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Reading Notes: The Higher Education Academy Guide for Busy Academics No.4 Learning through reflection. Moon (2005)

Alice Walton









What have you learned about reflective practice?

Personal reflective planning can come in different forms. Reflecting on something enables us to look at it in more detail.

Reflection can be just a very casual thought.

Reflection can be a conscious or subconscious purpose.

An if an experience is noticeably a pleasurable or uncomfortable outcome then it is more likely that the process of change will be a more purposeful change.

Reflection allows us to build on what we know already.

Reflection has a close relationship with our emotional feelings.

A deep approach to learning means that you are incorporating new material to what you already know, so reflecting on what you already know and adapting it.

Reflection doesn’t have a place in surface approaches, when learners just try to retain new information.

Because of this it can

-slow down learning and require the learner to repurpose information.

-it can allow learners to feel more engaged because they have been part of the creation of the class.

-allow ‘higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes’

-it can create further challenges to push subjects. This challenge can allow for greater abilities and understanding.

It is likely that some reflection is incidentally taking place when teaching, but creating deliberate activities will make learners more conscious and a more fundamental approach to learning.

 

 

Careful thought needs to go into whether reflection is assessed or not. Will the process of assessing the learner’s reflection help to improve engagement and further understanding of the subject? You may need to provide examples of the benefits of this assessment for students to see the value in assessment of reflection.

What role can reflection play in the development of your practice in supporting student learning?

I feel that reflection can be further integrated into my learner’s lessons to allow a deeper understanding of a subject. When I incorporate reflection into my teaching it will allow me to critically evaluate the positive points and less successful points of my approaches. It will enable both me to develop my practice and my learners to engage in a subject area.

I feel that by keeping a learning journal, it will help me to evolve my teaching and reflect on my practice. I am keen to receive peer assessment for my work experience time at Bath Spa from my colleagues and learners and am looking forward to self-assessing and peer assessment from my PGCHE colleagues. From this reflection I hope to be able to adapt my teaching to repeat subjects to my Frome classes.

 

Why is reflective practice important for us as teaching and learning practitioners?

It is important to have a reflective practice as a teaching and learning practitioner because it gives us a deeper understanding of a subject in relation to our learners. It ensures that we are always inclusive in our teaching and pushes what the classroom means. It ensures that we are continually incorporating new learning into what we already know. I feel that if we strive to continuously improve our teaching through reflection, then the only positive outcome is higher learner engagement, better understanding and greater abilities.



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