The Power of Reflection in Teacher Education and Professional Development

Strategies for In-Depth Teacher Learning

Fred Korthagen, Ellen Nuijten

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000573671
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

Based on years of extensive research on teacher development, this book offers a practical introduction to the concept of teacher reflection, demonstrating how student teachers can engage with reflective learning from their teaching and classroom experiences in a systematic and inspiring way.

Providing practical models and guidelines for use in the classroom, renowned teacher educators Fred Korthagen and Ellen Nuijten outline various strategies for promoting reflection and illustrate how a deeper form of reflection ? 'core reflection' ? enhances awareness of professional identity and supports the dismantling of inner obstacles, therefore enhancing social justice and empowering diverse student populations. The authors demonstrate how a trajectory for learning can be designed to develop key competencies, as well as the role played by university- and school-based teacher educators in supporting teachers' self-directed reflection.

Featuring a variety of tools that support professional growth, this unique text demystifies the area of teacher reflection, helping to provide concrete and inspiring examples for how to strengthen professional identity based on everyday challenges faced by practitioners. The Power of Reflection in Teacher Education and Professional Development is therefore an essential guide for students, in-service teachers, and teacher educators alike, as well as for anyone in the helping professions.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781003221470-1

An exploration of the concept of reflection

Reflection is essential for learning from experiences and improving actions. In this chapter, we will discuss more reasons as to why reflection is important. We will see that not every form of reflection is equally effective. That is why it is important to pay attention to the development of effective reflection skills (i.e. learning to reflect). This chapter also contains a reading guide for the rest of the book.

1.1 The theme of reflection

The ability to reflect

Teachers play an important role in student learning. Their profession can be both inspiring and challenging. To be able to do their work, teachers need various skills, such as subject-specific skills, pedagogical, organizational, and reflective skills. This book is specifically about reflective skills, which are internationally seen as fundamental to the development of teachers. This is apparent from all kinds of documents and standards describing the profile of a competent teacher.

What is actually meant by the term reflection? What do teachers actually do when they reflect? And what is the value of reflection for the teaching profession? In this chapter we will discuss these questions, starting with an example of one student teacher’s reflection. (Sometimes the term teacher candidate or pre-service teacher is being used for students in teacher education, but throughout this book we will use the term student teacher.)

Example I: An irregular lesson

Sharon is a student teacher specializing in teaching English as a second language. She teaches the subject of irregular verbs to a group of students whose mother tongue is not English.

Sharon has come up with an original idea for the start of the lesson. First, she challenges the students to pay attention because she is going to ask them questions. Then she walks into the classroom with exaggerated steps and says: ‘Every day, I walk into the classroom.’

She then asks: 'Laura, what did I do?’ Laura replies:‘You walked into the classroom.’

Sharon:‘Okay, good! Now ... I take Michelle’s book.’ She actually picks up Michelle’s book and then asks: ‘Michelle, what did I do?’ Michelle: ‘You took my book! But it is my book! ’The whole class is laughing and Sharon is laughing too.

Sharon then discusses the difference in form: The correct form is walk-walked, but take-took. She draws two columns on the whiteboard and puts some examples of regular and irregular verbs in these columns. Sharon tries to involve the class in making the list, but it is getting more and more noisy. Some students seem to be taking part, but an increasing number of students is not paying attention. The students begin to talk more and more with each other, rather than paying attention to the lesson. Sharon doubts whether they are talking about the content of the lesson or about entirely different things. At one point she gets angry and calls some students to order. Still, the class is becoming increasingly restless.

Reflection by Sharon

After the lesson Sharon is dissatisfied and she thinks about what she could have done to make the lesson more successful. She concludes that she should be stricter next time and that she wants to call the students to order sooner.

Figure I.I Cartoon Reprinted with permission from Boom Publishers, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The last lines of this example describe how Sharon thinks about the lesson she has given. Her goal is that things will get better next time. In other words, Sharon consciously tries to learn from an experience by reflecting on it. It is a natural human habit to reflect on something that you have experienced, especially if the experience had an impact on you in one way or another.

Professionals regularly reflect on work experiences. If a surgeon makes a mistake during an operation, he or she will reflect on the event in order to learn from it and not make that mistake again. Similarly, professional teachers will try to learn from their experiences. That is a way of being in the profession, in other words a professional attitude. When it comes to reflection, we call this a reflective attitude.

The ability to reflect is also a skill. Just as with any other skill (such as being able to drive a car, being able to write a text or to explain something), you can become more skilled at it through practice. In addition, it is important to be aware of effective and less fruitful forms of reflection. For this reason, we will consider various forms of reflection. We will also discuss how someone can become better at reflection. We call this process learning to reflect.

Exercise 1: Reflection on Sharon's reflection

1. What do you think of Sharon’s reflection? Do you agree with her conclusion?
2. If you wanted to encourage her to deepen her reflection, what question or questions would you ask her?

1.2 Not every form of reflection is equally effective

Sharon started to reflect when she encountered a situation that made her feel dissatisfied. The final lines of Example 1 show that she started to think about ways to make the next lesson go better. This is a sign of her willingness to take the experience seriously and to learn from it.

However, Sharon’s focus on finding a different approach has a major drawback. We will discuss this drawback by looking at Figure 1.2, which shows the form that Sharon’s reflection took.

Figure 1.2 From an action to a solution and back again

By using this approach, Sharon does indeed come up with a solution, namely to be stricter, but this is probably a superficial solution that does not address the essential problem: why were the students losing interest in the first place? In order to choose an approach which fits the situation, it would be better to first pay attention to this underlying problem. In other words, it is important to look at the cause of the noise in the classroom before thinking about a possible solution.

When people feel a pressure to improve a situation, they are often strongly focused on finding an immediate solution. This solution is sometimes derived before the essence of the problem is clear, yielding a solution that is based on symptoms rather than solving the underlying problem. Applying this knowledge to our example, we learn that reflecting on the essence of the problem could be an important intermediate step for Sharon in her reflection process, which could help her arrive at a better approach to her lessons.

Note in the example how Sharon is only paying attention to what went wrong. This is not surprising: people tend to pay more attention to what did not go well than to what did go well. People also have better memory for negative events than positive ones. In psychology this phenomenon is called the negativity bias. Although focusing on problems and negative issues seems to be ‘normal’, it has a few disadvantages and does not always lead to optimal learning. For example, a strongly problem-oriented way of reflecting causes negative feelings, such as uncertainty, irritation, and a decrease in self-confidence. Research by psychologist Fredrickson (2009) shows that those negative feelings lead someone to think within the context of the problem, creating a tunnel vision. This is characterized by the person seeing fewer options than available.

Moreover, a focus on negative aspects quickly leads to limiting thoughts of people about themselves. Sometimes it also leads to worrying, raising questions (such as: will I ever learn it? Am I actually suitable for the teaching profession?) that are not always helpful and can stand in the way of improvement.

Sharon could also reflect on the successful start of her lesson: What was essential in that successful experience? What made the first part of the lesson go so well? Does it contain a pedagogical principle that could be used more often? Or even multiple principles? During the strong start of the lesson, perhaps personal qualities of Sharon came to the fore (for example, her ability to make contact with the class and to challenge students in a playful way), qualities that she can consciously use in other situations. When Sharon thinks about such questions, she reflects on the basis of a positive experience. Thinking in this way is often more useful than a focus on negative experiences. It can help Sharon to become more aware of her strengths, which gives guidance and confidence. We call this strengths-based reflection.

1.3 A more thorough reflection

Sharon’s reflection deepened when she was coached by her mentor teacher. This mentor teacher first helped Sharon to see which actions made the start of the lesson good. Sharon realized that during the first part of the lesson, she was able to alert the class and create nice contact moments between her and the students, which led to a clear learning effect. Sharon also started to see that she expressed personal qualities during the successful part of the lesson, namely originality and being able to challenge and to engage students. This gave Sharon a sense of strength and self-confidence.

The mentor teacher then helped her to look closely at the problem that arose during the lesson. By discussing the onset of the unrest, two things became clear: this part of the lesson took a long time and the students could easily withdraw from the class discussion, as it increasingly became a kind of oneway conversation from Sharon to the class; there was no real need for the students to pay attention and no incentive to participate. The personal qualities that Sharon used in the first part of the lesson were much less apparent in this part of the lesson.

This reflection gave Sharon a different view of the lesson. She became more aware of the importance of activating the students and building a lesson based on contact and challenge. She started seeing fundamentally different options for making lessons run better than her first option of being stricter. In fact, she began to see that ‘being stricter’ could actually reinforce the causes of the unrest.

1.4 Five steps

Sharon’s example shows how important it is to first understand the situation at a deeper level: what is actually going on? What went well and how did that happen? What was essential in the occurrence of the problem?

Only when it is clear what the cause of a situation is, does it make sense to think about a different approach. When doing so, it is important to consider multiple alternatives rather than focus on one possible solution. When reflecting in this way, the reflection takes the form shown in Figure 1.3. This is the ALACT model for reflection, named after the initial letters of the five steps.

If we look at Sharon’s very first reflection (the last lines of Example 1), we see that she went through these steps, but in a fairly superficial way That was caused by a strong urge to go to step 4 and find a solution as quickly as possible, which made her spend too little time on steps 2 and 3.

Patterns in reflection

Most teachers subconsciously follow routine patterns in their own way of reflecting. For example, some people often linger in step 2 (Looking back) for a long time and fail to consider an essence. Others mainly focus on step 3, but they neglect steps 2 and 4. These pitfalls can be avoided by consciously paying attention to each step. Systematic reflection leads to awareness of the essence of a situation and can help with finding a suitable approach.

Figure 1.3 The ALACT model of reflection

Exercise 2: Your own way of reflecting

1. Which of the steps of the reflection model shown in Figure 1.3 usually get much attention in your reflections and which ones get less attention?
2. Take a look at one of your written reflections, for example a lesson report. If you do not have one, take a situation in which you were in interaction with others, and write down your reflection on this situation.
   Use the margin to mark (with numbers) the reflection steps t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of diagrams and figures
• List of structures
• List of examples
• List of exercises
• About the authors
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: an exploration of the concept of reflection
• 2 Working with the reflection model
• 3 Supporting reflection through coaching
• 4 Reflection in peer groups
• 5 Core reflection
• 6 Structures and instruments for promoting reflection
• 7 The promotion of reflection in teacher education
• Index