My current Understandings

Journal # 3
By Liceth Oyola Gamboa

What factors does a reflective teacher need to take into account to

improve his/her practice and student performance?

Being a reflective teacher provide us the opportunities to search for the changes
required to improve our students learning. That is why; it is relevant to bear in mind
some factors that can affect teachers improvement and students performance.
The first one would be the context, which reflects the socio-economic advantages and
disadvantages of the community and families that influence the students. The contexts
that surround the students are the ones that produce some kind of particular
configurations of behavior which might affect their learning process.
Another factor would be students motivation which would influence students needs
and desires to achieve a goal in their learning process.
Other relevant factor would be teachers expectations about his teaching process and
students outcomes. The objectives and goals the teacher pursues as a professional will
have an impact on the goals that he/she establishes for the students. In that way, students
will have a bigger probability of better results in their learning process.

How can teachers use reflection and collegial collaboration to improve

their practice and student performance?

Working as a team is a very common strategy to succeed in any task. It helps to be

more efficient, to support each member of the team, to provide more ideas and to
delegate activities that need to be carried out to achieve a goal. In this sense, to
improve our practices as teachers and our students performance, it is relevant to
share our reflections with our colleagues in order to work as a team and succeed on
giving students the opportunities for a successful learning.

That is why, teachers can get together to share what they have reflect on. Then, they
can provide ideas that help each other to find solutions, to apply new methods,
strategies, to redefine their view of teaching and learning, to delegate functions in the
behalf of their students.

Why is it important to grow as a reflective practitioner?

As we increase our process of observing, analyzing, interpreting and sharing the

reflections we make about our teaching practices, the more we get a disposition of
collaboration that opens our minds to new ideas, different views and inquiries.
Therefore, we can contribute with new actions that help to improve our teaching
practices and also our students performance.

How can teachers reflections be verbalized and translated into effective

practice?

There are many instruments that teachers can use in order to keep record of their
reflections and organize them, so they can be applied. Some of them are journals,
observation charts, videos, pictures, etc. However, I consider that one of the most

useful is the journal where you can keep information about videos and pictures you
make or even to have it organized with observation charts. Then, you can take those
reflections to plan your improvement strategies and organize a schedule and a
deadline to evaluate what you are doing with your new ideas and views. In this sense,
while you are applying you are still being a reflective practitioner.