Continuous Professional Development Task 1 Reflective Practice is an integral part of a teachers practice as it allows you to develop your own teaching practices as we can reflect on things that have already happened and decide how they can be improved so that I am providing the best possible learning for my learners. There are any different reflective theories, but I have decided to look at Kola and Brookfield.
Kola’s reflective theory is based on a learning cycle that has four stages to it which are concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. Kola’s learning cycle is a useful reflective theory to me as you can start at any point of the cycle but you must move round the cycle in a clockwise direction. Each stage of Kola’s cycle requires you to work in a different style: activist, reflector, theorist and pragmatist.
By using Kola’s cycle when planning my lesson it has enabled me to produce a well structure lesson as Petty states; “Kola believed that good learning requires that we go round the cycle, and so use all the learning styles at appropriate times. Petty,2009,IPPP 1 have found this to be beneficial to my learning practices especially when teaching math to my learners as it allows them do try the mathematical problem, review how they found it accompanied by myself showing alternative ways of working the problem out and then applying this to solve the mathematical problem.
Brookfield reflective critical lenses suggests we employ the four critical lenses to reflect upon our own practice and these are: our own view, that of our students, that of fellow professionals and various theoretical perspective propounded in education literature. The advantage of Brookfield lenses is that there are views taken from different points with the learning process which therefore allows me to have a more holistic view of my teaching practices and role.
Brookfield lenses encourages me as a practitioner to use the different lenses to view my teaching reflect on it, then take action on my reflection. If this is done continuously it provides me with a good foundation for my continuous professional development as Brookfield states “Examining our own experiences as learners as well as teaching helps “to uncover our most deeply embedded allegiances and motivations as teachers. ” Brain, 2012. Models of reelection. (online) available at http://www. Barbarian. Co. K/ah_aspects/pages/ Representational. HTML (accessed 14 May 13. ) Using Brookfield reflective theory works very well within my teaching of math and employability skills as it allows me to reflect on how I think things went during or after the lesson, it also allows me to gain feedback from my learners as what they thought went well as my learners may have different view to me but may be able to give ideas for future improvements, allows y peers to observe me and share best practice in addition to the theoretical lens.
There are many different reflective theories that can be used, but they all seem to nave similarities or overlap one another slightly and people nave theories that they feel work better for them. I feel that Kola and Brookfield work best for myself however I feel that there are many others such as Chon and Buttonholer which I could also apply to my own work but feel focusing on two theories allows you to be a more reflect practitioner than trying to use more than two models of reflective practice . Word count : 504
