TASK 2.c Reflective Theory

Task 2c Reflective Theory

After reading the reader 2 I was surprised at how many of the theory’s discussed in the reader I am using already in my every day practice unconsciously and how much I could learn from the theory’s I had not tried before. I made a conscious effort to apply the theory’s I thought could be useful and make notes on how they have affected my future practice.

I must start by discussing Moons ideas about journal writing as this was the first of the theory’s I put into practice. I have never kept a diary or journal of any kind and the closest experience I have to this type of reflection would be making lists, during my first two weeks of journal writing I was introduced to the website ‘Listhography’. I was very surprised I had not heard of this website before and once I created my account and began making lists I found myself on a new train of thought creating lists of things I’d not thought of before, For example: ‘Five things to do in your lifetime’ this task made me think about my life in a way I had not before, having only five slots to fill I had to think very carefully about what was most important to me. I was surprised at my own answers and it took some time and deep thinking for me to decide upon the final five most important goals in my life. Making lists is a great way for you to reflect when you have little time and creating the lists suggested by Listogrophy can start a chain of reflective thinking on topics you make not have otherwise thought of, For Example:

1.list your life to do list
2. list all the jobs you've held
3. list 20 memories you'd keep if nothing else
4. list how you've celebrated your birthdays
5. list your hardest moments in life
6. list your wish list
7. list your pet peeves
8. list crushes you've had throughout the years
9. list your favorite book, movies, and tv shows
10. list bands you've seen live

I spent two weeks writing a journal after work and then a further nine days using different methods for writing, for example: lists, charts, graphs etc. I was surprised at how much I learned day to day from my journal and how applying the ideas I had that day to the next was really helping. Here is an excerpt from my journal to show an example of my reflective thinking via my Diary entry and how it has been effecting and improving my practice. Reading back over my Diary a few weeks later I was pleasantly surprised at how I had applied the lesson learned and how much I had progressed since then. I published one of my Diary entries on my blog as I thought it may be helpful to others, it discusses a particular problem I occurred during teaching and the lesson learned that I now apply to all my classes.

Moon talks about ‘Articulation of Reflective Practice’ and says that reflection is real when you put it into words and it has understand and meaning. As I have never kept a diary all my learning has happened unconsciously and I have developed my skills along the way. After keeping a journal for 4 weeks I now understand why Moon says it’s important to put your learning and experiences on paper as writing is a tool we use to articulate reflective progress. I have made significant progress through my journal and can clearly see when things have gone wrong, why they have gone wrong and what changes I have made to my work to achieve greater results. The excerpt above is just one example of learning from my journal and how I have used the information to improve my future lessons.

Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it (Kolb 1984). Kolb’s theory ties in well with what moon says about putting experience into words and the transforming experience part I believe happens when we write things down. Kolb’s theory suggests that all learning comes from experience and only then can you understand and make progress.

As Part of my own reflective learning I printed off KOLB’s ‘Learning Cycle’ and stuck it to my desk in my class room.

I thought the cycle could be very helpful to my work and decided to test it out on one of my more challenging classes. I taught my original lesson plan then made notes after the lesson had finished, I used the cycle to review, reflect, conclude and plan a new lesson which I then taught and compared the results.  Here are the notes I made and how my lesson plan changed:

Kolb Reflective Learning Experiment

Yr8 Lesson 3 Battle Cries

Concrete Experience

·         Lesson 3: Conscription. Lesson begins with a discussion about what conscription is and who may be affected by it during WW2.

·         Show Movie clip from ‘Ali’ about Mohammed Ali being drafted into the war and his response.

·         Talk about Elvis being drafted into the war and his response.

·         Class then gets themselves into groups of 5 and creates a family scene where one receives a letter to go to war.

Reflective Observation (reviewing and reflecting on the lesson)

Overall the lesson was good, some low level talking in-between scenes which resulted in time being wasted. I found getting all the students evolved in the discussion challenging as they did know enough about world was 2 or conscription.  Students enjoyed Movie clip of Mohamed Ali conscription however I didn't have much information on Elvis and a few students asked questions I couldn't answer. My stress level was a little high throughout the lesson as I felt I had planned a lot and we always seemed to be playing catch up as things were taking longer than expected.

Abstract Conceptualisation (concluding and learning from the lesson)

Pros

·         Kids were very interested in Mohamed Ali and Elvis Presley’s conscription

·         Students enjoyed the movie clip from Ali about his conscription trail and this fueled a good base for a class discussing.

·         Most students participated in discussion and may point of view were shared

Cons

·         Students took too long to organize groups for a family scene and I had to put them into groups in the end, which wasted at least five minutes of the lesson

·         Students struggled to portray characters and didn't use their tone and body language to distinguish their characters For example: granddad and teenage brothers often spoke and held themselves the same way

·         Low level talking in-between scene as I didn't leave enough time for peer feedback so  students would just perform clap and move on to the next group, this caused a lot of chat in between scenes and focus was lost

Active Experimentation (Planning/ trying out new ideas)

·         Research more facts and images about Mohamed Ali and Elvis conscription as students seem to want to talk about this a little more

·         In chairs work on use of tone and body language for different characters as an exercise, giving the students examples and discussing how tone and body language can show the audience who the character is without dialogue. Play a guessing game of different characters from dad, mum, granddad, sister etc

·         Cut rehearsal time by 5 minutes to allow peer assessment of scenes performed

·         Create and use Peer Assessment cards so each student participates in discussion and gives point of view, this should help settle the class between scenes

Concrete Experience (doing)

The second time I taught this lesson I applied my new ideas and chopped and changed the lesson cutting of what did not work and focusing more on what the students engaged in. The discussion part of the lesson was better after delivering more information and showing more images and of Ali and Elvis and their conscription story. The children were very interested in the difference between their situations and more students raised their hands and participated.

The character exercise was a struggle at first as most students were embarrassed but after giving them a few examples and have a few of the more confident students perform the class slowly began to part take in the exercise and we had a lot of ideas for different characters. This helped them out later on when they came to developing their scene and the students used some of the examples shown earlier when performing their set character. This I believe got them to focus more on characterization and resulted in a clear definition between characters and their acting.

The extra time for peer assessment and assessment cards worked well and everyone gave input, however the students were slow in their delivery of answers and sometimes had to be prompted which took up more of the lesson than I initially anticipated which meant I had to only use peer assessment on some. Now the students understand the cards and how to deliver answers for specific cards I believe it will not take as much time.

This type of analysis ties in nicely in with Donald Schons ‘Reflection on Action’ and my experiment has proven to me that this type of ‘Off Line’ thinking can achieve great results. A quote by Kottcamp explains why this type of reflection has worked so well for my drama class: Accomplishment “Off-Line” at a time when full attention can be given to analysis and planning for future without imperative for immediate action (Kottcamp 1990). For my drama class this was very true and allowed me to make the most of my initial lesson plan, however If I had tried to change my lesson plan on the spot (Reflection on Action) focus from students would have been lost. For example: trying to find resources, more images and information when I realized the class needed more would have lead to the students losing focus, a break in momentum and low level talking. Time would also have been wasted and I would have been playing catch up for the remaining time to get the work done, raising my stress levels. However reflecting on it at the end of the day allowed me the time needed to research the required material and to find the best resources for the lesson, stress free.

It is when I am teaching dance that I find myself using Schons (Reflection in Action) the most, when routines are too complicated or sequences of steps are not flowing as well as I would like, this is when I will change them on the spot (reflecting in action). Some of my routines will have been prepared before class just like any other lesson plan ( Reflection on Action)  however sometimes I will leave section out as I want the students input as a lot of my ideas and inspiration comes from the ideas of others. Sometimes students will suggest a sequence of steps that fits better than mine or they may move in a way that gives me an idea for something else, this is all reflection in action and is the method I have used to developed my dance routines and classes for years. Tharp believes that dance is a tactical knowledge and our body’s tell us all we need to know, ‘Creative Habit’ and the idea of muscle memory when demonstrating a dance is a tactic knowledge (Tharp and Reiter 2006). I have been teaching dance for six years now and will rarely stop and write out routines, I believe a good dancer has strong muscle memory and once you have performed the sequence of steps a few times your body automatically records the feel of the movement making it easy to repeat at a later date. A dance teacher once told me “if you practice a dance routine 30 times you will never forget it” this has always stayed with me and I do believe through repetition you can reach a level of unconsciousness when performing, it is at this stage of unconsciousness I believe we perform our best.

Writing down dance routines has never been my way of learning however I must recognize that not everyone can learn through muscle memory in the same way I do. Some of my students find they progress more from making notes at the end of the lesson and practicing at home in their free time. This is linked with Kottcamps theory of “off-Line” reflection and I have seen some students develop faster using this method. Howard Gardner believes we have multiple intelligence's, For Example: Verbal, Logical, Spatial, Interpersonal, Naturalistic etc. He also states that we have multiple lenses in which to lean such as Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic (VAK). Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple lenses (Gardner 1983). I find this way of thinking fascinating as I know through my own experience that I learn things better visually, if I have a visual of information I can remember it better than to have heard the information verbally.

As a teacher I feel it is important to understand these different methods of learning and ensure I know which of my students progress greater with what method. I decided to try these methods out on one of my classes, I wrote 3 methods on the board, Visual (film or documentary), Auditory (teacher leading a discussion) and Kinaesthetic (acting out a drama scene) and I asked the students this questions “ If you are to retain as much information as possible about WW2 for a test and you had one of the following ways to take the information in,  which do you feel you would learn from the most? In a class of 21 these were the results:

Visual 8/21

Auditory 6/21

Kinaesthetic 7/21

My presumptions of how this test would go was negative as I believed most of the students would opt for a film just to have an easy lesson, however I believe telling the students it was for a test and challenging them retain as much information as possible made them think carefully about the method they selected. I was very surprised at how evenly spread the result was which shows a variety of different learners in the one class. I tried this out on a few classes and the results were always evenly spread which has shown me how important it is for me to ensure I apply all these methods to my teaching. I now try to make sure when delivering information on a topic I deliver Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic ways of learning in my lesson plan to cater for all my students.

All of these theories relay one message in one way or another, we learn from experience and we progress through reflection on that experience. Until I read the reader 2 I had no idea how much I unconsciously learn from experience and having researched the mentioned authors I can now recognize my own learning through experience. John Dewy says “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself” (Dewey 1934). This is an important message that I now try to relay to my students ensuring they understand that every experience they have is an opportunity for learning. This made me look at my own experiences and think about the moments in my life from which I have learned, using Listogrophy I created my top 20 most memorable moments. I then expanded on this making notes of lessons learned from them, and looked back over it to see what I now apply to my professional practice. We don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience (Dewey 1934). This is why I knew making the list was not enough for reflection, thinking about the lessons learned or progress made from the list was the reflective practice required. Continual recognition, restructure and transformation of experience (Dewey 1934), this is exactly what I did with Kolbs learning cycle and the experiment with lesson 3. I recognized what went well and what didn't, made changes to the lesson plan and transformed my approach. The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action (Dewey 1934). I believe through reflection in a variety of ways I can improve my professional practice and continually develop my skills as a teacher.