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Photo Credit : Torbus |
How many times does it happen that you come across an incident that
forces you to reflect and make you dig deeper to get a better
understanding of underlying theories so that you can improve on your
teaching practice. These incidents are happening all the time but not
everybody is equipped to spot these opportunities and not everybody can
reflect on it.
Reflection in a professional setting is:- deliberate;
- purposeful;
- structured;
- about linking theory and practice;
- to do with learning;
- about change and development.
Step 1 : Setup the group
Decide on the members of the group and the roles that they will play.
- In case there are many inexperienced educators then it makes sense to nominate a few of the senior educators as the group coordinators with the responsibility of spotting, sharing and sequencing the flinnts.
- In case it is a small group of equally experienced educators then it makes sense to put all the peers at the same level and let all of them post the flinnts.
- All it requires is that too many incidents being posted without due deliberation and inquiry is not desirable, hence having clear role definitions and rules is imperative for a successful professional development group.
It is important that this group does not become a place for big educational theories to be floated around, the group will begin to believe that this group is like the teacher education courses with a lot of focus on theory and scant regard to practice.
Hence real incidents like:
- Some examples of classroom behaviour;
- Parental feedback and expectations;
- Planned lesson activities;
- Assessment samples.
Step 3 : Structure, sequence and collaborate
The versatility of the Flinnt platform in terms of its ability to tag each of the post, the chronological sequence and the ability to share various kinds of media like links to various websites, links to youtube videos, sharing of documents, audio recordings and images make it the ideal choice to sequence a series of flinnts. Based on each of the issue a deliberate, purposeful and structured sequence of flinnts should be posted bringing out the issue and further linking theory and practice.
Try to limit yourself to 1-2 flinnts everyday as it might not be possible for all the educators to read, comprehend and contribute to the discussion if it is going along at a break neck speed. Always remember that in case of professional development, quality always takes precedent over quantity. One topic that has been fully exploited for its learning potential is better than 10 topics that are discussed in a superfluous manner.
Step 4 : Summarize and conclude
It is important that once all the flinnts related to the incident have been posted and a discussion has been initiated, one or two flinnts with a summary of what has been discussed and what has been the learning should be posted. It is important that the message be reinforced, all the group members might not be at the same level of professional development and some of them might take a little longer to comprehend what is being said. You need to scaffold the team members in exactly the same manner that you expect them to work with their learners.
MOST IMPORTANT:
Get started! It all sounds very good but all you need to do is take the first step and get started, I am sure once you start, rest of the things will fall in place.
Happy Flinnting.
Yes Mr. Harish,
ReplyDeleteI very well agree that rather than the big educational theories if we purposefully analyse and share those small incidents in the classroom and school ecosystem, a number of issues in teaching learning can be very well addressed and solved. The rule of one set of all never worked. Regional and individual sensitivity need to be addressed and reflected.
Let us begin...
Can't agree more, Harish
ReplyDeleteDaily sharing of bits and pieces of experiences may lead to creating a repository and you can use it to reflect on it. Time and again you can go back to the repository and refer to it for a particular point.