Three simple ways to incorporate critical reflection into your practice.
When designing professional development projects, we’re constantly examining how our promising practices can be solidified as we support educators. Through this examination, we’ve come to identify five principles of practice: Communities of practice, Contextualized practice, Critical reflection, Cultivating strengths, and Cycles of inquiry. As part of our series investigating each of these principles, let’s dig deeper into critical reflection. (You can see previous entries in this series here.)
Critical reflection includes meta-cognition, self-awareness, and considering multiple viewpoints — features which result in reflective action. Individuals who are able to reflect critically on their experiences are better positioned to learn from their successes and missteps so that they can be constantly improving their practice. The basic principles of critical reflection are all the more relevant today as we live in this fast-paced world, and we include opportunities for personal, professional, and peer-to-peer reflection in all of our workshop experiences.
What can reflection look like?
A cornerstone of CPET conferences and institutes, critical reflection helps us begin each Chancellor’s Day with time, space, and guidance that positions teachers as experts who can articulate the needs and desired outcomes for their learning.
Getting started: three ways to incorporate reflection
Reflection recipes Teaching is like cooking: both an art and a science. Invite participants to reflect by making a list of ingredients from their year. Turn the ingredients from a list into a reflection recipe. What do they notice? What happens when they add a creative element to their practical list? Participants share their recipes, draw connections between experiences, and consider how they gain perspective on their school year as a result of this reflection. Reflection inventory Not all participants will be into the touchy-feely-artsy reflection. For those folks, we include a teaching career inventory as a means for reflection. Using a timeline template, participants review what they’ve taught over their experience as a teacher, what education they have pursued themselves, and their goals, and then consider next steps for their future as an educator. Teachers may want to sit in subject area groups to bounce ideas off one another. Reading reflection Following a period of research or reading, utilize our What, So What, Now What resource to help jumpstart your reflective process:
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