Professional Development
Are You a Reflective Teacher?
Beata
Opałka
None of us
has doubts that getting professional certification is only the starting
point on the way towards professional competence. At the beginning of their
career teachers may be guided largely by impulse, intuition, or routine,
however, with time their actions should be guided by reflection and critical
thinking. In other words, teachers should be engaged in professional
development throughout their career in an autonomous way. That, in turn,
entails critical reflection on a past experience leading to the examination of
the experience on the basis of which evaluation could possible be carried out.
Then the teacher makes decisions on her/his teaching and plans next steps to be
taken. Such a cycle (see Grid 1) aims for continuous improvement.
Grid 1 The cycle of continuous
improvement.
How can
teachers improve their own professional development?
- Staying up-to-date with respect
to any recent developments in their field.
- Being engaged in a process of
reflection on their own professional activity in order to improve their
own practice.
- Collaborating with other
teachers in their practice and also sharing experiences with them.
In fact,
there is a variety of activities (see Grid 2)
in which teachers can become involved in order to improve their
practice, such as attending seminars or conferences, subscribing to
professional journals or publications, individual or group reflection, and
interaction with colleagues.
Grid 2 The components of
professional development.
However, the first and the most
important basis for professional progress is simply the teacher’s own
reflection on daily classroom events. Very often this reflection is quite
spontaneous and informal, therefore it is helpful only up to a certain point
because it is not organized and it is solitary. How to change it?
It is Teacher Development and Autonomous Learner SIG that provides many
opportunities for any teachers to reflect and share experiences, problems and
successes by means of the interaction with colleagues. There are meeting
organized regularly and SIG Newsletter.
Each SIG member is welcome to make her/his own presentation at the meeting or
to contribute her/his article to SIG Newsletter so that her/his reflection and
ideas become available for others. So are you a reflective teacher?
References:
Graciela Miller de Arechaga 2001 Teacher development: awareness, reflection and sharing. ELT
Newsletter, http://www.eltnewsletter.com/back/August2001/art692001.htm