Teaching and Education - Essay Example

?Running Head: Teacher as a Reflective Practitioner A Critical Evaluation of Role of Teacher as a Reflective Practitioner and Importance of the Learning Environment of Classroom in Students’ Learning [Writer’s Name] [Institute’s Name] Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Abstract 3 The Teacher as a Reflective Practitioner 4 The Importance of Classroom as an Environment for Effective Learning 7 Conclusion 10 References 11 Appendix 1 13 Questionnaire 13 Abstract The report analyzes in depth, the role of teacher as a reflective practitioner and the importance of the environment of classroom in effective education and students’ learning. The report is backed up with data collected by interviewing a teacher on a school visit that was studied and silently observed in a real-life classroom setting. The report focuses on the impact of classroom environment and teacher’s attitude on students and their learning. It turned out that reflection by teachers and environment of the classroom contribute positively to the students’ learning. The Teacher as a Reflective Practitioner Teacher plays a central role in the learning arena of any student. Despite its centrality and shaping lives and futures of individuals and communities, the development and training of teachers often goes under neglect and underestimation due to certain factors, such as unorthodoxy of the notion and lack of financial and human resources (Hativa, 2001, 67). However, much work has been done in the recent past on effective teaching skills and it has been mutually agreed upon that the tool of reflection is one of the important ones for practitioner and follower both (Loughran, 1996, 45). What is reflection and who is a reflective practitioner? A theorist defines the process of reflection as “a set of abilities and skills, to indicate the taking of a critical stance, an orientation to problem solving or state of mind” (Moon, 2006, 75). By this definition, reflective learning involves a lot of thinking about the process of learning itself. By connecting concepts to one’s own personal experiences and then broadly generalizing it to other concepts and notions is what lies at the core of reflective learning. However, unlike its namesake, reflection in learning tends to bring out an improved version of the original learning rather than a mere replica. Therefore, more precisely put, reflective practice is an independent approach, which fosters critical thinking and in-depth understanding of concepts and ideas. Reflective practitioners derive their origin from learning proposed by Socrates that emphasizes the importance of asking questions and collecting feedback from one’s own self and others. It also stresses upon the fact that learning eventually comes from individual’s inner self and that no teacher can demonstrate the connections an individual mind makes out of a piece of knowledge and his/her own cognition better than the student him/herself. The notion of reflective practice in education is a product of studies and innovation in constructivist theories and cognitive psychology. According to this modern and much-regarded view, intelligence is a fluid, active thought process and reflection on one’s own learning and life experience proves to be an important landmark of intellectual growth. John Dewey, the pioneer of this field, remarks that intellectual growth is a product of rebuilding the experience. One of the many proposed models for doing this is problem-solving model that comprises of four steps: the first is to analyze the situation and determine its difficulty level. Second is to come up with alternatives and choosing the best amongst the available ones. Lastly, the final touch comes by applying the solution and checking the results. Experts (Roffey-Barensten & Malthouse, 2008, 23-49) have indicated that most individuals reflect on their practice and actions naturally, while others may take reflection as extra work on top of what they have to do. Reflection helps teachers in not only their lessons but it also benefit them in problem solving, critical thinking, decision-making, organizational skill, and personal change management (Roffey-Barensten & Malthouse, 2008, 23-49). During the study, the teacher observed everyday life experiences used to teach the lessons efficiently. It was an observation that themes in the text were in connection with the daily interactions relevant to the age group of students to make it more related, interactive, and interesting. In particular, few other experts (Reed & Canning, 2010, 56-70) state that a practitioner needs to provide the opportunities for children to learn and make sense of the world. The teacher under observation explained in the interview post observation that she reflects throughout her lesson on how students are absorbing information that is being taught to them (Appendix 1). In cases where children face difficulties in grasping the concept or understanding a process, she goes over it again and keeps collecting feedback to confirm if they did understand the lesson. The practitioner states that knowing her pupils’ learning styles and what would make it work come from her becoming reflective (Brockbank, 2007, 265). If a particular style works in a lesson, she might decide to use it in another area of the curriculum. Becoming reflective allows her to make sense of her teaching experience and practice, thus providing her with new ways and ideas to work with her pupil hence making one conscious and critical of their own performance (Reed & Canning, 2010; Pollard et al, 2008). An important notion in reflective practice is the idea that the responsibility of learning lies in the hands of students not teacher. The reconstruction of experience, which is the core idea behind reflective practice, occurs at the student’s end and not the teachers. However, what does lie at the teacher’s end is to build a classroom environment that nurtures and nourishes this process of reconstruction, an environment, which encourages students to argue, critic and come up with new, out-of-the-box ideas. Teaching is an ever-growing profession. Teachers should learn to question constantly themselves and their practices and beliefs in the profession. This constant reflection makes them more conscientious and conscious of their own development and that of their students. Reagen identifies a three-step reflection in teaching, which are reflection in action i.e. thinking at the time of teaching, reflection-for-action, which is prior to the practice. It is an integral step since it anticipates the performance and determines the quality of results, and lastly reflection-on-action, which is a post-practice step and is effective in evaluating the overall performance and providing feedback in how to make it more effective and improve the quality of teaching. The Importance of Classroom as an Environment for Effective Learning Specifically, the learning environment plays a significant role in the teaching and learning process of children (Reed & Canning, 2010). Smith and Call (Hativa, 2001, 20-44) state that amongst the nine principles of effective learning, the first principle places great emphasis on the importance of the classroom environment. The teacher’s reflection on the classroom as a learning environment was to, enhance and advance the children’s’ learning by making the children feel secure, safe and happy. Having colorful interactive displays around the classroom gives off positive vibes and creates an aura of hope and optimism, which facilitates the education process (Johns, 90). Displaying children’s work gives them a sense of achievement (Walker, 2001, 89). The classroom environment should provide a high level of sensory stimulation and intellectually challenge, for example, signs, posters and charts should be clear and well written, arrangement of furniture should accommodate inclusive learning environment, and correct lighting, color scheme and correct room temperature should be chosen (Hativa, 2001, 20-44). In addition, Barbe and Milore (Vargas, 2009, 1-11) postulated that most children are visual learners and therefore, they will struggle if information is not visually illustrated. They further emphasized that visual learners prefer information that is presented through images, such as pictures and diagrams and that color helps to stimulate the visual sense and encourages the retention of information (Hunt & Touzel, 2009, 123). Creating the opportunity for effective play within the classroom environment is also very important. It gives individuals, an opportunity to explore and communicate with each other. Ginsburg (2007) states that sports is a cherished part of childhood that offers children essential developmental benefits and gives them the opportunity to engage with each other. Theorists for example, Piaget (Johns, 2009, 1-22) emphasized the importance of playing in early, self-directed cognitive development age and further stated that sports helps to advance children’s physical development. He further explained that intellectual growth also occur during this process as children go through the different stages of assimilation and manipulation of the outside world to meet their individual needs. In addition, (Vargas, 2009, 30-55) explained that not only does the provision of opportunities for children to play within the classroom environment provides a physical context in which skills are learned, developed and practiced but also helps to improve the development of literary skills in children. The provision of information technology within the classroom environment is also significantly useful for all children. Children using ICT learning resources are easily motivated, Underwood (Donnelly, 2005) states children using computers are exposed to many different techniques, for example, animations and images. Children will pay close attention, become fully engaged, and therefore, try to complete challenges assigned to them through tasks (Vargas, 56). Other theorists, such as Collins et.al (1997) agree with Underwood’s notion that pupil are very enthusiastic and motivated when using computers. The use of computer software for teaching helps develop a wider knowledge and gain experiences from activities, which are easy accessible and less time consuming (Grossnickle & Sesko, 1990, 78). In addition, this provision provides part of multi-sensory equipment to learning and recording. Rudd and Tyldesley (2006) states that ICT is valuable in supporting children with different abilities, thus giving them the opportunity to access relevant objectives which supports mechanisms, for example, visual and audio prompt, writing frames, simplified work sheets and sentence banks. However, not all schools are equipped with the necessary ICT resources to support all children with different needs. According to Ecalle et al (2009), the quality of ‘ICT’ provision is lower in area of high deprivation; the more deprived the schools the lower the proportion of good and outstanding provision. Besides the facilitation provided by resources such as ICT, creating a learning environment in a classroom require a tedious phase of planning and brainstorming. In this planning phase, it is important to envision the classroom both in its physical as well as cognitive sense. In the sense of the physical space, the teacher should ensure that the classroom is a welcoming place for students and exhibits the philosophy of learning that inspires the teacher through its aesthetics and set-up. In addition, equally important is to plan and take into consideration the image of classroom as a cognitive space (Hativa, 2001, 29-34). This represents the standards set by the teacher of the students’ performance and establishing an inspiring milieu to facilitate students to fulfill those standards. In this regard, it is also important to assimilate these physical and cognitive aspects of learning environment and ensure that each one complements the other. For instance, to ensure that the physical space of classroom complements the cognitive design, decor of the room should be intellectually stimulating and appropriate for the age groups attended to. A classroom for kindergarten students can have wall paintings of fairytales and natural objects while a classroom of 10th grade students may have a decor, which stimulates the aesthetic sense, and indulge them into thought-provoking activities like art and poetry. On the other hand, as far as cognitive space complementing physical space is concerned, it is important to keep in mind the milieu and background of students before setting up standards for them and launching the motivation element (Grossnickle & Sesko, 1990, 20-25). A classroom, which operates under a tree in a rural area of a third world country may be asking too much of its students by expecting them to develop an urban aesthetic sense or to delve into the intricacies of scientific theories that refute nature without any background reflection. Thus, a detailed inspection of physical and cognitive space of the classroom is inevitable important in setting up an ideal teaching practice. However, planning is just a phase in the entire process of effective teaching. Classroom management is another important step, invariably the most important one, for the development of an ideal learning setting. Several strategies have proven remarkably excellent in the past studies and they have been known to bring out the best in students. Some of the important ones include, conveying the fact that the teacher is in complete knowledge of students’ behavior. Through this technique, most students, who are scared of being notorious in the eyes of their teacher, are disciplined (Vargas, 2009, 10-22). Another important way of eliciting high levels of work involvement by students is that the transition between the activities and classes be made less and less prominent for the students. Often, it happens that students do well till recess after which their energy levels fall drastically, or some kids who were brilliant in the art class sleep in the science class that follows. In this regard, the teacher should ensure that students are on the same page by employing warm-ups and ice-breaking activities. Conclusion Concisely, training teachers to be reflective practitioners and aiding them with proper classrooms with tools for positive interaction and learning help in effective teaching and lead to better education systems. Conclusively, the paper has analyzed some of the significant aspects of teaching and education. The paper recognized and scrutinized different studies related to the topic; and it is expectation that the discussion will be beneficial for students, teachers, and professionals in comprehensive understanding of the topic. References Brockbank, A., McGill, I. (2007). Facilitating Reflective Learning in Higher Education. London: McGraw-Hill International. Grossnickle, D. R., Sesko, F. P. (1990). Preventive discipline for effective teaching and learning: a sourcebook for teachers and administrators. New York: National Association of Secondary School Principals. Hativa, N. (2001). Teaching for Effective Learning in Higher Education. London: Springer. Hunt, G., Touzel, T. J. (2009). Effective Teaching: Preparation and Implementation. London: Thomas Publisher. Johns, C. (2009). Becoming a Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons. Loughran, J. J. (1996). Developing reflective practice: learning about teaching and learning through modeling. London: Falmer Press. Moon, Jennifer A. (2006). Learning Journals. London: Taylor & Francis. Pollard, A., Anderson, J., Maddock, M., Swaffield, S., Warin, J. and Warwick, P. (2008). Reflective Teaching 3rd Ed. Evidence- informed professional practice. New York: Continuum International Publishing. Reed, M. and Canning, N. (2010). Reflective Practice in the Early Years. New York: Sage. Roffey-Barensten, Jodi & Malthouse, R. (2008). Reflective Practice in the Lifelong Learning Sector. London: Learning Matters. Vargas, J. S. (2009). Behavior Analysis for Effective Teaching. London: Taylor & Francis. Walker, M. (2001). Reflective practitioners: a case study in facilitating teacher development in four African primary schools in Cape Town. Cape Town: S. N. Appendix 1 Questionnaire 1. In what way do you see yourself as a reflective teacher? After each lesson and throughout a lesson I see what is going well. Are the children learning and responding well? If there is a common problem, I will stop the lesson and go over the objective again showing examples. At the end of the topic, I will work with other staff to see what worked well, and what needs changing. 2. How has reflecting on your teaching and the children’s learning, changed, developed or improved your practice? It has made me more aware that you have to change your teaching styles depending on the children. In addition, that lessons plans are working documents. You change the learning to suit the children. 3. If something has worked well, how do you build upon this? I might decide to use that particular style in another area of the curriculum. Share with my colleagues. 4. How do you build in time to reflect? Can you give an example? You reflect all the time especially after a lesson or when marking children’s’ work. 5. How do these reflections influence upon your planning and future practice and that of the other practitioners you work with? Refer to answer one 6. How does your reflection on the classroom as a learning environment, enhance and advance children’ learning? I make sure the children feel safe, secure, and happy. I have colorful interactive displays. The children’s’ work is displayed which gives them a sense of an achievement and you are engaging them. It shows them that they are involved. The children are encouraged to be responsible for getting out equipment, tidying up, and working together. By doing this, the children are motivated to learn. Read More