Reflective Practice: More Than a Catch Phrase
Reflective practice isn't just a catch phrase, a sound bite or one in a long line of trends. Instead, it calls on teachers to pause and look at the work they are doing, reflect on it and improve. Since its inception, Houston A+ Challenge has held reflective practice as a key piece in improving schools.
Over the last year, A+ has conducted a series of focus groups in local schools to gather data on what teachers in the Houston metro area would like out of professional development. Overwhelmingly, teachers have voiced one singular need: time to reflect and collaborate with other teachers.
The process of reflective practice takes on many forms:
- Teams of teachers giving and receiving feedback on their own work and that of their students
- Peer observations where both the observed and the observer reciprocate learning
- Reflective journaling about daily or weekly classroom instruction
- Action research projects where risk taking and experimentation in the classroom or school are encouraged and where documentation and reflection about the learning from this research takes place
- Coaching sessions in which central questions about teaching and learning are posed to facilitate the teacher's growth in understanding and practice
- Utilizing technology to network with teachers engaged in continuous improvement in and beyond the school
Schools that seek to develop strong instructional teams engage in these types of reflective activities. They allow teachers to come together around meaningful topics -- relevant, homegrown issues from inside the classroom. School leaders establish schedules that allow multiple opportunities for teachers to collaborate, both in and beyond their own disciplines; they also provide resources and professional development on the reflective practice and model such activities as above for their staff to see. By establishing school-based structures like these to promote reflective practice, ongoing development, long term learning, and continuous improvement become the expectations for all on the campus.
Houston A+ Challenge continues to offer programming that seeks to create reflective practitioners. In all of our opportunities for central office personnel, principals, teacher leaders and master teachers, Houston A+ Challenge facilitates learning through reflection. Educators engage in the activities above by bringing their own work to the table, receiving feedback, reflecting and moving forward. Houston A+ Challenge will continue to steward effective improvement in education by ensuring reflective practice does not fade away into some educator lexicon, but instead remains vibrant, meaningful and transformative.
