[MUSIC] Welcome again. The big question, what is it that good teachers do? What marks them out as professionals is what teachers do before the lesson by way of planning, what they do during the lesson by way of thinking and reflecting on what they're doing, and what they do following the lesson, thinking back and evaluating, raising questions such as, how good was that lesson? What could I have done better? Well, one of the big contributors to this whole notion of reflection, reflection in action and reflection on action is Donald Schön, who wrote the book The Reflective Practitioner. And his subtitle for that book was How We Think in Action. And that's what we want to explore just a little more here, the notion of thinking in action while you're teaching and thinking afterwards, that reflective thing that all teachers do, sometimes very unconsciously, sometimes on the drive home, or the walk home, or the journey home after school, thinking back on what had happened. So, reflection after the action has taken place. So, have a look at this slide. You see the two sides here, reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. So, looking at the left-hand side, the reflection-in-action while you're actually in the process of teaching is the first thing that you obviously, whether you have got a well-developed, filled out development plan or a lesson plan. Or whether it's really simply in your head and you're walking into the classroom, you're always thinking, you're always raising that question, what am I hoping will happen in this lesson? Maybe at its very lowest point, I hope that it's going to go all right. I hope that it's not going to be disruptive. I hope that they will be paying attention, learning, and that I'll be learning something as well. In the course of the lesson, at some point, you have to stand back and think about, what are the students doing? That's a simple description. It's not a judgment. It's a simple description of what you observe. Are they talking to one another? Are they writing? Are they reading? Are they looking at the ceiling? Are they thinking? Do they appear to be thinking? Or are they actually off task or doing something completely different? Perhaps they're sharpening a pencil, or perhaps they're walking around. Perhaps they're talking to somebody else. What are students actually doing? And the more probing question, the third question, what are they learning? That's yet a more difficult question to ask. What do they appear to be learning at the moment? And you'd have to have some kind of evidence for that. And then the fourth question, what am I doing? Well, presumably at the moment what I am, what I am doing is that I am watching them, and I'm making some form of judgement about what's going on in my classroom. But you have to have that kind of ability to reflect on your own involvement in the lesson. And it follows from that, if you have that simple, descriptive account of what I'm doing. And it follows from that a deep question, what am I actually learning? What am I learning from what I'm doing at the moment if I am observing my class, and I'm observing individuals, or I'm observing groups? I'm observing what's going on. What am I learning from that process? And then the next question, obviously, would be, what do I do next? Now, if you, if the teacher has planned, you obviously have planned what to do next. But if you are really observing and thinking and reflecting and making judgments about what's going on, then perhaps what I'd do next is not necessarily what I had planned to do. So, after the lesson, you're going to reflect back on what happened. Now, you may say there's no time for that. I'm going on to the next lesson. I'm not going to be doing any big reflection. I'll just be quite relieved with that went quite well or whatever. But at some point, you will have to think back on that lesson. And of course, teachers do it simply intuitively. They don't necessarily write it down or discuss it with people. But they do, teachers do think back and reflect on what they've been doing. It's almost impossible not to. So, the first question, reflection-on-action, would be, what actually happened there? Looking back and doing this a little more systematically for the purpose of this course. If you do it a bit more systematically and you're discussing it with somebody else, you'd be saying, well, what actually happened? So, this again is a behavioral description. Students were paying attention. Students were engaged. Students were talking to another. Students were raising questions. Students were answering questions. Students looked fairly bored. Some students were looking out of the window. Some students were playing around. Some pupils, some students weren't paying attention, whatever. What actually happened in that lesson when I reflect back on it? And then you have to ask the why question. Well, why? Why did things happen as they did? Has that something to do with my planning for the lesson? Has it something to do with external events? Has it something to do with the interruptions? Has it something to do with the time of day that all of this was taking place? Has it something to do with a previous lesson that my students had been at or anticipating another lesson that they're going to? Why did things happen as they did? That's essential to reflective practice. And of course, every teacher, every teacher asks themselves the question whether they do it systematically or intuitively, what did students achieve? Following from that, as a teacher, what did I achieve? And from this whole process of reflection, what have I learned? And if I've learned anything at all, I'm either going to repeat simply everything that I did because it went so well, or there are things I'm going to do differently. So, Schön asks us as the final question on reflection-on-action, what should I do next? So, that's the question that you're left with in planning and thinking about the process of learning and teaching, the quality of teaching. What am I going to do next? What am I going to do in the next lesson? What am I going to do tomorrow? What am I going to do next week? What have I learned from that process of reflection, reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, things that teachers do as a matter of their professional training and their professional practice? You could not be a teacher at all if you weren't doing some kind of reflection, some kind of thinking about what you're doing, some kind of evaluation even if it's intuitive, off the cuff, on the way home, or simply talking to a colleague, or talking to a spouse, or talking to someone else about what happened in your class that day. So, it's always there. We know that in the back of teachers' minds and sometimes in the very forefront of teachers' minds is that reflection on action that had taken place, what the students had learned and what, as a professional, I have learned. So, I would highly commend Donald Schön's work to you if you haven't already read it. Perhaps reading the book itself might be a bit challenging. But there are plenty of articles, there's plenty of websites which give you a nice summary of Schön's key ideas. But if anyone has made a really big practical contribution to the work of the teacher, then Donald Schön has to be ranked among those people. Thanks very much, and we'll meet again in week two. [MUSIC]
