APC Activity 3 - Reflective Practice

This activity asked us to read “Reflecting on reflective practice” by Lynda Finlay (2008) and respond to the article while considering our own reflective practice. The article is an interesting one that discusses reflection in some detail, comparing a number of models of reflection and discussing some of the current ideas and debates around reflective practice. 

We had discussions within our Mind Lab group early in the course around reflection and the huge variance in how teachers undertook it. Some people commented on how they thought it was done as a matter of course by all teachers, but were discovering that this was not in fact the case. However, the article highlighted to me that there are so many different ways and means of reflecting, and others may not be doing it the same way as you. The question does remain though, is their method, and for that matter yours, an effective one? 

There were a couple of key points that stood out to me when reading Finlay’s piece. On the very first page I have put a big highlighter mark next to “for busy professionals short on time, reflective practice is all too easily applied in bland, mechanical, unthinking ways.” I like to think I avoid this where possible, however I know I have fallen into this trap in the past, especially when endeavouring to put some sort of ‘structure’ around my reflection. Finlay lists the five levels that Zeichner and Liston (1996) put together, and the first is identified as “Rapid reflection – immediate, ongoing and automatic action by the teacher”. I think that this is something we all do, and though it is not typically recorded, it is vitally important to be able to think and adapt on the fly. I believe I do this well, but am not always effective at finding ways to expand on and document my reflections. 

Having said that, I commented in my last post about my Mind Lab studies having an effect on my whole approach to teaching and learning. Brookfield (1995) is referenced in the article as characterising critical reflection as “stance and dance” – having a stance of inquiry and a dance involving experimentation and risk. This is very much the direction I feel my practice has taken since participating in this course. 

My current ‘model’ of reflection is extremely informal and unstructured. However I do regularly stop, think and evaluate, and write anecdotal notes on my planning. Moving to a collaborative teaching team has also made an enormous difference to the amount of reflecting I do, as we are having constant conversations every day about how things have worked and how we can improve. There is definitely, though, room for improvement as even though structuring reflection can lead dangerously towards mechanical box ticking, I currently don’t have much in the way of documented reflections to learn from and look back on. My own goal is to continue this blog beyond this course as a platform for ongoing reflection.

Reference:
Finlay, L. (2009) Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file/ecms/web-content/Finlay-%282008%29-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf