Bullock and Hawk (2005)
Chapter 3 of the book Developing a Teaching Portfolio emphasizes the importance of reflection in portfolio development. Through the process of reflection, a teacher can understand her/himself in relation to practice and be more responsible of her or his own voice in the evaluation which further leads to better teaching and better professionals. Bullock and Hawk (2005) point out the three vital stages in the process of reflection. The first one is description. This is stage where the portfolio developer describe who, what, when, where, and how things happen in the classroom. Then there is the analysis stage. In this stage, patterns existing in both strengths and weaknesses are looked at. The plus/delta T chart assists teachers to analyze their lessons. The last stage is future impact. This stage is considered the most important since if there is no future improvement, then there’s no reason for one to reflect. The future impact allows the developers to make future implication and based from this, plan future lessons. Bullock and Hawk (2005) also state that there are four things developers must consider before writing a reflection. The first one is the audience. It is vital to know who the audience is. The second one is clear writing. The writing should be well written and clearly written. The third thing is voice. Since it is a personal reflection, the developer can use the first person voice. The last one is bias. The developer should not offend any audience by using sensible terms that can show preconceptions and stereotypes of any kind. The three stages of reflections and the four areas to consider will be an excellent guideline in writing a reflection in portfolio development.
Richards and Lockhart (1996)
Chapter 4 of the book Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms emphasizes the teacher decision making and explains how these decisions have an effect on teaching and learning. Teachers make a lot of decisions in everyday teaching. For instance, we have a lot options in choosing what, when, where, and how we want to implement that option into our teaching. Teachers think about the audience and the goal of the class and decide on the best option. Richards and Lockhart (1996) introduces three stages of decisions. The first one is the planning decisions. As one can infer from its name, those are the decisions that are made before the lesson at the planning stage. In this stage, macro-plans or micro-level plans or instructional or behavioral objectives are decided depending on individual teachers. Brindley (1984) introduces four types of objectives that teachers’ use for their classrooms: 1) instructional goals, 2) descriptions of course and language content, 3) quantity of learning content, and 4) learning materials. The second one is the interactive decision and is the on-the-spot decisions that are made during the lesson. Since the lessons are unpredictable, dynamic, and complex, some decisions must be made during a lesson appropriate to the specific need in the classroom.
The last one is the evaluative decisions. These decisions are made after the lesson and are decided upon what will be effective in the future lessons. Two important factors in this book was that all the decisions that the teachers make in their teaching reflect the teacher’s teaching philosophy and that all three types of decisions are interconnected and affect each other.
Chapter 5 covers the role of the teacher. Richards and Lockhart (1996) provide the readers with three factors that are reflected by the roles of the teacher. The first one is the roles reflecting institutional factors. A particular role of teacher is created based on different teaching settings, the institutional administrative structure, the culture operating in each institution, and its teaching philosophy. That is, if a teacher is working for a school that employs very traditional teaching methodology, then the role of the teacher might reflect those institutional factors. The second one is the roles reflecting a teaching approach or method. The role of teacher is also influenced by the approach or methodology the teacher believes in as effective. Richards and Lockhart (1996) introduce six approaches or methodologies and shows how they affect the role of teachers. They are 1) Direct Method, 2) Active Teaching, 3) Cooperative Learning 4) Audiolingualism, 5) Communicative Language Teaching, and 6) Total Physical Response. The last one is the roles reflecting a personal view of teaching. Teachers create their own roles based on their personal interpretation of what they believe is the most effective way of teaching and learning. Teachers choose themselves roles such as planner, manage, quality controller, group organizer, facilitator, motivator, empowerer, and team member. It is very interesting that such roles of teachers change during the lessons depending on the particular need of the classroom. For inst
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Jeongeun
3/25/2011 03:00:03 am
Week 4
Bullock & Hawk(2010) Developing a Teaching Portfolio Chapter 3
I got some idea about how to write reflection. According to this book, my reflection needs more description, analysis, and future impact. Rather, I wrote down my feelings and thoughts that don’t belong to any categories. I’d like to follow this procedure and go see what changes happens in my observation and teaching. Next, T-chart is very adaptable. It’s very easy to use, and the graphic organizer shows good thing and bad ones at the same time. I’ll implement this chart on my teaching at school. Lastly, critically thinking is challenging to me because I paralyzed this function a long time ago to be survived among people. I need to bring this sense again but it’s a double-edged sword because it hurts someone’s feelings even though it’s used very super carefully. I will go and see how constructive criticism works.
Question for Clarification: What does it mean: “on two- and three-digit division…”? (page 37, Reflection 3: A Videotaped Lesson)
Costantino & Lorenzo(2002) Developing a Professional Teaching Portfolio
Chapter 4 &5
This book gives me information about what I can collect for my better portfolio. This book comments something that I haven’t thought about accumulating such as letters, a list of books that I’ve read, honors, notes, standards and so forth. Thanks to practicum, I have a chance to arrange what I’ve done so far by gathering all the materials, and documents. This process gives me a chance to think about which direction I’ve pursued and also let me think what the next step is for my future teaching career.
Next, the information of e-portfolio is useful to me. In my office, there are 10 boxes containing materials and documents. In my room, there are 5 big boxes that I put old resources into. On the shelves, so many books and educational magazines are piled. It’s very hard to keep all the things in the small room and to put those things into my portfolio. I think it’s impossible to show all the proof about what I’ve tried to be a better teacher by using with one paper-type portfolio. I’m the old generation that prefers printed things, but it’s very tempting to show what I’ve done so far with e-portfolio.
Question: Which is a better way, e-portfolio or paper-type portfolio?
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haewon
3/25/2011 07:29:15 pm
Chapter 3 Bullock & Hawk
Reflection is the main element in portfolio development. Reflection shows what the teacher views about his/her own teaching. It is very subjective and clearly shows the developer’s point of view through the evidence in the portfolio. Reflection is not a product of one’s teaching but rather it is the on-going process of events so that later the developer can change his/her future lessons accordingly. There are three components: (1) description, (2) analysis, and (3) future impact. I think the final stage of reflection which is the future impact, is most important part of one’s portfolio. Through this the developer can make the lesson more suitable for his/her own students.
Chapter 4 & 5 Richards & Lockhart
When making plans for a class, teachers develop macro-plans or micro-level plans according to the duration. Macro plans are overall goals for a class and they use these to make daily lesson plans (the micro-level). Lesson plans should include particular learning outcomes at the end of the lesson and these are called behavioral objectives. On page 79, a behavioral objective can be divided into four dimensions such as:
1)The students as the subject, 2) an action verb that defines behavior or performance to be learned, 3) conditions under which the student will demonstrate what is learned, and 4) minimum level of performance required after instruction.
I usually include the fourth dimension in my lesson plan and develop activities accordingly. Sometimes even with my language or behavioral objectives, I end up not completing the class successfully. In that case, I usually try to review the lesson on the following day to check my students’ understanding. Since lessons are not predictable, there needs to be a constant change of plans. Moreover when you are teaching children, you never know which activities would work for them for sure. Therefore teachers continually make decisions during the lesson and these decisions are called interactive decisions; more experienced teachers would monitor and modify their instruction.
Teacher’s role depends on the setting. Whether you are a secondary school teacher, a university instructor or a private tutor may create specific roles based on the culture and structure of the institutions. Another factor which influences the teacher’s role is the approach or methodology that he/she is following. For example, some teachers may follow communicative language teaching while others follow a whole language approach. In other words, teachers make their own roles in the classroom according to their teaching philosophy or their own belief on teaching. For me, I am not comfortable with teaching grammar rules directly to my students, so I prefer teaching inductively using a lot of examples via modeling.
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Mr.Lee
3/25/2011 09:51:39 pm
Ch4. Teacher decision making
Teaching is an endless process of thinking and decision-making. Teachers are required to make decisions best suited to a specific goal or purpose at their own discretion. Teachers-made decisions are largely divided into three. One is planning decisions. Some teachers plan at the macro-level, which means they establish overall goals or paradigms as standard reference. Others work at the micro-level without having regular reference. Many teachers use lesson plans in planning lessons. They usually include class and student information, aims of each lesson, time schedules, activities, tasks, teaching strategies, teaching tools and class materials. Sometimes, intended outcomes could be included in terms of behavioral objectives in lesson plans. However, some believe that the act of planning lessons does limit the spontaneity and naturalness of class, and claim to use a mental lesson plan with no paper work needed.
However hard and thorough teachers plan ahead of time, lessons are unpredictable and always changing, thus requiring teachers to make interactive decisions. These decisions are important since they help teachers to react and respond to students’ needs more accordingly. Since the teaching-learning process is based on close interactions between the teacher and students, making appropriate interactive decisions is what teachers need to be good at.
After lessons, teachers make another kind of decisions: evaluative decisions. Teachers ask several questions of themselves to assess the lesson and make evaluative decisions. There are several criteria teachers can refer to in order to evaluating lessons.
Ch5. The role of the teacher
Roles of teachers can be interpreted in different ways depending on what factors to be considered. Teachers’ roles are influenced greatly by where they work since different settings require different things. The roles of teachers can be expanded to needs analyst, curriculum developer or counselor, even researcher. In addition, the role of teachers can be influenced by teaching approach or methodology they employ. In fact, some teachers implement specific approaches or methods in their teaching and use those terms in their descriptions.
Even though teachers are influenced by the teaching philosophy of their institution, their roles can also fall under the influence of their personal view. In other words, teachers tend to provide relevant roles in times of need such as planner, manager, facilitator or independent team member. Teaching theories, personal experiences and interaction between the teacher and students all have a great impact on forming new roles of the teacher in the classroom.
Lastly, culture plays an important role in defining the roles of a teacher. As one great example, the Korean attitude toward learning is different from that of Canada. The former is more teacher-dominated while the latter is more student-centered. Moreover, these cultural differences result in different expectations on the roles of a teacher and students. Therefore, in order to prevent or minimize these culture-based conflicts, such attitudinal differences need to be well understood among different cultures.
Chapter 3 Reflection
Needless to say, reflection is a critical component in terms of developing portfolio. It reminds the agent of what he is doing with what goals or purposes. If reflection is missing in a portfolio, then it is nothing but a collection of documents out of perspective. Reflection also benefits readers since it helps them to understand the developer’s progress and intention in a clear way. In addition, the process of reflection does provide professional insights into his instruction so that his teaching can improve in the end. Teaching reflection is usually made up of three elements: description, analysis and future impact. Through the cycle, teachers can see where he is standing in the teaching domain, and keep looking to see if there is any room for improvement employing all the available resources including experiences, theoretical knowledge and students’ response. Additionally, possible factors that could influence the direction of teaching such as ethnic groups, gender, or specific student needs should be considered to come up with more appropriate and objective reflection. Overall, portfolio carries a significant meaning when it brings a teacher’s voice, and that can be fulfilled via reflection.
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Soohyun
3/26/2011 06:45:51 pm
Bullock and Hawk Chapter 3 Reflection
Reflection is the important step as a teaching practitioner to self-assess on their practice of teaching to be improved. Reflection in teaching portfolios constitutes three elements; a description, an analysis, and a future impact. Description is basically to describe what happened during the lesson, as a process of collecting data. An analysis stage enables to look for strong and weak points from the collected evidence. Using Plus/Delta Chart can offer an organized way to begin this stage. The most significant stage is the future impact, in which teacher needs to make implications for the future lesson based on the evidence.
What I learned from a few things that should be considered when writing reflection in teaching portfolio is that it is well written and the content is accurate and honest. Also having a critical view point must play a key role for high quality of reflection. Peer observation can help to have an analytical eye if it is hard to begin on their own even though it sounds a bit threatening to be criticized. In fact, what I believe most important thing is that actually to try out improved version of a lesson after the reflection to see the effects and reach their own conclusion as an action research step illustrates.
Richards Lockhart Chapter 4 and 5
Teacher decision making
Based on a concept that teaching is a thinking process, teachers’ decision making can be categorized as three stages as planning, interactive and evaluative. Some teachers have a lesson objectives for the lesson as to develop it macro level while others design it micro-level, planning more on a day-to-day basis. One of the points that Nunan (1998) made as an importance of making course objectives explicit, what I liked best was that learners come to have a more realistic idea of what can be achieved in a given course.
As I reflect my general teaching planning habits, I was more likely to visualize what would happen in the class focusing more on detailed activities without having explicit objectives. It sometimes led me miss the goal of the lesson. I realized that I should firstly make achievable aims for the students then incorporate various activities and strategies as a micro level planning.
Interactive decision is something that teachers revise their practice of teaching in response to students’ reaction during the class. Hence, it can be spontaneous and improvisatory. I think I depend more on interactive decisions compared to planning ones as I encounter many unpredicted responses from students. As three examples of teaching journals show, I used to drop many of my original plans after observation and reactions of the students. However, it sometimes made me lose the control of the class, following students’ appetites. Therefore, I think I need to try to stick to the original lesson plan with definite course objective then make interactive decision to meet students’ needs if it promotes their engagement or motivation in the task.
The evaluative decisions sound similar to what teachers do in the reflection. When evaluating, teachers tend to base their judgments on their own personal believe system, considering what constitutes good teaching. As Richrads, Ho, and Giblin (1992) studied through completing the UCLES/RSA Certificate, there’s a movement to amore holistic evaluation of teaching , focused more on such dimensions a structuring and cohesion and student participation in lessons (Richards, 2002). This is something I think I as a teaching practitioner and a self-evaluator should keep in mind as I reflect on my teaching not only through this practicum course but also my general teaching.
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Soohyun
3/26/2011 06:48:14 pm
The Role of the teacher
Teachers take various roles according to institutional factors, teaching approaches, personal view of teaching and cultural dimensions. The type of role that a teacher takes in the classroom determines a teacher’s teaching style and it originates from individual teacher’s belief system. In the reality, it seems natural to take multi-roles during one lesson. All different types of roles that were presented in this chapter sounds very ideal to be a planner, manager, quality controller, group organizer, facilitator, motivator, empowerer, and team member. If I have to decide a few roles among these, I would like to be a planner, facilitator, and a motivator. The case renegotiating teacher-learner roles from the action research was quiet interesting to me. The teacher used to keep a tight control over the class but later he/she implemented a contract system where students can choose what they want to do as an activity. This eventually increased students’ motivation and most interesting part was they had asked to be assessed on. Despite the fact that it may require a teacher to prepare supplementary tasks to meet their needs, it sounds like a very satisfactory lesson from both teachers’ and students’ points of view.
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Jeongeun
3/27/2011 12:17:41 am
Oops,my second review was wrong. I read a different book. Here is a right one.
Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms Chapter 4& 5
I could reflect my teaching on three points. The first one is about decision making. In Chapter 4, three decision-making strategies are well-summarized: planning decision, interactive decision, and evaluative decision. I was surprised that all the terms regarding decision making were already categorized by somebody. The decision making on which I want to focus is interactive decision. When I was a student teacher 8 years ago, I studied under a very experienced teacher who was able to apply all kinds of skills. She observed and analyzed how students were doing and took the appropriate treatment at the right time. In my view, she had mastered the art of teaching and interactive decision. Next, I could check how many questions I ask myself for planning decision making. Roughly, I think of 16 out of 19 questions on page 82. If teachers ask themselves all the questions, they can develop their own teaching skills. It is very ideal but it is worth asking those questions. As great teachers consider the questions spontaneously, I hope that one day I can take a consideration of those points naturally. I also found that I take curriculum-based approach because teaching different thing from the given curriculum is a risk at school. When student score doesn’t meet the average, the responsibility is all mine. The administrative might think I’m not competent no matter how hard I tried innovative teaching technologies. Thus, basically I adapt a new thing based on curriculum. Lastly, I’m on the right track to be a professional teacher. I am not ready for the role of mentor and curriculum developer yet, but I take other roles in my class: a needs analyst by surveying students’ opinion on the first class, a material developer by creating appropriate materials, a counselor by encouraging lower level students, a team member by co-teaching with a native teacher, a researcher by doing an action research by myself, and a professional by taking SMU TESOL program. In conclusion, through two chapters, I could think of what I’ve done so far and what I need to develop.
Question: What strategies are effective to monitor students?
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Jooyeon
3/27/2011 12:44:18 pm
Bullock and Hawk (2005)
Chapter 3 of the book Developing a Teaching Portfolio emphasized on theimportance of reflection in portfolio development. Reflection is defined by Bullock and Hawk (2005) as the process of looking at information or events, thinking and critiquing them and then using the results to change or enhance future action. It facilitates the understanding of self in regard with teaching practice. Reflection enables the teachers to have insights into various dimensions of the teaching and learning process that can lead to better teaching. Teaching reflection consists of description, analysis and future impact. When writing a reflection, audience, clear writing, voice and bias should be considered.
Richards and Lockhart (1996)
Chapter 4 of the book Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms examines the importance of teacher decision making and the effects of these decision on teaching and learning. At every stage of teaching, teachers are confronted with a wide range of options from which they have to choose what they think is the best. According to the stages of teaching, different kinds of decisions are made; Planning decisions before the lesson, interactive decisions during the lesson, and evaluative decisions after the lesson. The decisions the teacher adopts reflect the teacher’s beliefs about teaching and learning. Interactive decisions are important in that it enables the teachers to monitor the students’ response to teaching and to modify their instructions to provide optimal support for learning on the spot. The types of decisions made during class are about student motivation and involvement, language skills, affective needs, student understanding, subject matter content, curriculum integration and instructional management. The evaluative decisions the teachers made provide input to planning decisions that they make on subsequent lessons.
Chapter 5 examines the roles of the teacher in their situations, the responsibilities that different kinds of roles create for teachers and how these roles contribute to their teaching style. The roles of teachers can be different depending on the institution, teaching approaches or methods, personal view of teaching and cultural background. Different teaching settings create particular roles for teachers. The institution’s operating system and its teaching philosophy imposes different roles on teachers and sometimes the roles need institutional assistance. Some of the roles the teachers are requested to play are needs analyst, curriculum developer, material developer, counselor, mentor, team member, researcher, and professional. The role of the teachers in their own classroom is influenced by the teaching approach or methods the teachers believe in. The role of the teacher is implicitly assumed in every methodology. For example, in communicative language teaching, teacher roles are specified as a facilitator in the communication process, as participants and as a researcher and learner. The teachers also create their own roles within the classrooms based on what they believe works best in a given situation, instead of within the framework of a theory or a methodology. Culture is another important dimension to consider the roles of the teacher. Often the roles of the teachers in Western and Eastern education are different. Western education focuses more on individual learner creativity and encourages the teacher to facilitate independent learning whereas the Eastern education weighed a teacher controlled and directed process. These differences influence the expectations that both learner and teacher have about the other. If these expectations are in conflict there might be misunderstandings.
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