Reflective Practice
Did the lesson go well, or did it just feel that way?
Reflective practice is the habit of systematically examining your own teaching, during and after the event, so that your decisions rest on evidence and examined beliefs rather than routine.
Halfway through a speaking task, Ms Lan notices that only the front row is talking. She could carry on with the plan, or she could stop, regroup the class and wonder why. That small moment of choice is where reflective practice lives.
The idea has two main roots. John Dewey, in How We Think (1933), set reflective thinking against action driven by impulse or routine, and named open-mindedness, wholeheartedness and responsibility as the attitudes it needs. Donald Schön, in The Reflective Practitioner (1983), challenged the view that professionals simply apply research findings to practice. He described reflection-in-action: thinking on your feet when a situation surprises you. Its partner, reflection-on-action, means looking back afterwards to reframe what happened, a contrast Schön drew out more fully in his 1987 book.
In TESOL, Thomas Farrell has done much to turn this into a programme, with a framework that moves from a teacher’s philosophy and principles through theory and practice to the social and moral world beyond the classroom. Reflection is also the bridge between your hidden beliefs and your observable teaching.
Yet reflection has its critics. Ramin Akbari (2007) argued that reflection was vaguely defined, often lacked a critical edge, and had little evidence linking it to better teaching. Steve Mann and Steve Walsh warned that it had become an orthodoxy, often reduced to institutional, written forms, and called for reflection grounded in data such as lesson recordings and done in dialogue with colleagues. Done well, reflection is closer to small-scale inquiry than to filling in a form.
In actionTwo journal entries
Entry A: Today’s lesson went well. Students enjoyed the game. Next time I will manage time better. Entry B: In the recording, I answered my own question four times within two seconds. Only three students spoke in the whole-class stage. Next lesson I will count to five before nominating anyone.
Entry A fills the box; Entry B is reflection grounded in evidence that leads to a testable change, the kind of data-led reflection its critics call for.
In the classroom
- 1
Record ten minutes of your teaching on your phone, transcribe one short episode, and note one thing you did that you had not realised you do.
- 2
Replace end-of-week journal prose with one concrete question, one piece of evidence and one change to try, then check the change next week.
- 3
Pair up with a colleague to watch each other’s recordings, describing what happened before anyone evaluates it, and try exploring a puzzle together rather than fixing a problem.
Myth and reality
Reflection means writing a journal entry about how the lesson felt.
Feelings are a starting point, but reflection in Dewey’s and Schön’s sense is disciplined inquiry: it examines evidence, questions assumptions and leads to decisions, and it often works best through talk with colleagues rather than solitary writing.
Reflect
When did a classroom surprise last change what you did in the moment, and what did you learn from it afterwards?
Worth a minute before your next lesson, or a conversation in the staffroom.
SourcesChecked against Crossref and library records
Schön (1983) introduced reflection-in-action and the reflective practitioner, building on Dewey’s account of reflective thinking in How We Think (1910; revised 1933). In TESOL the idea was popularised from the 1990s and developed into frameworks by Thomas Farrell.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.
Farrell, T. S. C. (2015). Promoting teacher reflection in second language education: A framework for TESOL professionals. Routledge.
Farrell’s five-level framework, from philosophy to beyond practice, with activities for each level.
Farrell, T. S. C. (2016). Anniversary article: The practices of encouraging TESOL teachers to engage in reflective practice: An appraisal of recent research contributions. Language Teaching Research, 20(2), 223–247.
A review of research from 2009 to 2014 on what actually gets TESOL teachers reflecting.
Akbari, R. (2007). Reflections on reflection: A critical appraisal of reflective practices in L2 teacher education. System, 35(2), 192–207.
The sharpest early critique from within L2 teacher education: what reflection leaves out and what we lack evidence for.
Mann, S., & Walsh, S. (2013). RP or ‘RIP’: A critical perspective on reflective practice. Applied Linguistics Review, 4(2), 291–315.
Argues that reflection has become a vague orthodoxy and makes the case for data-led accounts of how it gets done.
Walsh, S., & Mann, S. (2015). Doing reflective practice: A data-led way forward. ELT Journal, 69(4), 351–362.
The practical follow-up: how to ground reflection in classroom data and collaborative talk.
ConnectionsSee it in the graph
- Action Researchnot yet writtenTurns reflection into planned cycles of intervention and evaluation.
- Exploratory Practicenot yet writtenReflective inquiry aimed at understanding classroom life, with learners as co-investigators.
- Wait Timenot yet writtenA classic finding teachers rediscover when they reflect on recordings of their own questioning.
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