This document provides an overview of reflective practice for teachers, emphasizing its importance in enhancing teaching skills and fostering continuous learning. It outlines the reflective practice process, which involves analyzing teaching experiences, asking critical questions, and engaging in self-evaluation. The ultimate goal is to improve teaching effectiveness and personal growth through a methodical approach to reflection.

1. Reflective Practice for
Teachers
GLENN MARTIN
JULY 2018

2. Introduction
This is an overview of reflective practice for teachers. The aim is to help you, as a teacher, to improve
your skills, understanding and capability over time. The overview consists of eight sections:
1. What is reflective practice?
2. What is the purpose of reflective practice?
3. What conditions are needed?
4. How do you undertake reflective practice?
5. What questions should you ask in reflective practice?
6. What theories apply to reflective practice?
7. Continuing the process
8. Self-awareness and self-evaluation

3. 1. What is reflective practice?
Reflective practice is a process by which you….
 stop and think about your practice (in this case, teaching)
 consciously analyse your actions and your approach
 look at what you have been doing from the perspective of relevant theories and models
 develop more effective approaches to your practice.
Reflective practice is about paying critical attention to your current practice and
engaging in continuous learning and growth.

4. A model of reflective practice
Description:
What happened?
Thoughts and feelings:
What were you thinking
and feeling?
Evaluation:
What was good and bad
about the experience?Analysis:
What sense can you
make of the situation?
Conclusion:
What else could you have
done?
Action plan:
If the situation arose
again, what would you do?
Source: Gibbs, 1988

5. Key concepts of reflective practice
The diagram gives you the idea of what is involved in reflective practice. It starts with your
experience – what you have noticed happening in the classroom (or online).
You ask yourself questions about something that happened, describing it carefully, and paying
attention to your own reactions and the reactions of others.
You apply the ideas you already have about what was ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in the teaching situation.
Then you ask yourself the reasons why. You draw on what you already know, and you ask
yourself what it is that you do not understand.
You ask yourself how it could have been different (better), and you make a plan to create a
better outcome.
Can you see how these questions already set you on the path to learning and growth?

6. 2. What is the purpose of reflective
practice?
Clearly, the central purpose of reflective practice is to enable us to learn and grow as teachers.
There are many reasons why we would want to learn and grow:
 Teaching can be a stressful experience, and it would be good to be able to reduce that
stress.
 If we are better teachers, the experience of students should also be better, and they
should be more successful in learning.
 Being an effective teacher is a combination of knowledge about teaching, and grounded
experience; reflective practice can turn our experience into deeper knowledge.
 Finally, reflective practice helps us to grow towards the personal satisfaction of being
more competent, and effective, at teaching.

7. 3. What conditions are needed?
Reflective practice is something you can do in any situation, but it will contribute to your growth
more effectively when you can repeat the reflective cycle:
◦ Experience  Reflection  Conclusions and action plans  New experience
You want the situation to be stable and ongoing so that you can think, learn, adjust, and return
to the situation to try again.
You also need to be personally ready:
Reflective practice is a state of mind, an attitude, an educational approach which
makes the difference between twenty years of experience or one year of
experience twenty times.
(Bolton, 2005)

8. 4. How do you undertake reflective
practice?
There are two aspects to undertaking reflective practice:
The questions
you ask
The process you
follow
+
The process
“Practice” is something you do on an ongoing basis
– repeating a process regularly
The process involves using the steps in the Gibbs
model. This enables us to question your
assumptions and understandings.
There are four perspectives to take into account:
The
experience of
our students
How our
peers might
see us
Ideas from
the literature
on teaching
Our own
experience
and history
FOUR
PERSPECTIVES

9. The process of reflective practice
Reflective practice requires exploration, self-questioning and experimentation. It involves spirit
and imagination as well as methodical thinking.
The process starts with setting aside regular time to review our teaching experiences, both
critical incidents and the overall patterns of our behaviour.
Decide how to record your thinking. Writing can be a powerful way to clarify thoughts, capture
ideas and articulate plans. A journal is one way of doing this. It also enables you to track the
evolution of your thinking – your focus of attention and your perceptions over time.
Discussion with peers or a “critical friend” can also help you to explore important or difficult
issues.

10. 5. What questions should you ask?
The questions posed by Gibbs are a good starting point. As a teacher, you will have more specific
questions too, arising from Gibbs’s first question – “What happened?”
Questions that you might ask include:
 Did I fulfil the lesson plan? What went well, what didn’t?
 Who is doing most of the talking, the teacher or students? Why?
 Are students engaged in the class, and are they learning?
 Could students demonstrate their understanding of the subject matter?
 Did I address students across the whole range of abilities? How do I know this?
 Did I ask the students questions that were useful, and manage discussion well?
Reflective
practice is
about asking
yourself useful
questions.

11. How questions evolve
The list of questions provided is a sample list only.
Questions allow us to enter into the process of reflective practice.
Start with questions that follow Gibbs’s cycle. Over time you will have more specific areas you
will want to explore, and your questions will evolve.
Your questions will arise out of what you pay attention to, and will become more specific and
detailed as you explore particular areas further.
The experience of others – discussion with colleagues, and the literature on teaching – will also
inform the questions you ask.
Questions are the central part of the exploration that is reflective practice.

12. 6. What theories apply to reflective
practice?
1. Reflective practice is a field of study in itself*. It also draws on theories about other concepts,
such as competency, capability, mastery, professional development, and experiential learning.
You can increase your understanding of reflective practice by exploring the literature in all of
these fields.
2. For teachers, reflective practice also requires that you are familiar with theories and models
of teaching, and literature on the various skills involved in teaching – such as presenting new
material, questioning, discussions, classroom management – there are many such skills that are
part of the total teaching role.
(*For example: Schön, 1983, The reflective practitioner)

13. 7. Continuing the process
Reflective practice is, as it says, a practice – you engage in it regularly, applying a methodical
approach (which need not be rigid).
It is not simply telling stories over coffee – such stories may be uncritical and merely self-
justifying. The trap is that we do not challenge ourselves, we take things for granted.
So, reflective practice is a mindset that reflects critically on your experiences with students, with
the intent of improving your skills and understanding as a teacher.
Reflective practitioners strive to recognise responsibility for their own life stories, the
structures around them, and their actions within those structures. They can then create
strategies for responsibly taking charge of as many areas of experience as possible. They
also want to learn critically from the stories of others.
(Bolton, 2005, pp. 106-107)

14. A process based on experience
Reflective practice recognises that teaching is a lived experience in situations that are often
uncertain, unique and, sometimes, conflictual. Teachers learn by doing, and by being
intelligently aware of what they are doing, and aware of the positive and negative effects of
their actions and attitudes on students. (There can be a dark side to teaching as well.)
Reflective teachers question themselves, applying the reflective practice cycle on an ongoing
basis. The goal is to develop increasing expertise which is internalised, as opposed to merely
following a set of rules and routines.
The direction of reflective practice is illustrated on the next slide, shown by a pyramid which
depicts growth in expertise.

15. Stages of development of expertise
Stage 1: New practices,
language, skills, knowledge
Stage 2: Insight, changing action
rules, generalisation
Stage 3: Expert: Internalised values,
skills, beliefs and habits
BEHAVIOUR
PRINCIPLES
INTEGRATION
Adapted from The fifth
discipline, Peter Senge, 2006
Stage 4: Wisdom: broader perspective
Stage 0: Novice

16. Continuing the process – sources
Reflective practice fits into the wider picture of professional and career development.
In this wider frame, think of the range of things you can do to enhance your capability as a
teacher:
 Reading books and articles on teaching
 Viewing videos on teaching skills and practices
 Engaging in short courses and workshops on teaching generally, and on specific skills
 Engaging in further education and higher degree courses
 Participating in communities of practice (both formal and informal).

17. 8. Self-awareness and self-evaluation
What role does self-awareness play in reflective practice?
Self-awareness is an integral part of reflective practice. Learning and growth depend on us being
aware of our performance as a teacher, even when our performance may sometimes be
uncomfortable to examine.
Self-awareness is complemented by awareness of how other people see us – students, peers –
and our own standards of what a good teacher is. Thus we arrive at self-evaluation, one of the
stages in Gibbs’ model of reflective practice.
How do we evaluate our progress? We can do this in formal and informal ways, by ourselves or
with another person (a critical friend), and make plans and resolutions in appropriate time
frames.

18. Ways of supporting growth
There are many ideas and models that you can use to help you to grow. One idea is to have a
critical friend.
A critical friend is someone who is encouraging and supportive, but who also provides honest
feedback that may be uncomfortable or difficult to hear. A critical friend agrees to speak
truthfully, but constructively, about weaknesses, problems, and emotionally charged issues.
Reflective practice can be enhanced if you have a critical friend for whom you have professional
regard, and who is willing to question and challenge you, and vice versa. You both need to give
permission for this to occur.
Source: https://www.edglossary.org/critical-friend/

19. Summary
This overview of reflective practice has defined the concept and explained the basics of the
process.
Reflective practice enables us to move from being overwhelmed by the teaching experience, or
stuck in mediocre patterns of behaviour. It allows us to grow in our understanding and develop
our skills, to begin to fulfil our (evolving) mental model of what good teaching is.
What new ideas have you encountered?
How could you go about establishing your own reflective practice regime?

20. References
Bolton, G (2005) Reflective practice, 2nd edn, Sage, London.
Brookfield, S (2015) The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom, 3rd ed., Jossey-Bass,
San Francisco.
Gibbs G (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods, Further Education Unit, Oxford
Polytechnic, Oxford.
Schön D (1984) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action, Basic Books.
Senge P (2006) The fifth discipline, Doubleday/Currency, New York.
York-Barr J and Sommers W (2016) Reflective Practice for Renewing Schools: An action guide for educators, 3rd edition,
Corwin.
CRITICAL FRIEND TOOLKIT: Queensland Government (n.d.) (pdf) online at:
http://education.qld.gov.au/staff/development/performance/resources/readings/critical-friend-toolkit.pdf
(Accessed 17 July 2018)

21. The concepts of reflective practice fit into the broader
framework of the teaching/learning model.
For other slide sets on teaching and learning topics, search
“Glenn Martin” on Slideshare: https://www.slideshare.net/
Contact: glenn@glennmartin.com.au