Schon put Reflective Practice as “…a dialogue of thinking and doing through which I become more skilful” (Waters, 2005) and I have learnt that to become a reflective practitioner firstly we have to become open and aware that it is our experiences that inform our reflection. We have to take the time to stop and take note of what is happening – what we are ‘thinking and doing’. Ideally we would reflect every day; within different time frames, from different perspectives and by using various methods/tools - then utilise this knowledge to consistently become better educators.

“…reflective practice is about just doing it. It's about not making excuses. Don't tell me you don't have time or that other things are more important. Is anything in your work life more important than continuing to be better at what you do? Because that's what reflection is about--considering what you can learn from your experiences and then doing more of what works and less of what doesn't.”(Martin, 2008)

A successful Reflective Practitioner is purposeful and develops their own manageable structure for their reflection. One of the tools I have learnt more about and found rewarding is journaling. Over the past couple of years I have already been keeping very basic, but still reflective notes on my practice. I teach on the same course level and papers every year and have a big folder I carry everywhere for all of the information required for the 4 papers I am involved in - orgainised by each paper and also into separate partitions for each of my students.

But, on completing this module I have found that previously I have only noted and reflected on the “struggles” and “dilemmas” (Joy Amulya, 2004). I have experienced both within teaching the papers and with individual students. I now realise although these are important, it is just as crucial to reflect on those breakthrough-moments I have with a student or colleagues and on what is positive and successful with both mine and my colleagues teaching within a paper.


Image retrived from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AfHPV-YBdI

My teaching is either in an assisting role during structured lectures (we use team-teaching on all 4 papers) or one-on-one with a student. I always have my folder with me so it has been simple to utilise the tool of ‘Reflection in Action’ into my day and use this skill in my teaching. My journal is now always with me, inside my folder, when I’m in class. I take notes both during and immediately after a one-on-one with a student. These can include notes on the students’ progress, any issues, information that they’ve been/can be directed to, as well as reflections on my approach to their different learning styles – and my successes or struggles. Having this folder and now that I am reflecting on my observations and notes, I often find common themes and issues that reoccur within the student cohort. Putting into practice my new skills of being able to identify these as opportunities to learn, reflecting on them and forming a plan to apply my learning to improve on any future situations is already helping with my growth as a ‘teacher’.

In a recent session with the students on a very boring subject, Garment Costings, I took a different approach and made the students become actively involved. I got them to offer up their own working examples of situations where they struggled with costing their garments and as a class we worked through several examples, using 3 Costing methods. At the end of the session I asked them to quickly reflect on the session individually in their notes and identify the method they most preferred and where likely to use. In this I discovered that they all found one method to be difficult and less relevant and one they would not be likely to use. This small experience will now inform my future teaching of this method, which will be to touch on this method of Costing and explain it briefly, but focus on the other two.

In past personal development sessions at OP I have identified that I have an emotionally led personality type and I know that emotions often give a distorted perspective on situations and experiences. Through this module and learning about reflection I am beginning to be able to take a step back, to disassociate my emotional connections and view things from a different perspective. It helps to give me a broader and deeper understanding of a situation or experience and take knowledge from this into my future reactions and actions,

I have been focusing on finding techniques to help with journaling as I’ve found I need a structured method of journaling for trying to ‘Reflect on Action’. This helps me not be daunted by it and to help turn journaling into an every-day habit. I have found the 4 R’s framework and I like the simplicity of Bronwyn Hegarty’s 3 step Reflective Framework (Hegarty, 2013), another great tool to help with the development of my journaling. I think I will use both frameworks to identify which I feel most comfortable using but over the past month in my journaling (as emailed to you privately). Through journaling my experiences from different perspectives and working through the 4 R’s I find it clarifies for me the next step to take with each student or situation. I feel I can more succinctly and confidently put into practice the relevant knowledge and skills I have and also identify what methods I should use to achieve the best results, both with students individually and as part of a teaching team. This is also highly motivating!

reflecting_020.html

Each year, or even each semester, during a structured session of debriefing our course and individual papers, our teaching team have used the tool of Stop, Start, Continue. This helps identify what is and is not working, any knowledge gaps that need addressing and any new or updated information that needs to be included. I now realise that this is also an effective tool for my own teaching reflection and once I have completed the formal student and colleague feedback at the end of this semester, I plan to use this tool on myself to evaluate the effectiveness of my own teaching.

Another way I can evaluate my own practice is through the success from my students - sometimes on an international stage, and hearing them attribute their success back to the Design school is fantastic feedback for all of us! I also value the informal feedback that I gain from student’s every day. Because I walk that line between friend-mentor and assessing-lecturer, I often get a more candid reply than lecturers may do! For example, last week I was working with a student on a garment patternmaking method of constructing a pocket. I was taking her through the notes and discussing the technique with her when she burst out “this is of no use to me as I need to be doing it to understand”. And I agreed as I learn the same way, so I showed her my method of constructing a wee pocket example from scrap paper. I talked her through what I was doing and when I had finished she was able to identify what steps she needed to take to create the pattern pieces required to construct her pocket. She has told me that she will be keeping my wee paper pocket example as part of her notes as she can instantly understand it and she has made a beautiful pair of tailored pants with excellent pockets!

One of Dewey’s’ 6 Phases of Reflection (Rodgers, 2002), talks about how reflection needs to happen in a community – in action with others. Through this module I have come realise that my inclusion in course planning and reflection meetings is actually important – both for my reflective practice and that of my colleagues. I should be taking more notes, offering my insights and opinions and reflection on our meetings afterwards, that even though I am not a lecuturer my TRA role and my ‘insider’ knowledge of our students problems, issues, successes knowledge gaps in valuable to the table. In future I will be contributing more often and with the confidence that my reflection and gained knowledge taken from this can be beneficial to the teaching team as a whole and therefore for our students.

This module has also The value of formal and informal feedback and evaluations from both colleagues and students and the importance of reflecting on these.

I will also be more actively seeking out times and situations to collect different perspectives on experiences from my colleagues. More often than not, a complicated and unclear experience will involve at least 2 members of the teaching team. Although we do often debrief and seek opinions from each other, I never formalise these conversations in writing or in my reflections – a practice I will now be doing. I also think that relating our opinions back to the student is important as informal but written formative feedback.

This has been a hugely beneficial module for me, Through reflection on my current teaching practices I have been able identify my strengths (and weaknesses!) and utilise some of the tools I have found during the module to maximize the contribution I can make, both as part of a teaching team and with my students learning.

References and Bibliography

Schőn and Reflective Practice

Mark Waters, April 2005

http://www.resources.scalingtheheights.com/Schon%20and%20Reflective%20Practice.htm

Building Reflection into Your Individual Learning Practices

Michelle Martin, 2008

http://www.michelemmartin.com/thebambooprojectblog/2008/03/incorporating-r.html

What is Reflective Practice?

Joy Amulya, 2004

http://itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/whatisreflectivepractice.pdf

Reflective practice - What the experts say

Latrobe University, Melbourne Australia, 2010