How easy it seems to tell the kids to be brave when participating to progress… the shoe is now firmly on the other foot! This is my first blog critically evaluating my reflective practice using Jay and Johnson’s (2002) reflective model.
Descriptive
I am used to writing an online journal to critically evaluate my practice, in our school we share our reflective journals via the Ariki project http://www.arikiproject.ac.nz/. I enjoy the opportunity to internally reflect by writing my thinking down in response to current theory and research. It is my understanding that critical reflection is about critiquing not criticizing. Fook, White and Gardner (cited in Finlay, 2008, pg.6) say reflective practice is “challenging existing assumptions that are informed by reliable resources”. When reviewing this it occurs to me that sometimes I can slip into self-criticizing rather than critiquing! I note that my reflections are often introspective (Finlay 2008). I feel comfortable sharing my thinking in our school setting because I know and trust critical friends who ask questions of my practice in a probing way.
Comparative
The survey created by Mind Lab gave me new insights to how my professional peers view their own reflective practice. It was interesting to analyse how my responses corresponded to other teachers views and reviewing this information in light of current research. A common trend noted in “Evaluate your reflective practice-March 2018” was that: reflection often occurred in greater depth during the ‘reflection in action’ phase. Zeichner and Listens notice “that involves steps one to three mostly and less focus on retheorizing and reformulating”. This is the area that I would like to focus on further at a team level so that together we can critically examine our practice collaboratively (using different models of reflection as new tools (Finlay 2002). I rarely use a blog or twitter to reflect on my own practice, this was a trend noted by many others from the survey. A small percentage of Mind Lab teachers used Blogs and twitter to reflect on practice. Yet Fook and Askeland argue that the focus on “critical reflection should be on connecting individual identity and social context”. This prompts me to make a change to how I share my thinking!
Critical reflection
Reading Finaly’s article has given me a deeper understanding (whilst challenging some previously held assumptions) of the complexity of effectively reflecting on practice, I am most interested in the ideas around Dewey’s definition of reflective practice: identifying the two types of reflection (page3): reflection in action and reflection on action. Going forward my goal is to add more time and effort to reflection on action; in the context of learning through play. Also, I think there are rich opportunities for our learning team to explore models of reflective thinking in a collaborative sense. By writing this blog I have been able to review my thinking about reflective practice using new ideas from Finlay (retheorizing and reformulating) to renew my perspective. The act of writing a public blog will show that I am attempting to apply some new ideas. I will be stepping out of my comfort zone as I will be sharing my thinking with people outside of my school setting. I am hoping to experience the collaborative nature of leveraging digitally so that questions around my practice will prompt me to justify my thinking and consider reflection on action in more detail.
References
Finlay, L. (2009). Reflecting on reflective practice. Practice-based Professional Learning Centre, Open University. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/sites/www.open.ac.uk.opencetl/files/files/ecms/web-content/Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf
Jay, J.K. and Johnson, K.L. (2002). Capturing complexity: a typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 73-85.
Zeichner, K. M. and Liston, D. P. (1996). Reflective Teaching: An Introduction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Disrupted thinking ... 
Hey Estelle great reflective blog post. I like the way you have identified the need to recognise self criticising over self reflecting. The nature of teaching as inquiry is always prompting us to keep searching, questioning, improving our practice, so it is definitely important to stop and reflect on our successes as teachers as well! I also like the way you have decided to take critical reflection back as a collaborative tool as it lends itself well to this. Well done for being brave and sharing I really enjoyed your post!
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Kate, it is interesting that you also drew parallels to your own reflective thinking. It certainly is another dimension to get further feedback on your own written reflections! Thank you for a positive first comment.
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