What Is Reflective Practice

The assertion that teachers themselves are their most important resource is based on opinions rather than on fact. I understand that many people will have different opinions on the idea of teachers being their own best resource when it comes to the development of their professional expertise. The statement is both ambiguous and arguable when we take into account that teachers themselves might be seen as an individual who works well independently as an important resource, or as a collective term for teachers in general that work together as part of a school community. It is important for us to have an understanding that teacher expertise means “having a variety of ways at ones disposal for handling the task of teaching, and then knowing how …show more content…
Reflective practice can be seen as a fantastic resource for teacher development as it allows the teachers to look back and reflect on lessons. It gives them an opportunity to think about what methods or techniques had went well, which they can reuse. They can also reflect on what didn’t go so well, and how they could improve on this to try ensure the most effective learning for their pupils. Using a reflective journal helps the teacher to be their own best resource as it helps them focus on how to improve their skills to work to the best of their ability as an educator. In ‘Reflective Teaching’ by Pollard we explore the ideas of John Dewey (1933) and Donald Schon (1983) on reflective practice. Dewey talks about teachers having two approaches in reflective teaching, ‘Routine Action’ and ‘Reflective Action’. Routine action is the habit or tradition, and usually isn’t very engaging or motivating. Reflective action is being able to self-appraise and be open minded and flexible in order to continue to develop professionally. More interestingly, Schon describes reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action. Reflection-on-action is whereby you sit down and look back at how your lesson went and think about the positive and negatives which I have already discussed, whereas reflection-in-action emerges from reflection-on-action and requires a highly skilled and intuitive person. This is a good indicator of how you have developed with regard to professional expertise. Reflection-in-action is when you are in a situation and you must ‘think on your feet’ because not all lessons will go to plan. It’s the teacher that can recognise when a lesson is not going to plan and can reflect-in-action to review and change to recover the situation who will essentially be their own best resource in the development of their professional expertise. Teachers collectively can help one another, Joan Solomon (1999) explained reflection