Reflective Practice: A New Paradigm for Professional Development.

1. "Like other professionals, teachers cannot become effective by following scripts. Instead, they need to create knowledge in use as they practice ... knowledge does not exist apart from teacher & context." Thomas Sergiovanni, Moral Leadership

2. Reflective Practice:A New Paradigm for Professional Development. Equity & Excellence in Higher Education.

3. Goals: • Define Reflective Practice; • Design A Critical Incident Protocol; • Early Outcomes from the Reflective Practice Application; • Implementation Design.

4. Reflective Practice: A cognitive process & open perspective that involves a deliberate pause to examine beliefs, goals or practices in order to gain new or deeper understanding that leads to actions improving the learning of students. Steven Brookfield

5. Typical Professional Development Approach:Focus on AWARENESS Reflective Practice Multi Day Training, Courses One Day Training, In-services

6. New Paradigm-Creating Learning Communities:Focus on Application and Synthesis Reflective Practice Multi Day Training, Courses One Day Training, Inservices

7. In other words... Reflective Practice is an in-depth conversation about what we do, how it works & why we do it. so that our students are able to learn more effectively in our classrooms.

8. A Foundation of Reflective Practice: Protocols: • A set of guidelines; • Clear role definitions. • Common elements: • Presentation; • Clarifying & Probing Questions; • Artifacts; • Group discussion, excluding presenter; • Reflection/debrief.

9. Practicing a Protocol: Talking about Teaching & Learning using the critical incident protocol: • What is the best (or worst) experience you ever had in teaching?

10. Steps of Brief Critical Incident Protocol: • Introduction – 5 minutes. • Clarifying questions – 5 minutes. • Discussion – 10 minutes. • Presenter reaction – 5 minutes. • De-brief the protocol – 5 minutes .

11. De-Briefing the Critical Incident Protocol 2: • What was the experience like for the person presenting? • For the “consulting” faculty? • Even if you didn’t present, what did you get out of it? • What was hard about doing the protocol? How is it different from an informal discussion?

12. Non-judgmental; Collaborative; Equitable; Helpful; Positively focused; A guide for effective communication; Structured. Reflective Practice is:

13. Judgmental; Required; Haphazard; Supervision or evaluation; Rigid; Hierarchical. Reflective Practice is not:

14. Early Results from users: • “A switch in attitude to our students, not your students”. • “We see a greater openness to vary educational practices as a result of feedback from reflective practice groups”. • “There is a greater willingness to use technology to adapt teaching to student’s needs”.

15. Research Findings: • RP groups are more satisfying than other professional development activities because: • It is continual; • It is focused on their own teaching & their own student’s learning; • It takes place in a small group of supported and trusted colleagues within their own school. • (Dunne, Nave and Ellis, Phi Delta Kappan Research Bulletin, 12/2000)

16. Additional Resources • National School Reform Faculty: http://www.nsrfharmony.org/ • videos, on-line “virtual protocols”, articles, links • Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher by Stephen Brookfield • Reflective Practice: Creating Capacities for School Improvement by Montie, York-Barre, Kronberg, Stevenson, Vallejo & Lunders