Reflective Practice


Reflection plays the role of a key to success in human life. One of the important areas in the educational process is the professional development of teachers to build their capacities in pedagogical skills as well as content knowledge. In this connection, a plan was designed and executed to conduct a professional workshop for the teachers on reflective practice recently.  
The following sections contain a report on the workshop conducted for the teachers of Government and private schools in a remote area of Gilgit-Baltistan. The process, achievements, challenges, and recommendations are discussed in the report. The workshop started at 12:30 pm sharp and ended at 3:30 pm. A total of 51 workshop participants (WPs) including 22 males and 29 females attended the workshop.
Objectives of the workshop
The objectives of the workshop were:
·         To provide teachers with an opportunity to enhance their understanding of the reflective practice to improve their teaching and learning
·         To give an opportunity to the teachers to write a reflection on any of the events from their classroom using the discussed protocol/format
Process
The session started with the recitation of some verses from the Holy Quran. Workshop Facilitator (WF) said welcomed the participants and shared the objectives of the workshop. Then the WF conducted a brainstorming activity on “what is reflection”. WF while concluding the responses of the WPs, switched to a multimedia presentation to explain the following points;
  • What is reflective practice?
  • Why do teachers reflect on their practice?
  • When to reflect on?
  • What to reflect on?
  • How to reflect on it?
The workshop participants after presentation asked questions to reinforce their learning and rectify their confusion.
Then the WF formed groups of WPs and assigned a task to write a reflection using the shared reflective protocol while choosing an event that happened in their classroom.  WPs were asked to present their written reflections to the whole class. Rest of the participants asked questions, clarified misconceptions of each other, gave justifications and challenged each others’ ideas, and provided suggestions to improve their reflective practices.  At the end of each presentation, WF provided feedback to the groups on the basis of their shared work to clarify their misconceptions and reinforced their learning.
At the end of the workshop, WPs thanked WF for providing such type of a learning opportunity for their professional development. They also decided that they will keep the reflective practice in their professional practices to improve teaching and learning.
Achievements
  • 51 teachers got an opportunity to enhance their understanding of the reflective practice.
  • WF successfully conducted a lively and interactive workshop.
·         Workshop participants decided to keep the reflective practice on their professional practices.
Challenges
  • Varying levels of understanding of WPs as there were some highly qualified while some had no strong educational background.
  • Delaying attitudes among some of the participants because of learning stagnancy created problems to decide on carrying out reflective practice
·         English language problems for some of the teachers as most presentations and discussions were in English
Recommendations
·         Such types of workshops need to be conducted frequently on other such important topics
·         Manuals and handouts should be developed in English and Urdu as well
·         A follow-up mechanism needs to be developed to ensure the application of learning during the workshop