Self-Reflective Teaching

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Action research can promote reflective teaching.

(Hensen as cited in Hine, 2013: 152)


Hensen in Hine (2013:152) pointed out that action research can promote reflective teaching. Some questions might appear in your heads, what does reflective teaching mean? As a teacher who has a busy time to manage the classroom, should we do it? In this paper, we are going to discuss it.
Language teachers from all over the world want to be a good teacher, but not all teachers can be. Then, what makes a good teacher? The answer may vary. In my point of view, one of the characteristics of a good teacher is a teacher who never stops learning, meaning that we are not merely learning new thing, but also learn from the past. We do reflection on our classroom to know whether our work is good or no. This is in line with the statement of Burns (2010:143), all good teachers do reflective teaching.


Reflection is just like a mirror. We do introspection for what we have done. It is a process of recalling the experiences and do some kind of evaluation. Shandomo (2010) revealed that examining and evaluating can lead teachers to see their attitude, practice, effectiveness, and accomplishment. To put it in my own words, doing reflection makes us understand more to ourselves as a teacher, our classroom, and our students.

I haven't done any action research before. What I did was doing some kind of daily teaching reflection. Since my very first year in teaching, I like to make a small note of my teaching situation. Then it improved to be a teaching diary. I wrote almost everything happens in the classroom, how is the students' participation, is there something interesting or bad things. Then one day when I wrote my diary, I realized that the class was not really dynamics as usual. Roughly a year ago when I taught grade nine students. There were two classes, A and B. In class B, the activities were simply dividing students into several groups to arrange the puzzle of Disney movie and guessing the title, writing a synopsis of the movie, and telling the story of the movie. Then, I did different things for class A. I put students into several groups, the students competed each other to be the fastest group in arranging the puzzle of Disney movies and guessing the title, each of group wrote 5 points about the movies and read it to let the other group compete to guess the title, the students told about the movie orally, then the students wrote a synopsis of their own movie and the other group's. These things teach me that the same material at the same level with different performance brings a different response. The students' enthusiastic to participate in classroom activities were really shown in the second class.

Still, in the same classes, I have another case in my teaching situation. Students in class B were really energetic. They cannot stay long in their bench, always moving around, visiting their friends' bench, or finding a comfortable place. Comparing to class A who was a calm class, they can keep staying on their bench, looking at the whiteboard or projector focus silently. One day, I had a chit-chat with some teachers talking about these classes. Some teachers had the same opinion. They said class B was a very noisy classroom. Most of them loved to teach in class A who were very calm. Then the head of curriculum told me the result of the students learning style test from grade nine (it is a job of Learning Support Center now in my school). The data said that most of the students in class B are kinesthetic and auditory students. While in class A, most of them are visual students. Then it leads me to a light way. Not only knowing the reasons for their attitude in the classroom but also starting from that day, I suited their learning style with the classroom activities.

To sum up, we can have a ‘small' action research in our daily teaching. It can foster us to say, "how can I do it better?" Reflection does not only focus on our struggles and weakness but also make us aware of our success and strength that can be continued. I think it is important to emphasize that reflection can lead us where to go.


References

Burns, A. (2010). Doing Action Research in English Language Teaching. New York & London: Routledge. 143.
Hine, G.S.C. (2013). The Importance of Action Research in Teacher Education programs. Issues in Educational Research: Special Issue, 23(2), 152.
Shandomo, M. H.  (2010). The Role of Critical Reflection in Teacher Education. School–University Partnerships 4(1), 103.

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