Welcome to the WJETT blog
What is WJETT?
The WJETT blog or Warwick Journal of Education - Transforming Teaching blog is designed to encourage staff and students to disseminate good practice and to engage with their peers on academic cultural critique or areas of research that they find interesting. With the increased focus on ‘teachers as researchers’ in the sector, many qualified teachers are expected to publish the outcomes of any action research projects they undertake. The WJETT blog can be the first step on your journey towards publishing and enables you to experience publishing and reviewing in a friendly and supportive environment.
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How using a recognised reflective framework has helped me reflect on and improve my practice
Reflection is the foundation of learning because, by informing future action, it provides a starting point for development (Raelin, 2001). Systematic analysis and critical evaluation provide a great opportunity to recollect our thoughts and create new ideas. For this reason, reflection is the backbone of the teaching profession.
Being a trainee teacher, I have immensely benefited from using recognised reflective frameworks. I have noticed that it has helped me with addressing misconceptions and with working on my targets in a systematic and pragmatic manner. The reflective framework I have found myself using the most regularly is Schön’s, as it is easily applicable both during teaching and after teaching. Schön identifies two kinds of reflection that he calls reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action (Schön, 1991).
With reflection-in-action, he means thinking about the teaching experience while it is happening to decide how to take immediate action. This can be applied to any aspect of teaching, from pastoral care to making the decision to modify the lesson plan. For example, while I was teaching partitioning to my Year 4 pupils, I realised that the example that I was modelling for them was too complicated; hence, I changed it moving down from using a 4-digit number to a 2-digit number so that all the pupils could assess the learning point. Using the reflection-in-action framework helped to take immediate action to address my mistake still making good use of class time.
With reflection-on-action, Schön means reflecting on actions that have already occurred, putting them in perspective in order to inform our practice. This applies when we rethink about a lesson and use its outcome to inform new planning, new teaching or the action that has to be taken to solve an issue. It is a systematic method to build on our practice experience so that we can improve our teaching strategies and our pupils’ learning. When it comes to Teacher’s Standard 7, I reflect on my practice systematically after class, taking notes of what needs improvement and I reflect on what I can do differently to be on the right path. For example, at the beginning of my placement, reflecting on my practice made me realise that I needed to liaise with the SEN teacher to ask for advice on how to deal with a child who had behavioural issues. The SEN teacher made a support plan. Thanks to that, the child’s behaviour improved. He could access learning and he moved from ESL to the mainstream classroom for all the subjects.
Moreover, I use Schön’s framework when I review my weekly targets in my mentor meeting reports; when I discuss with my mentor about the action I should take to solve a problem; when I reflect on my lesson immediately after an observation, while taking notes on my lesson plan.
As a trainee teacher, I also reflected on action when I wrote my PG1 assignment about talk for writing, and I am reflecting on my practice at this very moment answering this PDP question.
Reflections:
Raelin, J.A. (2001). Public Reflection as the Basis of Learning. Management Learning, 32(1), pp.11–30.
Schön, D. A. (1983) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. New York, NY: Routledge.
Writing guidance
Can I write about anything in my blog post?
Yes pretty much. Academic cultural critique (Thomson and Mewburn, 2013) is always a good source of content for academic blogs. This can include (but is not limited to) comments and reflections on funding; higher education policy or academic life. You might also want to consider blogging about:
- Academic practice (Saper, 2006)
- Information and/or self-help advice
- Technical, teaching and careers advice
- Your research or practice
- How you’ve undertaken research
- The impact of research on your practice
- An area of research/practice that interests you
- Your teaching experiences/reflections
How long can my blog post be?
Each individual blog post should be no longer than 500 words. Long blocks of text are sometimes hard for readers to digest. Break up your content into shorter paragraphs, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Also include a list of keywords or tags as this makes it easier for Google to find your work.
Do I need to use citations?
No, this is a reflective piece so it does not need to include citations (but you obviously can include them if they are relevant).
Can I include links or images?
We would encourage you to include links to any articles that you have considered whilst writing your blog post. We also welcome the use of images (as long as you have permission to use them) as they can often help to illustrate a point and obviously will not be included in the word limit. Please remember this is a public site so if you want to include images of your students in your classes then you will need permission to do this.
What is the process for submitting a piece of work?
Your blog post should be emailed to A.Ball.1@warwick.ac.uk. Once the submission has been reviewed it will either be uploaded at the beginning of the next available week or sent back to you for editing if it requires amendments. You should then send the amended work to me once again and I will then upload it.