#1553705 CEBRASPE (CESPE) - 2009 - Professor (SEDUC CE)/Língua Inglesa

Most teachers develop their classroom skills fairly early in their teaching careers. Teachers entering the profession may find their initial teaching efforts stressful, but with experience they acquire a repertoire of teaching strategies that they draw on throughout their teaching. The particular configuration of strategies a teacher uses constitutes his or her “teaching style”. While a teacher’s style of teaching provides a means of coping with many of the routine demands of teaching, there is also a danger that it can hinder a teacher’s professional growth. How can teachers move beyond the level of automatic or routinised responses to classroom situations and achieve a higher level of awareness of how they teach, of the kinds of decisions they make as they teach, and of the value and consequences of particular instructional decisions? One way of doing this is through observing and reflecting on one’s own teaching, and using observation and reflection as a way of bringing about change.

A reflective approach to teaching involves changes in the way we usually perceive teaching and our role in the process of teaching. Teachers who explore their own teaching through critical reflection develop changes in attitudes and awareness which they believe can benefit their professional growth as teachers, as well as improve the kind of support they provide for their students. Like other forms of self-inquiry,  reflective teaching  is not without its risks,  since journal writing, self-reporting or making recordings of lessons can be time-consuming. However teachers engaged in reflective analysis of their own teaching report that it is a valuable tool for self-evaluation and professional growth.

Reflective teaching suggests that experience alone is insufficient for professional growth, but that experience coupled with reflection can be a powerful impetus for teacher development.

Jack C. Richards. Towards reflective teaching In:

Internet: <www.tttjournal.co.uk> (adapted).

The verb “improve” is synonymous with