“Change in our behavior and our inner life aspects of our professional practice requires a shift in our attentions from what we do not or only insufficiently attend to, to what we have recognized we need to attend to” (Falkenberg, 2012).

I recently read Thomas Falkenberg’s Teaching as Contemplative Professional Practice, and what kept coming back to my mind was an article about reflective teaching I share with new teachers, and the reason why I started sharing it in the first place.

A few years ago, a department colleague suggested we share articles on teaching and learning as a form of professional development. We took turns every month,  sharing an article, and then discussing it at our monthly meeting. The topics addressed topics like assessment, mental health and lifelong learning. The topic I chose to share with my colleagues was becoming a reflective teacher.

I selected this topic because a younger teacher, not a new one, didn’t understand why many of us in the department spent semester break planning and revamping our lessons and assessments.  We explained that each time we teach a course, no matter how many times we already have in the past, we learn new things, new ways to engage students, to help them succeed, and that it would be poor practice not to reflect and evolve. So when it was my turn to provide an article, I thought about how I could engage individuals who didn’t understand the efforts  we were putting into our “same old courses”.

The article  Brookfield’s Four Lenses: Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher by Stephen Brookfield discusses the idea that self-reflection garners an increased awareness of an individuals teaching from different perspectives or lenses: the autobiographical, the students’ eyes, our colleague’s experiences and theoretical literature.  According to the article, excellent teachers are those that constantly look for ways to improve their own teaching by critically reflecting via all four lenses. The result is improved teacher motivation, congeniality, student engagement, and critically reflective students. Similar to Falkenberg’s paper where he defines education as a process to the betterment of all living things, which can be achieved through contemplative self awareness. Both articles suggest that reflective practice is important, as it helps educators break out of their routines and through understanding one’s emotional and mental states, individuals can improve and better connect with their students.

So this brings me back to the situation that motivated me to share the Brookfield article in the first place. For teachers to improve their professional practice, reflection is way of developing our sensitivities, which helps us to foster effective relationships with out students and peers. This moral practice is an ongoing form of professional development that creates and nurtures compassion, respect and decency, values that are necessary for the betterment of society. Many of these same ideas are those skills or lenses found in 21st Century Learning.

Falkenberg, T. (2012). Teaching as contemplative professional practice. Paideusis, 20(2), 25 – 35.

Miller, B. (1996). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. Choice Reviews Online, 33(09). doi:10.5860/choice.33-5232