Teaching resources

Strategies for reflective teaching:

Even though it takes time to make self-reflection in teaching a habit of mind, there are some small steps teachers can take on a regular basis to introduce reflective practice when making choices about their teaching. One way of doing it is to start allocating some time after each class to think about the classroom experience with the goal of identifying possible ways of bringing classroom experience and teaching practices to the desired outcome. Another way is to work together with a “critical friend”, such as a colleague, who can come to class and observe teaching style, classroom dynamics and overall interactions between the teacher and students.

Both approaches help with questioning and re-interpreting teachers’ experiences from a critical perspective. As a result, teachers will be able to come up with creative teaching solutions, improve their professional practices and develop as educators. (Self-)Reflection is then key for developing into a critically reflective teacher. It is a process of self-observation and self-evaluation, which improves teaching and learning practices. There downloadable handouts for both approahces with leading questions that will help this process.

“Handout for self-reflection” offers guiding questions to ask yourself when analyzing own classroom experience. 

“Handout for external reflection” offers guiding questions for an external observer to reflect about teaching practice in a structured way.