Apprenticeships
National Day of Reflection 2021
Tuesday 23rd March 2021
Sienna Sandhu
Reflection is defined as serious and careful thought, the act of looking back at your past actions and evaluating their consequences and the impact they had. The Act of reflection can also be embedded into teaching to create more effective learning for both teachers and students and is quickly becoming one of the most common teaching styles used today. Reflective teaching is a process whereby teachers reflect on their teaching practices in order to examine the overall effectiveness of their instructive approaches (Dana Di Pardo Léon-Henri 2021).
Reflective teaching has proven to be wildly beneficial for teachers in numerous ways the most crucial is professional growth. When having a reflective thought process whilst teaching you can effectively analyse not only your strategy but delivery through self-assessment. This enables you to pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses and improve to become more effective. Small steps can be taken to move towards a more reflective teaching style such as preparing lesson plans and the analysing your class afterwards. Another benefit of reflective teaching is the strength in Student - Teacher Relationships. A reflective method of teaching not only allows you to assess your own behaviours but also your students. Understanding how each student functions and working towards their individual needs will allow learning sessions to feel more personal and effective.
Reflective learning is very similar to reflective teaching and involves consistent analysis and improvement of your learning styles. One of the main benefits of taking a reflective approach to your learning is self-improvement of performance. Overtime students will be able to assess what learning styles work best for them and the weakness they need to work on. Assess your learning to figure what learning styles suit you best can be extremely beneficial at finding an effective method for you to consistently take in and store information and get the most out of lessons. Another benefits is increased motivation. It is a recurring theme amongst many students to lack motivation and have poor performance and that can commonly be associated with not learning and studying in a style that suits them, leaving them feeling disappointed with what they are getting out of their education. Self-reflective learning allows to understand how you respond to learning through trial and error and once your style has been established it can drastically improve motivation and overall performance.
Here at Oxford Applied Training we believe that reflection is a crucial element of teaching and learning as it allows you to develop and grow from your actions and past mistakes.
"I believe that when it comes to reflection in teaching and learning, it is a powerful yet underestimated tool, the power of asking "What would I do different next time? What impact could that have?" is what takes the reflection in the mirror today and helps you change what you want others and yourself to see. From a skills coach perspective at Oxford Applied Training it is asking ourselves what could we do different? How can we make this better? the changes might not be big, they do not have to be, however they must be meaningful, changes today will change the outcomes of tomorrow. When we leave the house or join a virtual meeting, we always check our reflection, it is the exact same thing, and can increase confidence and spark innovation. We need to sometimes take a step back as this helps us see the whole picture." - Chris Gurdev, Skills Coach at Oxford Applied Training
contact us To find out more about our different methods of teaching or to understand more about our programmes.
We can show you how we embed and use self reflection as a teaching method in our Leadership and Management Training and our IT and Digital Training to help you and your team become better, more productive and resilient managers