Smith Rebolledo (2018). handbook for Exploratory AR (1)
What happens? | 80 8.5 Reflecting on your own development – the major finding? ‘Reflect’: v. ‘To think carefully and deeply about something’
1
Nobody would disagree that teachers should ‘think carefully
and deeply’ about their work. Unfortunately, we are
sometimes too busy to do this, and we replace reflecting
with ‘assuming’. If we go back to the story of Teresa Perčić,
whom we met in Chapter One, you will remember that she
assumed that playing classical music had no effect on how
well students concentrated during tasks, so she stopped
doing it, despite the recommendation of her boss. It was
only through the process of teacher-research that she
learnt that her students did find it beneficial:
So what was her final thought?:
Task 8.7 Look carefully again at these final reflections. Think about
the following two questions and either make notes or
discuss with a colleague:
1. What did Teresa learn from her research that
is likely to help her in the future?
2. What do you think she will do next time she’s told
to do something by her boss because it has been
proven by research?
Commentary Teresa’s final reflections seem to indicate that she learnt
several important things:
■
■
We can all be wrong, but we shouldn’t be scared of this.
It is an opportunity for learning;
■
■
We should avoid making assumptions based solely on
‘signs’ of student behaviour (remember, in Chapter One
we made this distinction between ‘signs’ and ‘evidence’);
■
■
It’s OK to be critical of recommendations we receive
from others, and testing them out in our own classrooms
is the perfect way to find out whether we should accept
them or not.
