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  • Support for early career teachers
  • Education Development Trust
  • Year 2: Second half-term: continuing your professional development
    • Summer week 2

    Induction tutor materials

    Training session - reflective practice

    Duration: 90 minutes

    Session objectives

    Learn that:

    • 8.2. Reflective practice, supported by feedback from and observation of experienced colleagues, professional debate, and learning from educational research, is also likely to support improvement.

    Learn how to:

    Develop as a professional by:

    • 8c. Seeking challenge, feedback and critique from mentors and other colleagues in an open and trusting working environment.
    • 8d. Engaging critically with research and discussing evidence with colleagues.
    • 8e. Reflecting on progress made, recognising strengths and weaknesses and identifying next steps for further improvement.

    How to prepare for the session

    These resources may be helpful:

    Session structure:

    Introduction to the session (10 minutes)

    Explain that this session will explore how ECTs can continue to improve their practice through:

    • reflecting on progress made
    • seeking challenge, feedback and critique from colleagues
    • engaging critically with research

    Ask ECTs to note how frequently they use each of these strategies for reflective practice to support improvement, and how useful they find them.

    ECTs may wish to continue identifying and noting next steps for improvement in each area throughout the session.

    Reflecting on progress made (20 minutes)

    Reflecting on our practice supports helps us to identify areas for improvement.

    Ask ECTs to identify how they’ll continue to do this as they move through their career. They may already have an effective process, which they can share with the group.

    Examples include:

    • keeping a journal to regularly note their reflections
    • make a space on lesson plans or schemes of work for reflective notes after each lesson
    • choose a ‘sample’ lesson each week, or a series of lessons each half term, on which to reflect in depth

    Ask:

    • what went well?
    • what went badly?
    • what have you learned?
    • what will you do next?

    Remind ECTs to think carefully about how they can keep their reflections secure and anonymous where relevant.

    Summarise that regular reflection over time helps teachers to identify areas of strengths and weakness.

    This can help them to identify and take further steps for development.

    Seeking challenge, feedback and critique from colleagues (25 minutes)

    This section asks ECTs to explore how they’ll seek to continue receiving feedback from colleagues after they complete their induction.

    Schools may have structures in place for peer observation and review, such as ongoing mentoring, peer-support groups, or teacher research groups.

    Ask ECTs how they’ll continue to learn through feedback from and observation of experienced colleagues.

    ECTs should identify one or more colleagues:

    • who they can observe and be observed by to learn from their pedagogical approaches
    • from another phase or subject area who they can observe and be observed by to learn from their behaviour management or other approaches
    • who can regularly observe the ECT to identify strengths and weaknesses
    • who they’ll invite to join a reading group, where they share and discuss evidence from research ECTs should choose people who they trust, can have open conversations with, and feel are able to offer challenge and critique in a respectful and constructive way.

    Discuss the following statements:

    • it’s hard not to have an emotional response to feedback
    • feedback can feel really personal

    Ask, how can we avoid taking feedback personally? How can we separate professional advice and personal emotion?

    Reponses may include:

    • reinforcing the concept of a growth mindset
    • continued professional development is important for your development
    • even the most experienced teachers need feedback
    • it's important to recognise your own response to feedback and think about how you deal with this
    • a safe space is vital in order to foster useful feedback that can be responded to
    • stop your first reaction, stay silent and think, then purposefully remind yourself of the benefits of feedback, then use listening and questioning techniques to deconstruct and depersonalise the feedback

    Share this list of strategies and questions for receiving effective feedback.

    Tips for getting feedback:

    • be clear in your own mind what you want to find out and plan an observation where this will be covered
    • do not ask for too much feedback in one go: focus on 1 or 2 specific aspects of your practice
    • focus on ‘how’ in relation to specific issues: get feedback on and tips to improve things like common routines, aspects of lessons and question forms
    • be aware of colleagues’ workloads and ask them when they have time to help you
    • colleagues may need time to think about their feedback to you, so give them time for this
    • make time to listen to the feedback
    • show appreciation and say thank you
    • ask if it’s OK to come back to the person giving you feedback after you’ve thought about it
    • do not take feedback personally: this is about professional development not about you as a person

    Possible questions when seeking feedback:

    • how did I...?
    • how would you...?
    • if you were teaching this class, what would you do in relation to….?
    • if you were teaching this pupil, what would you do in relation to….?
    • if I could do one thing better in relation to…., what would it be?
    • how do I improve my relationship with this group of pupils?
    • how can I get better at teaching this topic?
    • what's the most useful thing you say to parents in relation to….?

    Ask ECTs to identify and record when and how they’ll implement this approach, and the first areas of practice they would like to discuss with colleagues.

    Engaging critically with research (30 minutes)

    Teachers encounter research evidence in many ways.

    Ask, what makes a reliable source of evidence?

    Share the following questions to help ECTs consider how reliable evidence may be:

    • who is the author?
    • what's their expertise and experience?
    • are they qualified to comment on this issue?
    • how does their theory fit the available evidence?

    Share this list of sources of evidence:

    • blogs
    • books
    • colleagues
    • Department for Education
    • Education Endowment Foundation
    • newspapers and television
    • Ofsted
    • organisations such as National Foundation for Educational Research
    • peer-reviewed journal articles
    • social media
    • subject associations
    • TeachMeets and other networks

    Ask ECTs to sort these sources into the following categories:

    • always reliable
    • sometimes reliable
    • never reliable

    Ask ECTs to review sources they’ve classed as ‘sometimes reliable’. There may be many of these.

    What further information would ECTs need to decide whether the evidence is reliable?

    Options may include:

    • knowing who the work was funded or written by
    • checking if the author is qualified to comment on the issue
    • what scale of evidence was collected and how
    • where the research was carried out
    • discussing the evidence with colleagues (in journal clubs, best practice sessions or reading groups) to consider how it relates to their own practice and the pupils they teach

    Ask ECTs to plan how they’ll continue to engage critically with research as they move through their career.

    One simple option could be for them to sign up to the Education Endowment Foundation’s newsletter. They may plan a time once a month to read a relevant item. They could do this with colleagues to allow for discussion of its implications for their practice.

    Reflecting on the session (5 minutes)

    ECTs should review the actions they have planned in this session and make a note of these to share with their mentor.

    Gather feedback from around the room, drawing on the agreed strategies discussed earlier in the session.