How Teachers Can Strengthen Their Capacity to Reflect on Practice

“Growth, improvement, progress, and development don’t just happen overnight, and they typically don’t happen accidentally. They’re a result of intentionality, planning, conscious effort, and thought.” Those words are excerpted from the book Teach, Reflect, Learn: Building Your Capacity for Success in the Classroom, by Pete Hall and Alisa Simeral (ASCD, 2015).

Co-written by a successful principal and a school-based coach, this book can be a powerful guide for school-based coaches, lead teachers, or teachers seeking to improve their craft. The subtitle of the book—Building Your Capacity for Success in the Classroom—grabbed my initial attention. What kept my attention were the constant use of words like “reflection,” “intentionality,” “focus”, and “deliberate planning.”

The authors’ thinking aligns with the philosophy of the Alabama Best Practices Center: professional learning partnerships and the partnership principles. They contend that one of the major reasons that the knowing/doing gap is well in place is that change is hard to make and oftentimes even harder to sustain. This is compounded by the fact that teachers, living in the immediacy of teaching, aren’t often given the opportunity to reflect, a necessary component to successful change.

What and Why Should Come Before How

The first two chapters set the stage for the rest of the book. One of the most intriguing parts of the first section was the authors’ decision to suggest that instead of focusing only on the knowing-doing gap, we ought to also consider the “doing-thinking gap” —

“Many of us, either in our personal or professional lives (or both), fall into habits and routines for how we go about our business. Often, we just do things the way we do because, well, that’s just the way we do it. We don’t really think about why we do it that way; we just do.” (p. 16)

They point to the dismaying fact that oftentimes educators embrace a concept without investing the time needed to think about the “why” and the “what” before moving to the “how.”

As an example, they point to Marzano’s classic book on effective practice, Classroom Instruction That Works (2001), which cited “Identifying Similarities and Differences” as an important strategy. The result? Teachers began creating lots of lessons using a Venn Diagram, “whether it was an appropriate educational tool or not” for the content or skill being taught. (p. 17)

Instead, they argue, teachers need to develop self-reflective skills that can help them better design lesson units and be in tune with their students’ needs as well as their own.

A Self-Assessment Tool to Gauge Reflection

To help educators become more self-reflective, the authors offer a Reflective Self-Assessment Tool, accompanied by a scoring guide.

The scoring guide identifies four stages that categorize educators based on their individual score: Unaware Stage, Conscious Stage, Action Stage, and Refinement Stage. The rest of the book is devoted to chapters on each stage and a description of two different teachers that fall into that specific stage. Each of these four chapters also contains a “Six Week Challenge” to help teachers strengthen their self-reflective and teaching skills.

The authors are quick to point out that these stages aren’t meant to be judgmental; rather the stages are just a snapshot of where a teacher currently “is,” accompanied by strategies that can be used to strengthen individual knowledge and skills.

Unaware Stage
Hall and Simeral suggest that teachers scoring in this stage have not “yet learned about certain teaching strategies, aren’t yet attuned to the finer details of their class and students, and do not yet reflect deeply about their particularly responsibilities” (p. 46). Notice the repeated use of the word “yet”—a nod to Carol Dweck and the growth mindset. Dweck encourages teachers to use the word “yet” when talking to students who have not completely mastered a concept to demonstrate their belief that the student will get there. My guess is that many beginning teachers and those who rely almost exclusively on the textbook as “their curriculum” could likely fall into this category.

Conscious Stage
Teachers falling into this category often struggle to “implement their knowledge into solid, transformative action.” (p. 71). Teachers in this stage often feel stuck and seem willing to accept the status quo, even though they know that things need to change. Often they are afraid to ask for help, or just don’t know what next action step to take.

Action Stage
Teachers in the action stage are “proficient in the science of teaching but need to connect it with the art of making necessary alterations.” (p. 97) Hall and Simeral suggest that action stage teachers could improve their skills by analyzing their teaching—perhaps videotaping themselves teaching a lesson—and asking the question: “How do I know whether my actions affect student learning?” (p. 102)

Refinement Stage
Teachers in this stage are getting close to what John Hattie suggests is the most important aspect of teaching: Knowing Thy Practice. They are thinking “critically throughout their day, continuously reflect[ing] on their practice and dial[ing] in to the learning that is taking place in each moment of the day.” (p. 123) Hall and Simeral suggest that teachers in the refinement stage improve their craft skills through continued reflection and a willingness to share their learning and insights with others.

A Useful Resource for Instructional Partners and Coaches

The power of the book lies in the self-assessments and the four chapters describing the stages and suggesting “exercises” to strengthen our skills. As a result, this book could become an invaluable tool to school-based instructional coaches, instructional partners, or any one working in a coaching or evaluative capacity. It’s available through Amazon and at ASCD, with a discount for members.