Improving your teaching

Having the possibility to receive feedback on one’s teaching from different perspectives seems to me a wonderful way to improve one’s professional practice.  The model presented in chapter 13 seems very helpful since it provides teachers with opportunities to reflect on their practices by obtaining information from different sources (the observer, the students, him/herself, the video).  The information brought by each of these sources is invaluable for the reflective teacher since it allows him to understand his teaching as it is perceived by all those involved/interested in the classroom.

I was particularly interested in the way getting information from students (even though this was not discussed extensively in the chapter) can help us understand how the type of discourse we use in the classroom, the way we address our students, the way we give instructions, the learning opportunities that we acknowledge (or not) affect our pedagogy and the students’ learning process.  I have found that the distance between our pedagogical purposes and attitudes and how these are perceived by the students is too big.

Getting a better understanding of how our attitudes, activities, explanations, methods and classroom management strategies are interpreted by students can totally help us improve these and be more effective teachers. And who else can give us first-hand information on these if not the students.  Of course, one must be aware that the students, as direct participants in the classroom, may be biased in providing this feedback, but once we are aware of this, and also once we have set the right atmosphere for this to take place, this can give profound insights on how to improve our teaching.

Also, conferencing with observer colleagues can help gain an equally but differently informed view of the things we do in the classroom, but a reflective teacher, who may not have always access to this kind of feedback, will find it very valuable to videotape his/her classes. It is hard to know how much you can gain from this unless you do it. The first thing one will feel is probably embarrassment. But once one has overcome that stage and gets used to observe him/herself in the video, one will become aware of the ideologies one brings into the class and the decisions made. This is a critical way to approach your own teaching that could prove very successful to become a better teacher.