Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher

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Questioning one’s own self for the success or failure of the learning process in the classroom in terms of attitudes, beliefs, values, traditions and pedagogy is not only an essential ingredient of teaching profession but it also helps an individual to be a valuable resource of a prosperous society. Theorists have named this self-evaluation as reflection and have given different perspectives and processes to define and practice it. It is necessary for an individual to understand the process of reflection and its types based on the time factor for the reflective action. The importance of reflective practice is so much emphasized that it is considered as a bedrock activity for the teaching identity. For some individuals it is an inborn property but anyone can master the skill of reflective practice by using the strategies and tools provided to accomplish the goal of continuing professional development and lifelong learning. Among the prominent strategies, students’ evaluation forms are the most common source of reflection along with their advantages and limitations. It is vital that a teacher fully understands the concept of reflection, its implementation using different strategies especially students’ feedback and its purpose and significance in work-based learning. So the first step that a teacher needs to take is to comprehend the broad multi-dimensional concept of reflection.
Smyth (1992) observes that the concept of reflection is multidimensional and all individuals attach different unrevealed interpretations with it based on what is good or desirable in their context or culture (p.285). People all around the world have different backgrounds, cultures, values, profession and even languages and based on all these fact...

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