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Self-Reflective Practices

Self-Reflective Practices - Why reflect on daily events?

Experience is a powerful teacher, especially if we take the time and make the effort to capture, think about and talk about what we experience. Certainly we all reflect informally on the events of the day. Certain situations stick in our minds. We run them over in our minds, wondering what if…

Often, however, we don't act on these reflections, instead we are under tremendous pressure to attend to the demands of the present. Some of what we think about sticks and adds to our pool of accumulated informal knowledge, much, however is lost.

The trick to reflection is to be systematic. When done systematically and collaboratively, reflection provides a wonderful structure for beginning special educators to start developing and validating informal cause-effect relationships. Through observation of practice/experience, with focused questioning, or more formally through study groups, teacher work sampling or action research, reflection can improve practice.

The use of reflection can:

• Help organize thoughts and make sense of classroom events.
• Lead to professional forms of inquiry and goal setting
• Promote a model of learning that views teaching as an ongoing process of knowledge building.
• Promote conversations and collaboration with mentors.
  (Boreen, Johnson, Niday, and Potts, 2000, p.68).

Self-Reflective Practices - What is Reflection?

Reflection has been defined in many different ways. Reflection usually includes or is prompted by some level of uncertainty that needs to be resolved in the mind of the educator (Dewey, 1933).

Reflection, however, is more than "just thinking hard about what you do" (Bullough and Gitlin, 1995). Reflection should pose a question, pose alternative answers, and seek deeper meaning about what you do.

To be useful, reflection should include both self and collaborative questioning about what is taught and how it is taught (curriculum and pedagogy). It should address the underlying cause - effect relationships between what special educators do and outcomes for children and youth. At the deepest level there should be questioning of what is best for the children served (Liston & Zeichner, 1987).

Specifically, the goal is:

• To think about what you are doing,
• To challenge or validate your beliefs
• To develop and test cause-effect theories related to connecting what you do to outcomes for students.

Levels of Reflection - What to Reflect On