical Reflection

At the first level, teachers’ reflections focus on

strategies and methods used to reach predetermined
goals.
They are concerned with what works in the classroom
to keep students quiet and to maintain order, rather
than with any consideration of the value of such goals
as ends in themselves.
It is the lowest level of reflection.
Typical questions the teacher asks at the level of
technical reflection are:
Did I spend too much time on group work today?
How can I keep students on-task?
Did I have enough (too many) activities?
How can I get students to pay better attention?
 Contextual Reflection

 Teachers engaging in Contextual reflection attempt to understand

the theoretical basis for classroom practice and to foster consistency
between supported theory (what they say they do and believe) and
theory-in-use (what they actually do in the classroom).
 Teachers reflecting at this level can determine when there is conflict
between what they practice and what they lecture (e.g., seeing
themselves as humanistic yet belittling students when they persist
in disobeying rules).
 Typical questions the teacher asks at the level of pedagogical
reflection are:
 How can I improve learning for all my students?
 How can I build in better accountability for cooperative learning
tasks?
 Am I giving my students the opportunity to develop decision-making
skills?
 What else can I do to help students make connections to prior
knowledge?
 Is there a better way to accomplish this goal?
 Critical Reflection
Critical reflectivity is interchangeably used as the
dialectical/logical level.
At this stage, teachers reflect on the moral and ethical
implications and consequences of classroom practices
on students.
They extend their considerations to issues beyond the
classroom to include democratic ideals/perfection.
Acknowledging that classroom and school practices
cannot be separated from the larger social and political
realities.i.e. a classroom is a miniature of the
society.
Critical reflection is mostly considered as a
higher-order level of reflection.
 It adds the following dimensions:
 ---

Questioning of underlying assumptions, biases,

and values one brings to bear on their
teaching.
Conscious consideration of the ethical/moral
implications and consequences of practices on
students and their learning.
Examination of how instructional and other
classroom practices contribute to social equity
and to the establishment of a just society.
Extended awareness beyond immediate
instructional circumstances to include caring
about democratic foundations and encouraging
socially responsible actions.
 ---
Typical questions the teacher asks at the level
of critical reflection are:
Do all students in my class have daily
opportunities to be successful?
Who is being included and who is being
excluded in this classroom practice?
How might the ways I group students affect
individual student’s opportunity for success?
Does this classroom practice promote equity?
Do I have practices that differentially favor
particular groups of students (e.g., males,
females)?
 Tradition of reflection practice
There are five different traditions of
reflective practice as described by Zeichner
and Liston (1996).
This framework ties different types of reflection
to traditions in educational reform, emphasizing
that each of the types derives from different
underlying assumptions about the aims of
education
1. Generic tradition; It emphasizes reflective
practice in general as central to teaching and
teacher education, without a particular focus
on the content, quality, or context of reflection
when a teacher merely describes the situation
in the classroom.
 ---
2.Academic tradition: teacher education
mainly emphasizes the teacher’s role as a
scholar and subject matter specialist.
 That is, academic reflection is thinking
about content and instruction.
3.Social Efficiency tradition: The social-
efficiency tradition focuses on the scientific
study of teaching to provide the basis for
building a teacher education curriculum, whose
major manifestation in recent years is the
Competency/Performance-Based Teacher
Education (C/PBTE) programs
 Social efficiency reflection, in short, is about
thinking about improving methods of instruction.
 ---
4.Developmentalist tradition: has its roots in
the child study movement and assumes that
the natural order of development of the
learner provides the basis for determining what
should be taught, both to pupils and to their
teachers.
In short, the focus of developmentalist
reflection is thinking about student readiness.
5.The social reconstructionist tradition
defines both schooling and teacher education
as crucial elements in a movement toward a
more just society.
 Generally,the social reconstructionist
reflection gives emphasis on thinking
about equity and social justice.
 Section 6. Benefits and issues of reflection

The rationale for reflection

Why reflection?
The rationale for reflection: It
 aims to improve practice by learning directly
from experience
is engaged in a process of examining the
fundamental assumptions implicit in practice
and experience and;
is planning to change thinking and practices
from this new awareness
 Benefits of Reflection
What are the benefits of reflection for teachers
as wellofasreflection
Benefits learners?for Benefits of reflection for
teachers learners
 ---
Reflection is tied directly to experience.
Individuals must have the cognitive ability to
practice reflection.
They must have self-awareness as well as
awareness of their environment.
They must psychologically, cognitively,
and/or emotionally benefited from reflective
activity.
These benefits are categorized in to two:
Benefits of reflection for learners and
teachers.
 The benefits of reflection for learners

 Reflection helps learners to:

 understand what they already know (individual).
 Students improve their basic academic skills.
 identify what they need to know in order to advance
understanding of the subject (contextual).
 Students develop a deeper understanding of subject matter
 make sense of new information and feedback in the context
of their own experience (relational) .
 Students start to relate the subject matter to the non-
academic world and to their own experience.
 guide choices for further learning (developmental).
 develop personally by enhancing their self-awareness, their
sense of community, and their sense of their own capacities.
 They also develop higher level thinking and problem solving
skills.
 The benefits of reflection for teacher

Reflection enables a teacher to:

Be conscious of our potential for bias &
discrimination.
 Make the best use of the knowledge available.
 Avoid past mistakes.
solve a problem or address an issue in the
classroom
 to reduce confusion or frustration.
Reflectivity is often a problem- or situation-
based activity.
 Maximise our own opportunities for learning.
 result feelings of pleasure and self-satisfaction
 ---

Unless we make conscious & systematic efforts

to critique our own practice, what do you think
will happen ?
 Unless we make conscious & systematic efforts to
critique our own practice:
We will be unaware of how & when we are
being discriminatory
 We will not make use of the knowledge
base developed by our own profession
We will continue to repeat the same
mistakes
 Our skills will decline rather than develop.
 Issues of reflection

What are the barriers that hinder us to

reflect on our experience? What could be
the solutions?
 Possible Barriers of reflection

Lack of time
Lack of awareness about the purpose of
reflection
Fear of judgement and criticism
being closed to feedback and defensiveness
fear of professional arrogance
 Solutions for the Barriers

Mentors or teachers should:

be a role model, e.g. a mentor or teachers who
reflects on their own practice
Give time for reflection. To reflect effectively on
your experience, you should actively set a time
from your each working day to reflect &
analyse
Provide Non-judgemental support to your
colleague or your mentee.
create as many opportunities as possible for
engaging in reflection, e.g. pairs, groups
reviews and discussion
Section 7. Reflection vs. Technical rationality

What is technical rationality?

Where is the concept derived from?
 ===
Technical rationality is when professionals make
decisions and solve problems through `the application of
scientific theory and techniques.
Technical rationality holds that professionals possess
specific, scientific and standardized knowledge.
A first component of this professional knowledge is basic
science, which for a `major' profession such as medicine
might include such knowledge as anatomy and
physiology.
From this basic science is derived applied science, which
is the knowledge guiding the everyday work of
professionals.
Finally, in the technical rational model of practice,
professionals are held to possess specific skills and
attitudes, which are related to the process of providing
services to individuals and the community
 ===
Teachers may have acquired the
theoretical knowledge (technical
rationality) of their subject or of the
practice of teaching and learning.
 UNIT 2

Teaching and Reflection

Section 1.The nature of teaching, complexity,
dilemma
Nature of teaching complexity
 Have you ever afraid of becoming a
teacher? Why?
 What kind of difficulties you think you will
face by being a teacher?
 ===

There are some of the major factors that make

teaching more difficult or complex than other
professional practices.
These complexities are resulted from problem
of:
 student’s cooperation,
 compulsory students,
 emotional management,
 structural isolation and chronic uncertainty
about the effectiveness of teaching
 The Problem of students’ Cooperation

 Teaching is a practice of human improvement.

 Any practitioners depend on their clients to achieve any
results.
 For example surgeon can fix the sickness of a patient who
sleeps through the operation, and a lawyer can
successfully defend a client who remains silent during the
trial.
 But, success for a teacher depends heavily on the
active cooperation of the student.
 The student must be willing to learn what the
teacher is teaching.
 Otherwise, a teacher is understood as having failed.
 That is why you can’t be a good salesperson unless
someone is buying, and you can’t be a good
teacher unless someone is learning.
 ===
As a result teachers must devote huge amounts
of skill and effort in order to make students
cooperate.
However, the result is far from to certain.
The students still may choose to reject or
ignore the teachers effort and offer of
improvement because of lack of interest,
concentration, and etc.
Therefore, the effectiveness of the
teacher becomes more difficult to
establish.
 The Problem of Compulsory students

The teacher- student relationship is a form of

institutionalized domination and subordination. . . .
The teacher represents the formal curriculum, and his
interest is in imposing that curriculum upon the children
in the form of tasks; however pupils are much more
interested in life in their own world than in the dried out
adult life which teachers have to offer (Waller,1965) .
In other words, students are likely to feel the pressure for
school attendance as result of:
 their parents (who want school to take care of children
during the day, to help them get ahead, and even to
educate them),
 the market (which makes school credentials mandatory
for access to a good job),
 their own social desires (school is where their friends are).
What can you do to make students
interested in you and your subject
matter?
 The Problem of Emotion Management

One of the difficulty of teaching is teachers are

required to establish and actively manage an
emotional relationship with students.
Other professional practitioners in general are
expected to maintain a distinct emotional
distance between themselves and the client.
They focus on the particular problem for which
the client is seeking professional help, they are
judged on their performance in resolving this
problem, they and the client are seen as
independent agents pursuing their own ends
through the relationship.
 ---
Unlike most professional relationship,
Teachers need to develop a broad
relationship with students for the
purpose of understanding their learning
problems.
They also need to establish an emotional
bond to motivate the student to
participate actively in the learning
process.
Managing emotion become even more complex
for the teacher to easily practice is because
there is no prepared guidebook for how to
accomplish it for any particular teacher in a
particular classroom.

 The Problem of Structural Isolation

Teachers are practicing their job within the four

walls of the self-contained classroom.
They normally teach under conditions where
they are the only professional in the room.
They are left alone to figure out a way to
manage a group of 45-60 students and move
them through the required curriculum.
Therefore teachers needs to control the
classroom situation
 The Problem of Chronic Uncertainty about the Effectiveness of Teaching

What are the sources of uncertainty ?Read !

 Nature of teaching dilemma

What is dilemma?
Have you ever been in dilemma?
 What have they?
How do you come out of it?
 ---
A dilemma implies a situation where there is no
clear easy choice or answer.
Example, when you only have two extra tickets to
an event and three friends that want to go.
Dilemma can rise from different reasons:
 a genuine clash of values
 uncertainty about the facts of the case
 a failure to be unaccepted, a deficiency in
courage, a misdirected desire to be popular, and
so on
 uncertainty about our position, our perceptions
 the merits of our decisions, and concerns about
how they will be received and what their results
will be
What is teaching dilemmas?
Construct your own definition
 ---
 Teaching dilemma is when the teacher put in to the situations of two
evils.
 Some dilemmas of teaching:
 How to balance the needs and interests of some students over the
needs and interests of others.
 Eg . Students with special needs and girls and other normal
students in my classroom?
 What happens if there is a clash between the needs of individual
teachers and those of institutions?
 Staying within your comfort zone or being prepared to take
risks/become vulnerable. (Eg. changing teacher –centred method
that one familiar with to student-centred method)
 For a teacher, balance between pursuing one’s own specific tasks
(teaching, conducting research, participating in the department
meeting) and the moral duty, as an ‘academic citizen’, and as
belonging to a community (providing community service).
 How far should a teacher press students to participate in class (the
shy, those for whom there are linguistic & cultural barriers, the
reluctant, other special needs and female
The Professionalism Of Teaching: Teacher Thinking, Creativity And Teacher Learning

What knowledge and belief you think

the teacher possibly can have?
What is teacher thinking?
 ---
Teacher thinking is defined as “the set of
cognitions, of mental representations that
operates as a lens through which teachers look
at their job, give meaning to it and act in it” .
Even though it is difficult to observe and
evaluate teachers’ thinking, their knowledge,
beliefs and attitude that directly and indirectly
influence their thinking are very important.
 ---
 There are different kinds of knowledge, attitudes and beliefs the
teacher have:
 Content knowledge refers to the depth of knowledge that a
teacher has about the subject itself – for example, their procedural
knowledge and conceptual understanding of mathematics topics,
as well as of the connections between topics.
 Pedagogical content knowledge is the knowledge teachers have
about the ways student learn particular topics – for example, a
particular teaching methods to help students understand the
subject matter better.
 In addition to, general pedagogical knowledge is the knowledge a
teacher have about classroom management and the
characteristics of his/her students.
 Teachers have knowledge about the context of schooling, from
knowledge of the school in which he/she works, to the district, to
the larger school system – for example, teachers may have
varying degrees of understanding of school financing at various
levels, or of how and where decisions are made about curriculum
and resources.
 ---
At even larger level, teachers hold personal
value orientations and will have particular
beliefs about the purposes of education and
even the nature of knowledge.
 they have also beliefs about what it means to
be a teacher – about the roles that teachers
should and do play, what the act of teaching
requires, what makes for quality teaching.
Teachers also have different attitudes and
expectations for different students, for female
and male students, minorities and students
with special needs.
How teachers learn? And where can
they learn?
Teachers learn during their stay in pre service
Teacher Learning and Change

teacher education; during their teaching

practice; and through reflective practice.

Why teachers need to be reflective

practitioners?
There are many reasons for
teachers to develop as
reflective practitioners.
The most important is that
teachers need to be reflective
in order to deal with the
inevitable uncertainties and
dilemma involved in everyday
decisions that affect the lives
of students.
Another reason for
developing as reflective
practitioners is that it
frees teachers from
routine and impulsive acts,
Section Three: The role of teachers in the society

What do you think the role of teachers

in the society?
A teacher’s work can never end.
 From the role of everyday teaching process to
managerial to the role as a member of the
society, teachers play various roles to ensure
that the education system and the society as a
whole move along side by side.
The roles of teacher in the society are classified
into three main areas: knowledge and skill,
social inclusion and professional development of
the teacher’s role.
Refer each !
 ---
Section Four: Relationships in teaching:
How are we getting on together?
A teacher's relationship can be divided into
three main areas: the relationship with
students, which mean the “ordinary teaching”,
and the relationship with other staff members,
the relationship with societies at large.
Exhaust it !
Section Five. Teaching, change in society and reflection

What will be the teacher roles in the

changing world?
What are the challenges of the teachers
in the changing world?
 Section Six .Professional identity: knowing oneself as a teacher

What kind of teacher you want to be?

 Types of teacher disposition/inclination

A teacher's disposition can be divided into four

main areas as follow:
 Able/Unable
Identified/Unidentified
Larger/Smaller
People/Things
 Section Seven. Teachers as lifelong learners
What is lifelong learning?
Lifelong learning is not rooted in any particular
moral or professional commitment.
Lifelong learning for teacher becomes an
individualistic enterprise, its purpose to
consume skills while turning teaching into an
endless human resource development project.
 What is Continuous Professional
Development?
The idea of continuous professional
development clearly denotes that learning for
the sake of improving professional practice.
 What are the methods of CPD??

→ Approaches to CPD
 Teacher career development in schools
including:
whole-school training days the induction,
mentoring and assessment of individual
teachers
peer observation
Collaborative planning and evaluation, and
self-evaluation.
Looking beyond a particular school,
teachers might build networks by:
visiting other schools
attending conferences
undertaking joint training exercises with other
schools
joining teacher networks, and
Engaging with specialist subject associations.
Outside the school environment, teachers
might:
attend short courses by commercial and not-for-
profit providers (such as charities and LEAs)
study for higher degrees validated by
universities take part in examining processes
(for example by becoming examiners)
study using online courses, or
Finally, looking towards the wider
community, teachers might:
take part in outreach activities, particularly in
the case of ASTs (Advanced Skills Teachers)
Sometimes provide opportunities for community
learning.
 Rational and purposes of CPD

What do you think the purpose of CPD?

 The rationale and the purpose of CPD can
be summarized in four categories as follows:
Greater authenticity and commitment to
learning
Increased focus and personal
accountability in learning
Teachers’ self-affirmation through
learning
 Unit Three: The notion of reflective teaching
 Meaning of Reflective Teaching
 What is Reflective Teaching?
 Routine Action Vs Reflection Action
 What kind of Actions considered routine and
reflective for the teacher’ Job?
 Routine action is guided primarily by tradition,
external authority and circumstance.
 In reflective teaching, teachers engage in active,
persistent and careful consideration of any belief or
supposed form of knowledge in the light of the
grounds that support it and its consequences.
 Thus reflective teachers consistently assess the
origins, purposes and consequences of their work.
 Becoming a Reflective Teacher
How can we become reflective teacher?
There are attitudes and skills you should
develop to be a better reflective teacher.
According to Dewey (1933) as cited in ___book,
there are three essentials attitudes and
practices that one should have to be a reflective
teacher.

They are: open-mindedness, responsibility, and

wholeheartedness.
Open-mindedness
Open-mindedness means being open to other
points of view, appreciating that there are many
 Responsibility

 Responsibility is the careful consideration of the

consequences of one’s actions, especially as they affect
students.
 Reflective thinking leads to responsible action.
 Responsibility refers to a teacher’s willingness to examine all
decision making (e.g., decisions about curriculum,
instruction, evaluation, organization, management) from a
coherent philosophical framework of teaching and learning.
 Wholeheartedness
 Dewey believed that when people are thoroughly interested
in a cause, they throw themselves into it with a whole heart.
 Teachers who are wholehearted approach all situations with
the attitude that they can learn something new.
 The “need-to-know” is the driving force for their learning.
Wholeheartedness is characterized as “a commitment to
seek every opportunity to learn.”
 Three Essential Practices for Becoming a Reflective Practitioner

 The following three practices are essential:

 1) Solitary/personal reflection, 2) Ongoing inquiry, and 3)
Perpetual/repeating problem-solving.
Adapting Reflection in to One’s Teaching Repertoire: Some Tips
 Prepare a framework for guiding the discussion.
 Lead the group by actively engaging each student.
 Set the tone by establishing norms of behavior such as: Anyone
in the group may speak at any time — no hand-raising is
required, but the rules of polite conversation are followed.
 No profanity or sexual innuendoes are necessary to make a point.
 Speakers should be respectful, open-minded, and not aim to put
anyone down.
 Insist that responses are clear, coherent sentences, not just a few
words.
 Clarify students' responsibilities and expectations (write them
down and copy for all) ……
 Section Four: Strategies/ Opportunities for Reflection
In what way do you reflect your
experiences?
Strategies/ Opportunities for Reflection
Teacher Narratives (autobiography and
metaphor)
Critical Incident
Portfolios
Case Study Analysis
Student Input
 Action research
 Unit Four: Action Research as a strategy for Reflection

What is Action Research?

What is the purpose of Action Research?
How action research is different from basic
research ?
How action research is conducted ?

END