Reflecting on & Improving Teaching
Pause for a moment and think back to your most recent teaching experience. Did the class activity go as you expected? Did students meet the stated learning goals? Could this activity be modified for use in different courses? Asking yourself such questions helps you to reflect on your teaching practice, a key part of improving teaching.
Improving teaching is an iterative process that cycles between teaching, reflecting, and modifying. Here, we will discuss various methods for developing a reflective practice and documenting your teaching effectiveness, which will help you track your progress and will be a valuable tool when applying for teaching positions.
Critical Thinking
Push yourself to analyze all aspects of your teaching. What elements of a class or unit went well? Can you identify why a particular concept seemed more difficult for students to learn than you expected? Did issues with technology or materials take attention away from the learning experience? Ask yourself these questions from various perspectives – think about your own experience preparing and leading an activity as well as how the students may have perceived that activity. Weighing your own time investment against the benefit for students may help you develop learning activities that maximize student learning while being manageable for you to plan. Also consider how elements of the classroom culture may be shaping the learning environment. For example, if you have a small group of students that dominated a discussion, in the future you could design an alternative discussion (such as a chalk-talk) that intentionally engages quieter students.
Critiquing your teaching may be especially difficult when processing classes that did not go as planned. However, keep in mind that identifying the weaknesses of a particular activity can help them go more smoothly next time.
Recording your reflections
When developing your reflective practice, aim for consistency. This will help you track your teaching improvements over time. Scheduling a time each week to write about your teaching practice will help reflection become a habit. You can also experiment with various platforms for recording your teaching – you could use a physical journal, digital writing apps, or notes written directly on teaching materials like handouts or class outlines.
Developing a Reflective Practice
Reflecting on your teaching will help you improve throughout your career. However, developing a reflective practice that will allow you to make targeted modifications for future improvement is a skill in and of itself. Key elements of a reflective practice include critical thinking, consistency, and a strategy for planning future improvements. The work that you put into developing a reflective practice can become part of your teaching portfolio, or the documentation that you use to demonstrate the effectiveness of your teaching for use in promotion and job applications. See here for more information on what resources can help you document your teaching practice.
Planning Future Improvements
The next step in improving your teaching is applying what you have learned to future lessons. After going through your general reflection, write out specific goals and a tangible strategy that will help you meet each goal. When designing these modifications, make sure that your teaching goals and approaches for meeting them are in alignment.
There are many online resources for teaching self-assessment that can help you improve specific class plans and also provide suggestions for broader teaching goals, such as inclusive practices and organizational skills:
See this worksheet developed by CITL for more details on developing a reflective teaching practice.