Facilitating reflective learning: an example of practice in TESOL teacher education

Author: Angela Pickering

Table of contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Case
• 3. Statements of Relevance (SOR)
• 4. Evaluation of the experience of using SORs
• 5. Lessons learned
• 6. Concluding remarks
• Appendix
• Bibliography

1. Introduction

We are currently living in an era of enforced and rapid change. It is in this context that the notion of lifelong learning has been consistently promoted by government and educational policy makers (NCIHE 1997). Learning how to learn is seen as an essential transferable skill, almost a survival skill in the current socio-economic climate. In such a context it is seen as desirable that individuals are not only able to engage with questions about the 'what', but also the 'how' and the 'why' (Mezirow 1991), and to have a high degree of self awareness of their own learning needs and the initiative to take these forward.

It is claimed that one of the most effective ways of promoting such learning is to engage in reflection on a learning event, or learning experience, a process which would involve mentally revisiting the experience or event, interpreting the event and evaluating what we gained from it (Boud et al. 1985). Those learners able to reflect on the learning process are said to be more likely to develop the tendency to look for learning, and also to have an increased desire to learn. In fact, it is claimed that more learning can be derived from retrospective reflection on the process of learning from an experience than from the experience itself (Posner 1996).

In various educational contexts, specific 'tools' have been used to facilitate this process, such as learner diaries, critical incident logs, action research, identifying action plans or personal development plans, self-evaluation activities and peer assessment. All such tools aim to make the learner not only a more effective and self-aware learner, but also a more curious, confident and autonomous learner who understands the purpose of their learning, accepts responsibility for it, takes the initiative and is self-evaluative (see Little on Learner Autonomy and Second/Foreign Language Learning in the Good Practice Guide).

Little also notes that a reflective approach to learning enables the learner to best serve their own needs. It is, therefore, the educator's responsibility to help create a learning and teaching environment in which learners are encouraged to learn how to become more autonomous in their learning. In this way, reflectivity informs autonomy and autonomous learning has a qualitative effect on reflectivity.

2. The Case

This case study gives an account of the process by which the identification of a problem relating to the reflective component of a Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at the University of Brighton gave rise to the implementation of a potential solution to the problem and the subsequent evaluation of the success of the 'experiment'. In this section I outline the trigger for the process, which was dissatisfaction with the quality of the reflection in participants' reflective learning diaries. I then trace the events leading up to the implementation of the 'solution', which was a reflective tool named a Statement of Relevance (SOR) (Pickering 2003).

The in-service teacher education course on which the study was based, and for which I am still responsible, served, and continues to serve ESOL teachers who work both in the local community and overseas. The course is a Diploma level qualification and offers input in English Language Teaching Methodology, Second Language Acquisition, English Grammar and Phonetics, as well as giving participants opportunities to be observed teaching and to work at improving their practice through reflection on their teaching and feedback from observers. The study took place throughout the academic year of 2002-3 when (as now) participants were required to complete a teaching diary, which was assessed and graded. This diary was intended to document reflections on assessed and formatively observed teaching and to help participants to learn through reflection on teaching experience in the light of the course input.

Since it had first been introduced, a number of concerns about the diary requirement had been voiced by the participants, but particularly the difficulty they found in productively relating theory and practice in reflective writing. In the late 1990s the course tutors and I undertook an informal analysis of reflective outcomes and processes. This was based mainly on tutor feedback and one-to-one discussions with participants, but we also looked in detail at teaching diaries and tutor written evaluations of them.

All concerned saw the diaries as problematic. Although participants were intended to draw upon personal experience and relate this to other knowledge gained from the course, most failed to relate this theory successfully to the events which had prompted the reflection. Descriptive accounts were the norm, and analysis tended towards superficiality and defensiveness. Accounts were de-personalised and loosely-contextualised. Participants tended, when writing about their strengths and weaknesses, to talk about strategies "working" or "not working" or students "enjoying" the class, but many found it difficult to move beyond the problem or success they had identified to an analysis of the event and strategies for taking it forward. In other words, the process of completing the diaries did not appear to be helping the participants to become more self-aware learners, or more curious, confident or autonomous.

While maintaining a belief in the potential of reflective learning to lead to better practice and increased professional autonomy, we felt it was necessary to consider the ways in which the course programme might facilitate the kind of reflective processes that participants would feel were authentic, which would contribute to the development of skills of professional learning, and which, most importantly, would help them to make sense of theory in relation to practice. Underpinning this was the suspicion that all participants might not have the potential to be reflective or have a disposition to learn reflectively (Brotchie et al.1999), and we recognised that as educators we needed to have a strategy to deal with the inexpert or reluctant reflector.

Interestingly, our ad hoc concerns were found to resonate with research findings. Studies of reflection amongst trainee teachers had found, for example, difficulty in being self-critical and lack of a language of reflection, an inability to articulate personal needs or wants, to describe personal learning processes or identify the strategies used for improving practice (e.g. Hatton & Smith 1995). Other studies found that the propensity to reflect was influenced by variables such as the learner's learning orientation which influences the need for self-discovery (Korthagen 1988), the level of previous subject knowledge (Shulman 1986), and, in the case of teacher education in particular, the barriers of the teacher's own beliefs (e.g. Russell 1988).

The search for a supplementary reflective tool was based on the assumption, therefore, that many learners are not naturally reflective and so need support if they are to develop their reflective skills, and that educators need to provide what has been termed 'scaffolded reflection opportunities' (Bean & Stevens 2002). Such support is intended to enable learners to achieve a reflective output which is qualitatively superior, and which includes an element of self-discovery (Bengtsson 1995). This was an outcome which the literature suggested could best be achieved through a process of distancing the self from the event or experience (temporally and intellectually) in order to help develop 'perspective', to promote an ability to look for learning and to 'take ownership' of knowledge, which helps to make learning relevant to an individual's needs (Eraut 1994; Pickering 2000; Von Wright 1992). A reflective tool which seemed to have the potential to meet these conditions and to enable participants to address the knowledge they had gained through teaching and learning activities and the process by which it came to be acquired was a specific reflective tool: the Statement of Relevance.

3. Statements of Relevance (SOR)

I first became acquainted with the use of SORs as a participant on a University teaching development programme, where SORs had been in common use since the early 1990s. In the context of this in-service teaching development programme for university lecturers, a satisfactory SOR was defined as a written statement (usually of about 1,000 words) which showed that a participant had understood the main ideas of a particular workshop, and was able to reflect on the relationship between the theories introduced during a workshop and their own teaching practice. More specifically, participants were expected to include insights into their own teaching, express the intention to try out new methods, identify issues which merited further investigation, and reflect on longer-term professional learning. Reflections were expected to include reference to the process of the workshop, as well as content. In other words, SORs were seen as offering, in the words of the developers of the SOR, "a means by which individuals can undertake structured, in-depth reflection on how their personal and professional development has been affected by participation in a learning event" (Bourner et al. 2000:68). The key aspects of a SOR are the processes of review, reflection and digestion through which participants are helped to "take ownership of their learning by facilitating the transfer of knowledge and skills from the course to the participants' own situation" (Bourner et al. 2000:73). SORs are in this way an explicit means of facilitating the ownership of learning.

In the language teacher development course which is the context for this case study, we introduced the requirement that participants not only complete a reflective diary, but also reflect specifically on learning that had occurred as a result of workshop input. The latter would take the form of a SOR, designed very much on the model I had experienced. Participants were encouraged to extend the topic of their workshops through reading and experimenting in their teaching, and to reflect on such knowledge sources holistically.

Below is an extract from the instructions given to the participants on the English Language Teaching Methodology module (Diploma in TESOL).

Throughout the year, each participant wrote at least 3 SORs and feedback was given by tutors. Appendix 1 reproduces in extenso and anonymously an example relating to a workshop on lesson planning. As the SOR was seen as an experimental method, it was decided to base the evaluation of the success or otherwise of the tool on feedback from both tutors and participants, but particularly the latter.

4. Evaluation of the experience of using SORs

The course team monitored both the process and outcome of the innovation by means of team meetings at which participants' SORs were examined jointly in relation to assessment criteria, and by means of an end-of-course questionnaire. The majority of the course participants were initially very anxious at the prospect of completing a SOR, and so the first SOR was treated as formative.

Twelve teachers completed the course and ten of these completed the end-of-course questionnaire. Because of the low numbers involved, no attempt was made to analyse the data statistically, but qualitative insights were gained about the following: the process of writing a SOR, tutor support, preparation for the SOR, feedback on SORs and the effect of SORs.

It is interesting to note that, in spite of initial anxiety about the writing of SORs, the majority of participants had, by the end of the year, found the process less problematic than anticipated. Difficulties were expressed at finding the right words to express thoughts, about getting the balance 'right' between reflection on personal and academic knowledge and about the time-consuming nature of the writing, but the majority felt the process had been stimulating.

None of the participants indicated that they would have expected more help with their SORs. The majority felt that the process was personal, and dependent to such an extent upon individual perceptions that help would have been an interference in the process. It was interesting to note the degree of autonomy which participants were eager to assume in relation to the SOR writing process, a result which seemed to have been facilitated by the less nebulous structure of the SOR framework and the more familiar 'language' they were able to use.

In order to prepare for the SOR the majority of the participants referred to notes made during the workshops, as well as to notes made immediately afterwards, and were stimulated by this to try out new ideas in their teaching and to talk to colleagues. All read widely about the topics they reflected on and felt it was important to refer to reading in their SORs. The process of writing the SORs was felt to be authentic in the sense that, within the genre, reference to both practice and theory was natural and productive, and led them to search consciously for learning from a variety of knowledge sources and for connections between them.

All participants were satisfied with the nature of the feedback received from tutors. Factors which were particularly appreciated were encouragement, positive criticism, honesty, specific reference to what was missing from the statements, comments focusing on professional issues, and the way in which criteria for assessment were adhered to. A number of participants referred to an increase in confidence in their ideas about teaching as a result of receiving feedback, and they felt that the framework of the SOR enabled them to move outside of introspection on their own performance, and to engage through the SOR in a professional dialogue with their tutor. This was felt to increase the individual's sense of contributing to a professional scholarship of teaching.

Participants unanimously agreed that SORs had helped them to reflect on their teaching, to be more informed about theories of teaching, and to look critically at theories of teaching. The majority thought SORs had helped them to reflect critically on their own beliefs about teaching and on their actual teaching practice, had helped them to develop new teaching materials, and had encouraged them to be more confident as a teacher. The process had also helped participants to evaluate their own learning, and the effectiveness of the teacher education workshops in bringing about that learning. Most importantly, all felt that the process of writing their SOR had helped them to identify ways in which they would like to develop as a teacher.

Comments on the nature of SORs and the process of writing them were interesting in the degree to which participants highlighted the way in which knowing that they were going to be asked to write a SOR had led them to evaluate what their understanding and beliefs about the relevant issue were before coming to the workshop. Most highlighted also the way in which the SOR had led them to make connections between theories of teaching and their own practice, as well as helping them to reflect on their own learning. A significant number mentioned the way in which the SOR experience had helped them to think about change and future innovations in their own teaching.

Feedback from tutors was less systematically collated, but minutes of the end of year monitoring meetings testify to the degree to which tutors felt that SORs had provided qualitatively superior reflective outcomes to the previous diary reflections.

5. Lessons learned

The format and style of the SOR differs from that of the 'traditional' academic essay, with which students were more familiar. However, with tutor and peer support, even the weaker students were able to fulfil the SOR criteria, while the best SORs also showed a subtle understanding of the process of students' own professional learning. The genre was not perceived as either private or public, but as a combination of the two, a marriage which mirrors the autonomous and collegial processes of professional development. Also, SORs could be said to have widened and deepened the types of knowledge which trainees had access to, enabling them to break out of the practical loop within which knowledge was thought to be impoverished and reflection was found to be defensive.

Through SORs an intellectual distance had been achieved which not only made reflections less defensive, but also helped to orientate thinking to future plans and the potential for change.

SORs also appear to have facilitated to some degree the conditions for reflective learning identified earlier, that is the development of perspective, the creation of relevance and the ownership of knowledge, and to have contributed to strategic thinking about ongoing autonomous professional development. They appear to have done this by foregrounding not only retrospective reflection on experience, but by encouraging a focus on future needs, a process which I have elsewhere termed "prospecting" (Pickering 2000, 2003). In so doing, SORs have addressed an important developmental issue: that is the nurturing of the tendency to habitually look for learning from a variety of knowledge sources. A by-product of the process of completing and sharing SORs seems to have been the opening up of a professional dialogue between participants and tutors and between the participants themselves (SORs being shared by email). This helped to widen the knowledge sources which participants had access to, and helped to build their confidence in their own professional persona and a sense of the teacher-as-learner (lifelong learner).

A final point relates to the notion of independence and control. Participants appeared to have relished the independence of thought that they were encouraged to demonstrate through SORs. Not only were they able to evaluate their own learning, but also to consider the more general issue of relevance, leaving both improved study habits (such as more detailed notes, revisiting of notes and the undertaking of further research) and also to a sense of control over the process of professional learning (seen in mini-action research projects and the identification of personal learning needs). SORs also, of course, enabled tutors to gain valuable feedback on the content and delivery of the curriculum, which made participants feel they had made a contribution to curriculum development.

6. Concluding remarks

On the basis of the experience of using SORs it would appear that they have the potential to qualitatively affect the process and product of reflective learning. Most importantly, for longer-term professional development, they appear to have the potential to help individuals to function autonomously by steering them to look for learning from a variety of knowledge sources.

Participants on the development course continue to complete reflections which are structured round teaching experiences. The original developers of the SOR found that successful completion of SORs impacted positively on the quality of other reflective writing. This has not yet been formally examined, but informal indications are that this is the case. It is certainly my impression that the quality of insight contained within the SORs bodes well for the future, in the sense that they seem to have the potential to affect attitude as well as action. As a result the course team continue to require participants on the teacher education programme to complete SORs and have increased the number of these. We have also extended the concept to other academic courses on which we teach.

There is a renewed awareness of the importance of lifelong learning, an increasing need for professionals to embrace change and innovation and to learn and develop independently. In any context, therefore, if reflective outcomes are desirable, educators should not merely provide opportunities for reflection, but should consider how practitioners might be enabled to reflect effectively through the use of appropriate reflective scaffolding.

Appendix

An example of a Statement of Relevance from 2003 written by a participant on the module English Language Teaching Methodology (part of the Diploma in TESOL course at the University of Brighton).

The aim of this Statement of Relevance is to reflect on the Lesson Planning session.

The first stage of the session began with a role-play activity. The trainees were divided into two groups and asked to brainstorm arguments for and against lesson planning. For several minutes each group discussed and proposed a number of reasons with respective supporting statements then, after a secretary had summarized them, there was a lively cross-class debate with members of the opposing groups defending their standpoints vociferously.

Throughout this stage, other than a brief initial explanation and stopping the brainstorm to set up the debate, the trainer adopted a monitoring role. She mostly listened and only got involved in the discussions to clarify specific points or answer questions at the trainees' requests.

Outlining various teacher roles in The Practice of English Language Teaching, Harmer (1991: 239) suggests:

The main aim of the teacher as organiser is to tell the students what they are going to talk about, give clear instructions about what exactly their task is, get the activity going and then organise feedback when it is over.

This reflects precisely the role the trainer adopted at this stage in the session, where all the ideas were generated by the trainees.

In A Course in Language Teaching Penny Ur (1996: 217) discusses ordering the components of a lesson and advocates putting the hardest first. She suggests that tasks requiring more energy or initiative from students are best conducted early on in the lesson followed by more structured or controlled activities. Ur's recommendations make practical sense and, as will hopefully become clear from this SOR, were followed throughout the session.

As a participant I was reassuringly surprised by the genuinely strong advocacy of planning in our group. It wasn't difficult to argue in favour of lesson planning and make sure we said all the right things', but there was a real awareness of the rationale behind our arguments and a sincere belief in them. Perhaps, as it transpired, our group wasn't actually role-playing here. One obvious benefit of this in the debate stage was that it made the opposition's arguments (some of which I have previously used myself) much easier to counter.

The second stage of the session focused initially on the outcomes from the debate in the first. The trainer listed on the whiteboard the arguments in favour of planning under the heading Why?'. After this there was an open class discussion about What?' a lesson should contain and How?' it should achieve its purpose. During this stage the trainer's role switched between: assessor when the students have completed a role play the teacher first discusses with them the reason for their decisions (Harmer 1991: 237), participant participating as an equal in the discussion (Harmer 1991: 241) and controller the most important source students have for roughly tuned comprehensible input (Harmer 1991: 236).

Once again, in-keeping with the advice given in Ur (1996: 218), there was no sharp transition from a fast to a slow activity. The session moved seamlessly from a lively debate to a group discussion with the pace being gently slowed for the input stage.

Of specific interest in terms of clarifying my own lesson planning was the introduction at this stage of the idea of a difference between aims and learning outcomes . Over the years I have become familiar with the notion of setting lesson aims and observing or being observed on achieving them. Here the idea of quantifiable, student-centred learning objectives for a particular lesson and teacher-centred aims over a series of lessons was suggested. The distinction is a useful one which in future will help me to avoid confusing or combining the specifics of a lesson with the bigger picture.

As well as giving rise to a list of desirable contents' for a lesson plan, a useful resource in itself, the group discussion established a division of these contents within the plan between before' and during'. This is another distinction I hope will help me produce clearer and more practical plans. Worthy of note with reference to the suggested ideal' was the unanimous agreement that practical constraints make assessed style lesson planning an everyday impracticality. Nevertheless, a minimum requirement for a working document was set out as: outcomes, resources, stages and procedure.

In the final stage the trainees were organised into pairs and each pair was given a sample lesson plan to evaluate against a checklist. After the pair work there was a brief open class discussion and the trainer put up a list of three learning outcomes for the session. This was a very clear way of illustrating that a set of predetermined objectives and organised staging can lead to a meaningful conclusion there was a palpable sense of satisfaction from the trainees and trainer alike that the outcomes had been met.

The exercise evaluating the various lesson plan examples was particularly informative in a number of ways. There was a direct and immediate relevance to the session input and the various plan formats provided useful authentic material against which to test the ideal'. It was interesting to note that even though the individual format styles were widely varied there were a number of features common to most plans: activities, stage aims, procedures, interaction and timings. Although no one plan contained all the desirable contents', as a whole the selection included all the items from our comprehensive ideal list. In this sense the session provided two real sources of relevance to draw upon, the group's thoughts and theories as teachers about planning and their actual deeds.

Ur (1996: 215) encourages us to research seven questions about our own and other teachers' planning, to generalise about similarities and identify any idiosyncrasies. From a sample of answers given by Penny Ur, an ex-colleague, a current Diploma student and my self, I established the following:

Plans are usually self-generated, written one day in advance in short note form and refer to key stages/activities in the lesson. Plans are rarely referred to while teaching but are kept afterwards for reflection. Interestingly enough, nobody (including Ms Ur) explicitly writes down their objectives!

My initial research into this SOR included investigating Ur's ideas of metaphors for a lesson (1991: 213). My two choices were doing the shopping and a symphony , about which Ur (1991: 224) makes the following observations respectively:

The lesson would be essentially a systematic and goal-oriented progression through a prepared set of items with the emphasis on efficiency and the completion of tasks.

The combination of different themes that go to make a full and balanced programme. There is also the aspect of working together to create a shared satisfying result.

While I am happy to accept these interpretations of my approach (needless to say all Ur's ideas were constructive) I am interested in exploring and experimenting with some of the other metaphors I rejected because of their implications for what elements are missing in my teaching.

In saying this I am echoing what Harmer (1991: 243) suggests about the teacher as investigator. "Teachers who constantly seek to enrich their understanding of what learning is all about and what works well will find the teaching of English constantly rewarding."

As a teacher, rising to this challenge is clearly in my interest. I hope from a combination of my reading, the information arising from the session and further research I will be able in future to plan lessons that:

• explore and experiment with different types of lesson concept: (free-choice, interaction, goal oriented effort, etc)
• include of a number of different teacher roles
• contain more clearly conceived and expressed outcomes and aims
• have an appropriately selected and organised variety of activities
• are easy to generate and adapt, are practical to use and clear to read
• provide a useful document for reflection, revision and recycling

Bibliography

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Bengtsson, J. (1995). What is reflection? On reflection in the teaching profession and teacher education. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice 1, 1:23-32.

Boud, D., R. Keogh & D.Walker (1985). Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. London: Kogan Page.

Bourner, T., S. O'Hara & J. Barlow (2000). Only connect: facilitating reflective learning with Statements of Relevance. IETI 37, 1:68-75.

Brotchie, K., C. Lloyd, J. Mallick & M. Watts (1999). Chopping away at the writing block: four cases of meta-affective learning. Unpublished paper, University of Surrey, Roehampton.

Eraut, M. (1994). The Acquisition and use of educational theory by beginning teachers. In G. Harvard & P. Hodgkinson (eds), Action and Reflection in Teacher Education. Norwood NJ: Ablex.

Harmer, J. (1991). The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Longman.

Hatton, N. & D. Smith (1995). Reflection in teacher education: towards definition and implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education: Theory and Practice 11, 1:33-49.

Korthagen, F.A.J. (1988). The influence of learning orientations on the development of reflective practice. In J. Calderhead (ed.), Teachers' Professional Learning. London: The Falmer Press.

Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning. San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Bass.

NCIHE (1997). Higher Education in the Learning Society. Crown Copyright.

Pickering, A. (2000). Independent reflection in teacher education. In T. Bourner, T. Katz, & D. Watson, (eds), New Directions in Professional Higher Education. Buckingham: SRHE/The Open University.

Pickering, A. (2003). Facilitating autonomy in reflective practice through "Statements of Relevance". In J. Gollin, F. Gibson & H. Trappes-Lomax (eds), Symposium for Language Teacher Educators 2000, 2001, 2002. IALS Symposia: University of Edinburgh.

Posner, G. J. (1996). Field Experience: A Guide to Reflective Teaching. White Plains, NY, Longman.

Russell, T. (1988). From pre-service teacher education to first year of teaching: a study of theory and practice. In J. Calderhead (ed.), Teachers' Professional Learning. London: The Falmer Press.

Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: knowledge and growth in teaching. Educational Researcher 15, 2:4-14.

Ur, P. (1996). A Course in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Von Wright, J. (1992). Reflections on reflection. Learning and Instruction 2, 59-68.

Intended further reading:

Prahbu, N.S. (1992). The dynamics of the language lesson. TESOL Quarterly 26, 2:225-41.

Parrott, M. (1993). Tasks for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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