Teaching Principles - Reflective Practice

A teacher's "good practice", whatever the methodological approach, would mean that language lessons will be balanced (include a range of skills practice), varied (include different types of activities to appeal to different learner styles), communicative (give learners opportunities to practice communicating), creative (give learners the opportunity to develop their own ideas) and encourage learner independence (the possibility for learners to make their own decisions in learning), in order to be effective. It is also very important that teachers should reflect on their learning in order to develop their own knowledge and skills more effectively.

D.A. Kolb, Experiential Learning, Prentice Hall, 1984. 

Reflective practice entails reviewing one’s own teaching, evaluating it and using the results of the evaluation in future teaching. In this way, the teacher builds effective professional development routines and internalises a process by which s/he continuously improves. Kolb sees this as a Learning Cycle comprising four different stages of learning from experience and can be entered at any point but all stages must be followed in sequence for successful learning to take place. The Learning Cycle suggests that it is not sufficient to have an experience in order to learn. It is necessary to reflect on the experience to make generalizations and formulate concepts that can then be applied to new situations. This learning must then be tested out and evaluated. The learner must make the link between theory and action by planning, acting out, reflecting and relating experience back to the theory. 

Taken from: Teaching English CiSELT Handbook, British Council

Task 2: Considering the two micro-teachings that you have presented, make your own reflective work following Kolb's model. Think of what you did, what you could have done, something to improve, something that went better than expected or any other aspect that you may find important. Follow each part of the model. Include your ideas in relation to Kolb's work and the key elements for a teacher's "good practice". Feel free to search for more sources, quotations or any other element that is worth sharing.

Make it as a NEW ENTRANCE. Use the label "Task 2". Reply to your classmates comments. 

"We are inclined to think of reflection as something quiet and personal. My argument here is that reflection is action-oriented, social and political. It's "product" is praxis (informed, committed action) the most eloquent and socially significant form of human action. "

Stephen Kemmis, "Action Research and the Politics of reflection"