Making sense of classroom experience through reflective practice

Here's an edited version of the handout for the workshop I gave at the Professional Development in Language Teaching conference in Okayama, Japan this weekend. It was a great conference with lots of workshops by teachers working on their teaching. I'll post thoughts and inspiration from the conference in the next few days.


Making sense of classroom experience through reflective practice

Systematic, rigorous reflective practice is a potentially transformative method of professional development since it focuses on the classroom experience – where our beliefs about teaching meet our practice.

The steps of reflective practice…

Experience – a critical moment that you would like to understand better

Description – the video clip of the moment
• What was happening? What were the students doing/saying? What were you doing/saying?
• How did you feel? How were you reacting to the students?
• What other details will help you to understand this moment – group dynamics, institutional context, level & ability of the students?

Analysis – produce several hypotheses that could explain the situation
• Why do you think this happened?
• What beliefs do you have about learning that might help interpret this moment?
• What does your past experience (generally and/or specifically with these students) tell you about this moment?
• What do research and/or theories of language acquisition tell you?
• Can you think of other possible explanations?

Plan of action – articulate a variety of future actions to address the situation
• What would you do differently next time based on your analysis?
• What information or skills would help you address this issue?
• What information or skills would help your students address this issue?
• What else can help you address this issue?
• What questions would you like to explore?

Disclaimer
This presentation is based on materials and terminology developed by trainers in the SIT TESOL Certificate course.