Informal reflection

I would just like to state that everything in this blog is the personal opinion of me, Laura Dawson, the blogger, and should not been seen as a reflection on my university, lecturers or fellow student teachers. I do not aim to offend, insult or upset anyone, I am simply stating my opinion.



So, the crux of this whole thing: an article called 'Informal reflection in pre-service teacher education' by Melanie Shoffner. I have had a quick scout on the Internet and I couldn't find a link for you, so if you wanna check it out yourself...well, why bother when you an read my blog!! ha ha

We were given this article and told to read and critically analyse it as part of one of our modules, partially I feel to make us think about our own journey of reflection throughout this course, and partially to develop our critical reflection skills.

A bit of background-Basically the article is about reflection and how its not done enough once student teachers leave university, and enter the real world of teaching. It talks about the purpose and advantages of reflection, and in this case, how it can be done informally through the medium of 'weblogs'.

What is reflection?
Before we even started analysing and reflecting upon the article, we first had to look at what we though reflection was...we came up with key ideas such as personal, flexible, varied, adaptable, critical and both positive and negative. When comparing my thoughts to the definitions given in the article, I was surprised, as the article makes reflection sound very clear cut, very boxed and rigid, like it can be done this way, for this reason, whereas to me, reflection is more like a fluid process.

We also discussed whether we thought everyone was reflective and if it could be taught. This was interesting, I feel that maybe everyone is a reflector, just to different degrees. Some people reflect upon everything, be it the smallest or largest thing in their life, others reflect at key times in their life, or on important aspects, whereas I imagine some people, rarely give a thought to reflection...but that doesn't mean they're not doing it. When was the last time you told someone 'you'd had a bad day because....' that's reflection, perhaps in its simplest form. I do think however that people can be taught how to be 'better' reflectors-I'd say that this task is aiming at doing just that.

Moving on from this, we were given a 'suggested framework for the critical synopsis of a text', and the first question on this was:

Why am I reading this?

Now this I actually found a tricky question to answer, as my automatic response was-'because I was told to', which I'm sure you'll agree isn't actually very useful. Usually, when reading an article or doing research it's for a specific purpose...because you want to find the answer to a specific question, or you want to compare and contrast ideas on a topic. Perhaps you simply want to find a quote that is of relevance to your work, so that you can prove you've done some reading!! Whatever it is, it's a starting point, something to work from...I found that 'being told to', wasn't a significant starting point, and therefore I was behind before I'd even begun, so to speak. In the lecture today, after having previously read the article, I was able to see that even though I hadn't chosen to read it, perhaps Id had to, so as to continue our awareness of reflection and how this can be useful as a tool for professional development .

What is the author trying to do in writing this?

Reading the abstract of this article, it sounds as though the author is merely presenting informal reflection as an option for reflective thinking, as an 'approach to assist in the formation of reflective practitioners'. In theory I would say this article was written to inform others of why and how reflection can be helpful. However having read the entire article, it sounds to me, like the author feels she has 'created' informal reflection, and is trying to prove to everybody how good her idea is...

What is the author saying that is relevant to what I want to find out?

This was an easier question to answer, and I can imagine, that will probably be the case with a lot of reading. The author describes the benefits of informal reflection, which is helpful, the more positive points for something, the better. I'm not going to be keen on reflection if I keep reading things that tell me it is an unhelpful waste of time.

How convincing is what the author is saying?

Not very.... The author makes some good points, and I don't think the article should be dismissed, however I feel there are a lot of broad, sweeping statements, which are massive generalisations, such as 'reflection is not a common professional behaviour among teachers'. Now having been in numerous schools, and worked along side multiple teachers, with different experiences, opinions and backgrounds, I would disagree with this statement. Nearly every teacher I know, in a professional context or not, has demonstrated reflection to me on some level or another. Obviously, I, like the author, have only met a small minority of the worlds teachers, and therefore with no evidence, how can I back up a claim about them....I can't!! Another key point, is that the author does a study...on 9 people, one of whom drops out, so that's a study, about teachers, on 9 'pre service' teachers. Now, 8 isn't a very big sample, especially 8 people who know each other and work alongside each other, therefore this automatically makes me unsure as the reliability of this article. Like I said, I think the author says some useful things and makes me think, but I'd have much more faith in something which had hard evidence, with regards to its study done, off 200 people, at different ages, stages, and places in their teaching careers.

In conclusion, what use can I make of this?

Well, I have to say, although I don't think it's a very good article, it did persuade me to start this blog, which has got to count for something. It created a good discussion about reflection, which made me think and has sent me off on tangents, that's perhaps I never would have looked at. It also made me look at formal reflection in comparison, and how that can be affective, or not. It made me realise that sometimes we need a structure for reflection, depending on context. A critical reflection for an essay, may well require a structure, such as the one I'm using now, a quick after lesson reflection however, could be done just as easily, and effectively as a few scribbled notes and mental pointers. Another key point that I would not have thought of, without having read this article, or more it's attached appendix (a blog 'rant' from one of the study participants) is that there is a big difference between reflection and reaction, and they vary immensely in there helpfulness.

So...is reflection helpful, I think so, be it formal or informal, or both perhaps, it all depends on the context.

That's all for this post, stay tuned!!