Before talking about the importance of reflective teaching, it is crucial to define what it is. Reflective teaching is all about looking at what you do in the classroom, gathering information, analyzing and reflecting on the things that are being done, and why they are being done. It is a process of self-observation and self-assessment. We should collect data from our lessons.
How do we collect the necessary information? There are many things we can do: we can ask the students how they felt about some tasks; we can ask our peers to observe our lessons and give us some feedback; we can simply take notes of some feelings, results, attitudes observed during the lesson; we can use some self-evaluation forms and fill them in after our lessons; we can write diaries; we can record our lessons and watch them later. The important thing is to gather as much information as possible and then analyze it.
When should we do it? In my opinion, as often as possible. The teacher should be a researcher too. However, reflective teaching is more used when the teacher suspects of a problem and wants to find out what the problem really is, and how to solve it. I think it would be ideal to reflect upon our lessons since we may think that the lessons are going well, and they might not be; or when we might have a problem and want to avoid jumping to conclusions about it. It is always best to investigate first, before taking any action.
Once the information is collected, you need to analyze and check whether there are some patterns or not. You may notice a few things that you were unaware of. It is also a good idea to discuss your findings with some colleagues. They might give you some invaluable feedback. You may even post these questions in blogs or forums to get some ideas from other teachers. This exchange among teachers is priceless.
Reflective teaching is a cyclical process, it means, once you start researching and implementing changes, you will see improvements in your lessons and you will start the process again. That is what a committed teacher should be doing, as this is part of our professional development.
