The Importance of Teacher Self-Reflection for PD

To reflect on your teaching is to give your practice deep thought. You should use self-reflection to consider questions such as: Why do some of my teaching methods work better than others?

In 1945, psychologist Karl Duncker created the Candle Box Problem. He presented his research participants with a question:

"How can you attach a candle to a wall and light it so that candle wax won’t drip on the table below?"

New research confirms teacher coaching is a powerful tool for teaching and learning

Researchers and educators have emphasized the importance of teacher coaching for decades, describing it as an essential component of effective professional development. As a result, school districts across the country have developed coaching programs that are supported by a wide range of federal programs and policies.

However, until recently, there have been relatively few causal studies demonstrating the impact of teacher coaching on instruction achievement.

A study of teacher professional development (PD) was released in 2016 by The New Teacher Project. They followed three large school districts for two years by surveying more than 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders. They learned some interesting things:

• A shocking amount is spent on PD – On average, these three districts spent $18,000 per teacher, per year. At this rate, the top 50 school districts in the US spend $8 billion on teacher PD annually! 

• Despite this massive expenditure, most of the  teachers in these districts don’t improve year to year - even though many of them lack fundamental skills. A few did improve, but the they couldn’t attribute improvement to any PD experiences.

• The study concluded that most of the PD that these districts provide isn’t effective because it doesn’t provide teachers with the kind of information that they need to improve their teaching.

In the second of our five-part interview series with Jim Knight, Jim discusses how video can unlock the truth about your teaching. He identifies the five essential components for building a trusting coaching relationship and the key features of a video platform for building trust.

Teachers are the most important factor (after student characteristics and prior attainment) affecting student outcomes. It is therefore vitally important that we provide teachers with meaningful opportunities to develop their classroom practice.

In a recent report, trust was sighted as an important contributor to school culture. With an atmosphere of trust, teachers’ fear of judgement and failure is removed and so they feel more able to work together collaboratively, taking informed risks and innovating to improve outcomes for students.

"That climate of trust is also about taking risks... It’s about having that openness that we all make mistakes and that is fine and that we’re going to learn from them as a staff and as colleagues." 

Alex Quigley

But how can you help to build trust in your school? One way is through establishing an open-door community within your school. This will encourage professional discussion and sharing between you and your colleagues.

The importance of feeling safe

People need to feel psychologically safe in order to learn and be productive, according to Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard. Amy claims that, when taking a risk, we need to believe that we are in a secure environment where others will not judge, resent or humiliate us if we make a mistake or need help.