Reflective Thinking and Teaching Practices

 

Reflective Thinking and Teaching Practices

Reflective thinking is thought to enhance critical thinking. This approach takes reflection as bending thoughts to incorporate prior experiences and how these experiences could influence the current practices of teachers. Many teachers fail to connect between their teaching and what they are actually practicing and vice versa. This is the way teachers perceive the realities which govern their behaviour and relationships. Apart from this, self-efficacy also plays an important part in determining the reflective practices of teachers. Added to this, it has been noticed that teachers with high self-efficacy are those that have high metacognitive awareness of themselves and can change the strategies they are using to attain their intended goals. It was found in each of the sub-sections that teachers were generally more concerned about their own performance in their discipline rather than enhancing their teaching by reflecting on their practices. The results indicate that a majority of the teachers were self-assessing only to ensure that they were doing their jobs properly.

It has been noticed that in order for teachers to become reflective of their teaching practices they must be motivated to change their teaching strategies when needed. Further to this, the results indicated only a few of teachers that were interested in continued assessment of their own discipline. They seemed ambiguous about using feedback from students to improve their lessons. This could be because the teachers thought it was important they learned from the past to help enhance their performance. Added to this, they perceived that students learned differently and needed new strategies in their teaching. Generally, based on the results, it would seem that teachers were using reflective thinking to enhance the quality of their teaching, but for many it was in terms of personal performance and expectations rather than as a tool for social changes . They were not open to the idea of using feedback as part of the assessment criteria to develop their reflective thinking practices. They may not see a connection between what they are teaching and practicing with helping them be more reflective practitioners.

It was found in each of the sub-sections that teachers generally accepted the idea that they were still learning to develop their skills. The results seem to indicate that teachers were not interested in developing their identity as a learner that is to become aware of how they learn and their assumptions. Many of the teachers were not aware of the importance of developing this identity and how it could influence the way they taught. It is also interesting to note that these teachers felt that as long as the comments were positive they were doing well.

In the Influence of Belief about Self and Self-efficacy section, many teachers believed they needed to put their own needs as priority. They indicated their willingness to getting feedback from their supervisors and students. However this contrasts their responses on not taking students’ feedback seriously. It would be interesting if further studies could be carried out to determine the perceptions these teacher have of their students and their superiors. These teachers also held many perceptions about learning, their students and superiors that were not reflected on. They seemed to be more interested in maintaining their own perceived sense of self-worth and self-efficacy rather than using the comments by students as a means to help them improve.