Name of Student: Conor Jennings

Article/Reading: Brookfield, S., 1995. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. 1st ed. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc. (Chapter 2)

1. CONCISE SUMMARY OF READING

The aim of this chapter is to teach the reader how to be critically reflective. Brookfield
explains that to become critically reflective, me must look upon our actions in as many
unfamiliar angles as we can to see our practice in new ways and to see how we can improve
our methods. He explains how it is very difficult to reflect by ourselves so we must get
feedback and look at our teaching through different perspectives. He suggests that there are
four main lenses that we as teachers must look through to critically reflect on our teaching.
These are (1) Our autobiographies as teachers and learners, (2) Our student’s eyes, (3) Our
colleagues’ experiences, and (4) Theoretical literature.
When analysing our autobiographies as teachers and learners, Brookfield tells us how it is
impossible for us to analyse our past experiences in depth by ourselves. He explains how in
the same way that when anybody loses a parent, it is not the same as anyone else because of
different memories, ages, regrets, pain etc. While this is true, the people all go through the
same process of recognising and accepting loss and these patterns and rhythms that everyone
faces can be caused as generic. He relates this to teachers when they are trying to reflect and
the different scenarios they would be trying to rectify. These are all generic problems that can
be rectified, and Brookfield highly recommends peer support groups to rectify these problems
and analyse their problems along with some constructive feedback. This is very common for
people who are grieving or going through a divorce.
The second lens Brookfield talks about is looking through our student’s eyes. He explains
how it is so important to constantly get feedback from the students so that you can tailor your
lessons for the students. He tells us how when getting feedback off the students, to get the
most accurate and honest feedback it must be anonymous. Students fear that by giving the
hard, cold truth to a teacher it may backfire. The teacher must be really open to criticism and
be able to hear the students’ honest opinion without reacting and taking a disliking to a
student for their honesty. To get the most honest criticism, the students need to be encouraged
and be given the teachers trust that whatever they say will not backfire as there is a major fear
there. Constant repetition of this will make it easier for the child to trust the teacher.
The third lens is in relation to our colleagues’ experiences. It is here where we may let a
colleague into our classroom to give feedback on what they actually see. There can be times
where we may be using methods that we have been taught by and felt it was effective, so we
use try to replicate the method constantly, but it may not necessarily be working. From this,
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we can get professional feedback from a colleague who may have experienced the same
dilemmas and with a few tweaks after their feedback, your teaching could be improved
immensely.
Once we get to analyse the previous three lenses, from the feedback that we gain from them,
we may then refer to theoretical literature. By referring to theoretical literature we can
improve our teaching in the areas that we have identified as being weak by referring to the
theorists who have scientifically proven theories to work from. These theorists have models
that are proven to work and by referring to these, we may gain some pointers on how to
introduce these better.
On conclusion, this article aims at explaining how we need to look at ourselves in as many
different angles as possible to really critically reflect and improve on where we are weak. It is
very difficult to identify your own weaknesses by yourself, so we must look through the four
identified lenses and look at yourself in their perspective, be open to change and humble in
their opinions.

2. CRITICAL REFLECTION

I think this passage from Brrokfields book was very useful and I have got a much greater
insight into how to effectively critically reflect from it. As a teacher I feel it is very important
to constantly improve and as we are told from the Professional Code of Conduct (Teaching
Council, 2016), it is solely up to the teacher to advance in their progression into the teaching
profession. For this progression to take place, it is essential for us to constantly critically
reflect on our methods so that we can improve. Jack Mezirow (Mezirow, n.d) tells us that for
teachers to improve their teaching methods, they must be humble and be able to critically
assess themselves to find weaknesses that can be improved on. There is a lot of useful
information in the reading in particular for me due to the fact I am a trainee teacher and
critical reflecting is so important. This has direct relevance to my teaching practice as I will
have to complete a critical reflection every Friday looking at a particular are that the lecturers
tell us to reflect on.
The strengths of this article in my opinion are the actual useful guidelines that Brookfield
gives us. He explains how there are four main lenses that we as teachers can look through to
make our reflection as effective as possible. The thing I found most interesting and which I
can really relate to is when you are getting criticism, it is so important that you leave your ego
aside and take the feedback on board. This really relates to me individually I feel because I
can be quite stubborn and when something isn’t working, it has been a bad habit of mine to
look for an excuse somewhere else away from myself. It has only been in the last few years
that I have learned to deal with this problem and I have learned so much about the importance
of humility. Sport has been a great way for me to learn about humility and through my hurling
team, we all take turns in doing charity work, cleaning the dressing rooms or doing any jobs
around the club that are needed to keep us grounded because nobody is bigger than anyone,
we are all equal. A great quote by Rick Warren states that “True humility is not thinking less
of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” (Willamson, 2017) This must be taken into
consideration when asking anyone for feedback and in particular, when you are asking your
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students for feedback. Brookfield tells us how students can feel scared to say anything critical
in relation to the teacher for fear that the teacher would turn on them. He then explains that it
must be reinforced at every lesson that it is ok to give criticism to the teacher as long as it is
constructive. This trust must be built up over time so that the teacher can get the most
effective feedback as possible from the student.
The article is very well structured as it gives the reasoning of reflection and them breaks it
down into four main sections to explain how it is then implemented. The only suggestion that
I may have is to give a step by step process of analysis of how to efficiently reflect when
looking through the lenses. I found it a small bit difficult to understand where to actually start
when reflecting and which lens should you look through first and the process after that.
Something that I found very similar to what we have covered in DTE was to get feedback
from colleagues. During our teaching practice we are constantly looking for feedback off our
mentors and this is very alike to what Brookfield is saying. As Brookfield states, most of the
time, the same problems reoccur for different teachers. For this reason, it is essential that new
teachers get feedback from their more experienced colleagues to prevent these problems from
reoccuring. Susan Heathfield (2017) explains how formative feedback from experienced
colleagues is so important as part of a professional development of a worker. From my own
experience, I firmly agree with this as I feel it is so important to get feedback as soon as
possible after a performance when teaching as it is fresh in the mind and makes it much more
effective. The experienced teachers have faced many problems in their time as well and a lot
of them over lap which makes it easy for colleagues to help out.
Overall, this has been a very helpful reading. This is something I will most definitely have in
mind when on teaching practice and I will be getting feedback from colleagues, my mentors,
and I will also be using exit cards and evaluation sheets that will be anonymous when asking
the students for feedback so I can tailor my lessons to their needs.

3. LIST OF REFERENCES

 Brookfield, S., 1995. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.
 Heathfield, S., 2017. How to Provide Coworker Feedback for a 360 Review: The Balance. [Online]
Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/how-to-provide-coworker-feedback-for-a-360-review-1917538
[Accessed 10 November 2017].
 Mezirow, J., n.d. How Critical Reflection triggers Transformative Learning. [Online]
Available at: https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/30281715/critical-reflection.pdf?
AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1511121688&Signature=MPZOlI4KZG1a
disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DHow_critical_reflection_tr
[Accessed 10/11/17 November 2017].
 Teaching Council, 2016. Professional Code of Conduct for Teachers. [Online]
Available at: http://www.teachingcouncil.ie/en/Fitness-to-Teach/Code-of-Professional-Conduct/
[Accessed 10 November 2017].
 Willamson, C., 2017. Importance of Humility in Leadership: Forbes. [Online]
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 Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/09/14/the-importance-of-humility-
[Accessed 10 November 2017].

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