On experience and reflection in teaching

Mr K wants to improve his practice and asks to observe a more experienced teacher, Ms Y.

Ms Y begins an explanation and all students are rapt with attention. After a chunk of information, she uses whole-class questioning techniques to check for understanding and only then do students move on to independent practice.

Mr K knew that’s what he should be doing because he has read blogs, articles and books about it but he wanted to see it in practice.

A few days later, Mr K is in the middle of an explanation. He can see the minds of his students wandering as he continues. He pauses to ask questions to check students are listening. The two students he picks struggle to answer the questions so he tries to explain the concept again. He does a check for understanding and all students can easily answer the questions. He then asks them to complete questions independently but a few turn around to chat and some hands go up asking for help.

When the bell goes, he sits down, feeling dejected.

Why is it that when Mr K follows the same process as Ms Y, the students seem bored and struggle to answer questions?

It could be due to Ms Y’s experience. The mistake I used to make is to equate experience with time spent teaching.

But experience is way more than that: it is reflection in disguise. I have written before about how important reflection is in teaching and how we need to pause to consider how we reflect on aspects of our practice. It is entirely possible to reflect on aspects that won’t have much impact on my practice, or to reflect and come to conclusions that are not helpful.

For example, imagine a teacher trying to use mini-whiteboards in their lesson for the first time because they want to see responses from all students and increase thinking and participation ratio. It takes a long time to hand out the boards, check everyone has a pen and ensure students are not drawing anatomically-incorrect body parts on them. Nevertheless, they stick to it, attempting to build a routine but by the end of two weeks, it is still taking far too long. This teacher might reflect on this and think using mini-whiteboards is not worth the effort and time it is taking to build a routine of whole class participation and thinking. But if the purpose of using the mini-whiteboards (increasing ratio) is not achieved via another, possibly more effective strategy in this context, then the self-reflection is flawed.

Reading books, blogs and articles are definitely a useful way to come up with different ideas and ways of reflecting and seeing the same problem to find effective solutions. Observing other teachers is also powerful.

That is what Mr K did and he was absolutely right to do so. Reading something in a book and then observing it in action is incredibly useful CPD. However, in Mr K’s case, it wasn’t enough. What can we do to take this further?

Some might say there is no other solution but time in the classroom. Experience of teaching different students with differing needs and levels of attention, participation, motivation, and effort is great training. As I said before, though, simply teaching for longer does not necessarily help us develop a repertoire of effective solutions and strategies. And it seems harsh to say to Mr K that time will teach him well. What is he meant to do now??

I think there is one more step Mr K should have taken to be successful in his lesson. Discussion with Ms Y (and ideally a few other teachers, particularly those teaching the same subject as him and at the same stage in teaching).

How did Ms Y decide what to include in her explanation?

How did she know when to stop and ask questions?

Why did she ask the questions she did?

Was the wording of her questions important?

How many did she ask?

Why did she choose to ask the questions in the way she did?

Did she have more questions planned or did she make some up on the spot in response to something?

How was the independent practice designed?

What would she do if her class seemed to struggle?

What cues does she look for to find out if the class is struggling?

Even if Ms Y might say it was intuition or experience* that helped her decide the minutiae of what she chose to do in the lesson, discussing it with Mr K will mean that she can reflect on past experiences or cues she noticed that helped her decide what path to take in her lesson.

Simply knowing about the importance of techniques such as Checking for Understanding is not enough to help teachers improve their practice. What questions should we ask to check for understanding? How do we respond when students understand only part of something?

And while self-reflection is important, we need to be reflecting together with others more experienced in the technique and with others at the same stage as us.

*I have been Ms Y (possibly not as successful as her!) where a trainee once asked me similar questions and I replied with ‘I just knew what to do’. Entirely unhelpful, I know, but it did make me go away and think about how I responded to the class and the decisions I made. I was able to discuss this with the trainee the next time I saw her. It served to help her and me improve our practice.