The Language Teacher
July 2002

Developing a Reflective Practice through Disciplined Collaboration

Kathleen Graves

School for International Training

Amy Powell is a new ESL teacher in a public middle school in Boston, Massachusetts. In an effort to improve her teaching, she joined the professional development subcommittee in her school. Once a month they meet with the principal to discuss how to structure the monthly professional development session in which all teachers are contractually obligated to participate. The idea of the sessions is simple: A topic is chosen and teachers discuss and present their experience with the topic. On the surface, this approach sounds promising, but Amy's experience shows otherwise. Rather than giving teachers a chance to talk openly about their work and to explore their practice, "they often turn into teacher showcases of best practices" (Powell, 2002). That is, teachers present what they do well and their fellow teachers congratulate them for work well done. Some readers may be thinking, "This doesn't sound like a problem, we can all learn from the successes of others." True, but not if success is worn like an armor. If we are interested in changing practice, not in protecting it, we need, paradoxically, to be able to show the chinks in the armor. To further extend the metaphor, we want to shed the armor so that we can be more flexible in our practice and responsive to our students.

What do reflective practice and collaboration have to do with Amy's experience in her monthly professional development group? She explains her feelings this way: "These sessions are not safe places to get humble and elicit feedback. As a new teacher, how else am I supposed to learn how to improve my practice? When will it be acceptable to admit that no one, not even the most respected of veteran teachers, has all the answers?" (Powell, 2002). Amy has a different vision for these professional development sessions, one in which she can articulate problems and puzzles, and in which she can learn from the experience of others as it is brought to bear on her particular situation. Amy is already a reflective practitioner. What she is seeking is a community with whom to exercise and develop her reflectivity.

Reflection is one of the most powerful tools teachers can use to explore, understand, and redirect their practice. Reflection is about learning to see and to understand what is seen. It is not simply being able to identify problems and frame solutions, although both are crucial. The father of reflection, John Dewey, defined reflective action as "that which involves active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or practice in light of the reasons that support it and the further consequences to which it leads" (Zeichner & Liston, 1996, p. 9). For Dewey, the purpose of reflection was to transform experience through observation and interpretation into reasoned, purposeful action. This transformative process is captured in the four stages of the Experiential Learning Model, adapted by David Kolb from the work of Kurt Lewin: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation (Kolb, 1984). Despite good intentions, teachers can undermine the development of a reflective practice in two ways. One is to undertake reflection without action--to hold up the mirror, acknowledge what is there and how one feels about it, but go no further (Stanley, 1998). Another is to view the process as one of seeking solutions rather than as one of effecting change, that is, to seek solutions without having explored the wider issues and underlying beliefs that are at the root of the perceived problems. When teachers are able to explore the root issues and beliefs, a shift occurs in their understanding and a wider range of effective, intelligent actions becomes possible.

Colleagues can play a critical role in helping teachers gain a wider and deeper perspective on their practice by asking questions and by providing alternative interpretations and courses of action. The Teacher Knowledge Project at the School for International Training (www.sit.edu/tkp) has developed an approach to reflective practice that depends on disciplined collaboration. The aim of the project is for teachers to develop and use their knowledge to improve student learning. Groups of teachers, usually from different schools, participate in seminars over a period of six to twelve months. In the seminars, teachers are guided by two co-facilitators through the four stages of the reflective cycle outlined in Figure 1.1 This way of using the cycle, which I will describe below, was developed by Carol Rodgers based on her research on John Dewey's work (Rodgers, in press). It enables teachers to examine issues in their teaching and move to what Dewey called intelligent action. One facilitator is from a school context, the other from a university context, in order to model a diversity of perspectives and the dialogic nature of the inquiry process.

The process itself is simple, but the results are infinitely rich and complex, as I discovered when I co-facilitated an eight-month seminar with an experienced teacher from a local elementary school. At each monthly session, two of the participant teachers presented what we called a case study. Each teacher chose some puzzling or problematic aspect of her practice to focus on. This is the experience at the top of Figure 1. For example, one teacher was concerned with whether all her students were able to participate in group activities; another teacher was concerned about whether she taught enough. Another teacher was concerned about a student who didn't seem to fit in with the others in her class. The second stage, describe started when the teacher described to the group a slice of her practice that captured the issue. The teacher's spoken description was supplemented by a video-clip of her class, a written narrative describing the situation, or samples of student work. The teacher who was concerned about participation showed us video clips of students doing different activities within one class period. The teacher who was concerned about a misfit student showed us samples of her student's work as well as a video clip of her class. The group then helped the teacher flesh out the description to be as thorough as possible and to keep it focused on student learning. Some of the questions the group asked, the teacher could readily answer, but some of the questions were ones she hadn't thought about before. For example, the teacher who was concerned about student participation in-group activities was asked about what students did when she lectured, since the lecture material was often the basis for the small group work. The group helped the teacher to build a fresher, fuller, more complete picture than the one she was used to seeing through her own eyes.

The third stage, analyze, is the interpretation stage. The teacher and other participants generated as many explanations and interpretations of the situation as possible. The variety in our backgrounds and expertise played an important role here since multiple interpretations were possible. In this stage it was also not uncommon for us to use terms and concepts from seminar readings as explanatory tools. The group did not suggest solutions or give tips for dealing with the issue, but rather proposed multiple perspectives on the issue, based on the teacher's description. The teacher, with the help of the group, explored the various interpretations, and identified the one(s) that made the most sense at that time.

In the final stage, based on the chosen interpretation(s), the teacher and the other participants proposed intelligent actions to address the issue. Sometimes the intelligent action was a change in the teacher's attitude toward the situation, rather than a discernible change in procedure. The teacher chose the ones that made sense to her. Back in the classroom, she tried out these actions. These actions, in turn often suggested new questions or issues, and the cycle began again, albeit individually.

Like the elegant lines of beautiful calligraphy, the simplicity of the process belies the discipline required to do it successfully. In the seminars, as soon as a teacher started to describe her situation, we all wanted to jump to the solution. The separation of the stages is a key component of the discipline. As co-facilitators, one of our important functions was to keep the group focused on each stage long enough first to reveal a multifaceted picture, then to provide a variety of perspectives so that when we did get to the solutions they were grounded, thoughtful, and feasible. This process stands in stark contrast to the one Amy has experienced in her monthly meetings. And yet, our experience in the Teacher Knowledge Project shows that it is a process that could easily be implemented at her school. Lasting educational renewal depends, ultimately, on changes in the classroom. Successful change in the classroom in turn depends on the understanding and skill of the most powerful figure, the teacher. The development of a reflective practice through disciplined collaboration enables the teacher to make thoughtful and lasting changes that can have a positive impact on student learning.

References

Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Rodgers, C. (in press). Seeing student learning. Harvard Educational Review.
Stanley, C. (1998). A framework for teacher reflectivity. TESOL Quarterly, 32(3), 584-591.
Powell, A. (2002). From a (close) distance: Reflection on first year teaching, professional development, and the Teacher Knowledge Project. Strands, 3(2), 4.
Zeichner, K., & Liston, D. (1996). Reflective teaching. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Notes

1. This version of the cycle is the one that my co-facilitator, David Holzapfel, and I gave to our seminar participants.