Collaborative reflection as a means to improve teachers’ reflective skills: a community of practice perspective
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This study aims at using collaborative reflection to see how it impacts teachers’ breadth and depth of reflection on teaching practice. To do so, as a part of an in-house professional development program of two schools of languages in Iran, eight teachers attended four sessions of collaborative reflection in which they focused on teacher talk. In these sessions, they wrote a reflective note about a teaching session they had observed for 20 minutes, engaged in a discussion with their peers for an additional 30 minutes, and wrote another reflective note after the sessions in another 20 minutes. Their reflective notes were compared to find possible differences. To corroborate the data, the teachers all completed narrative frames and attended semi-structured interviews in which they discussed any changes in their thoughts and the reasons for the changes. The gathered data were analyzed using in-depth thematic analysis, which involved iterative coding and theme identification to uncover differences in reflective depth and diversity. The findings indicated that collaborative reflection significantly enhanced teachers’ reflective skills, leading to more practical, and more diverse reflections. This study suggested that incorporating collaborative reflection in professional development programs can foster critical thinking and continuous improvement among language teachers.
Source: Reflective Practice
Authors: Jaber Kamali, Pourya Javahery
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4404193036