This blogpost is inspired by the cross program session Annamarie McKie delivered on reflection. In the session McKie (2024) covered when we might reflect on our teaching, as well as research insights covering how lecturers in the creative arts discuss reflection, as well as offering some prompts and strategies we tried out to help us reflect on the UK professional standards framework.
I could relate to a lot of the research insights McKie (2024) presented, from the dual identity of education and practitioner, introducing practises related to industry, this is what I do when I deliver workshops on design research or prototyping.
I found the prompt cards presented to be quite an engaging and playful framework in which to think about reflection. The session also introduced me to a lot of reflective strategies such as Brookfield’s critical lenses, which has allowed me to consider more perspectives than my own when thinking about my teaching work. Such as viewing my teaching from my students’ eyes can help me to see what they take from my teaching. As well as experiencing the vast array of literature already out there to make sense of familiar situations that have happened (Brookfield, 1995).
One of the exercises asked us to consider our identities as teachers and made me consider my role, as well as to why I teach what I do. The ways in which I would normally reflect on my teaching was to review what worked and what I could do better in a session by writing down a few notes after the session, this may have not been the best approach as the nature of teaching changes constantly.
The dialogic prompt cards makes sense for in my practise as a tangible way in which to reflect, it reminds me of design research tools such as the IDEO method cards (IDEO, 2024) that I have used in my design practise. The reflecting through metaphor prompt was one that I felt I would use more, especially when thinking about difficult teaching situations, this draws on the idea of reflective practise through dialogue and stories as Joy Amulya (2011) describes as a tool to help unpack experiences and identify issues that need to be pursed.
My next steps here would be to find time to use or adapt some of the dialogic prompts for my teaching context, continue to use Brookfield’s critical lenses, as well as find ways to reflect more through dialogue with colleagues and peers.
References:
Amulya, J. (2011) What is reflective practice. Community Science. Available at: https://communityscience.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/What-is-Reflective-Practice.pdf (Accessed: 16 February 2024).
Brookfield, S.D. (1995) Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
IDEO (2024) Method Cards. Available at: https://www.ideo.com/journal/method-cards (Accessed: 16 February 2024).
McKie, A. (2024) Reflect on this…or that? [Workshop]. University of the Arts London. 14 February.