Some noteworthy situations arise recently. I was taking the last couple of lessons for my classes before exams start and the end of year activities take over. This is usually the point where a whole year’s of effort culminates and everyone sort of wind down from an intense academic calendar. My intention with the class is to allow some autonomy for the students and connecting it to a learning process where I get students to contemplate what they are doing and connecting it to the bigger picture of why certain movements seem more attractive over others. The hope is that this creates more appreciation and understanding of what is happening. Now, the students have an altogether different expectation when involve in a fun physical activity of their choice. Their unpacking desire and abilities of what they are doing goes as far as the limit of their emotional connection for the moment, i.e. they want to have fun through play. It was a challenge. I was trying to facilitate a situation that the students may not be interested in at that moment, as much as I thought they needed it. My reflection questions for this was “What happened?” and “Why it happened?”.

I also happen to relief a couple of classes of my colleagues. For them, my attitude was to hear them out and present activities that was planned for by their original teacher. It was a much more pleasant experience as I tried matching their expectation without the pressure of having taught them a long time, as terrible as this thought sounds! These two experiences are identifiable for many teachers. How do we connect the need (is there really a need? I was reminded recently to stop over-analyzing) to be true to our approach and planned content with what students think they should do in Physical Education (PE) classes. A part of the teacher tension in approaching is exactly that, i.e. the tension created by teachers for themselves in wanting to ‘teach’ in PE and not just present experiences. I also know many who may not have this issue as much due to mainly being convinced that PE is about experiences and that experiences will take care of the learning inherently. I see value in both views.

At every point in a teaching scenario, including before and after, the ideal situation will be a constant questioning of what we doing. We call it reflection, analyzing, brainstorming, etc. Every word used to describe the act of contemplating and coming to a conclusion has probably very comprehensive breakdown of what it means by experts. You will find clever steps and schematics of the reflection process, the brainstorming process, etc. Despite this overwhelming information, we do tend to ignore much of it and use the literal meanings. Both extremes are probably not desirable and we need to find a balance.

We do all this because our main business as teachers seems to be behavior manipulation. In the old days, this is done as quickly as possible, without worrying about regulation, motivation, movement related sciences, etc. processes. The great thing about the learning process within a learner is that it evolved specifically to overcome problems, which means that even if we mess up in teaching approaches, the learners adapt and will learn nonetheless. Because of artificial chronological milestones, e.g. terms, semesters, and school years, we are externally pressured (a good/bad thing?) to be more efficient. Because of better insights to how the body behaves, we are professionally obliged (a good/bad thing?) to be more efficient.

Is the “What works and how to do it?” qualifying rubric sufficient for us to meet the above expectations? Those following will probably guess that the famous why will come next. I bring to attention a schematic I did very long ago on layering Bloom’s Taxanomy language to describe how we as teachers can measure over reflective stages.

Fig 1

Below, I revisited a literature review by Standfel & Moe, (Standal & Moe, 2013) that keeps coming up in my simple searches. Coming clean, I started this article this before I realised that it was a revisit. It was interesting for myself to compare my feelings two years ago and now. Being a reader of convenient research, I am attracted to open sourced and easily available research that appears in my simple online searching. I usually am hooked on the first paper that engages me without going to first source like in academic writing. This paper was done almost a decade ago but still valid in its value. Let me list some of its obvious, but needing that pointing to, findings and quotes that I found extremely aligned to that is similar to my earlier article but with my current insights.

• While everyone agrees on the importance of reflection, it does not have a common understanding amongst all. At research level, it is just as uneven.
  • Own note: We tend to use incredibly important processes like reflection generically, without much attention to what it means in different situations. This goes the same for descriptors like games, drills, discovery, understanding, constraints, pedagogy, etc.

• van Manen (1977) suggested three levels of Technical, Practical and Politico-ethical (or Critical). This 3 levels includes 1) the means rather than the end, 2) the assumptions underpinning practical actions and 3) looking at the ends in light of wider social, political and ethical contexts.
• • Own note: One restriction to more comprehensive reflective practises is the focus on the outcome rather than the means, i.e. what and how it works. Outcomes are narrow and relatively easier to assume completion, as oppose to the broadness of the means, i.e. why it works, where learner centeredness is so vital. Over here, scientific underpinnings need to come in, to complement teacher experience.

• Compare the two reflective statements below. How useful is deepening understanding (multi-level understanding) on behaviour for us teachers?
  • a) “The students seems to react badly (not listening, distracted, etc.) to this activity. Let’s change activity for the next class.”
  • b) “The students seems to react badly to this activity. What about the activity that caused this reaction? Let me see if I can understand why and perhaps tweak it for the next class after considering.”

• Tsangaridou & O’Sullivan (1994) developed a framework called reflective framework for teaching in physical education (RFTPE). The RFTPE consists of two major categories; the first being the focus of reflection and the level of reflection, which is divided into technical, situational or sensitizing, mirroring van Manen’s (1977) model. The second category brings in the levels of description, justification and critique.
  • Own note: I believe for many of us, these levels are not deliberate but rather a consequence of tacit background of taken for granted assumption (see Wackerhausen’s quote below). To make it deliberate means to purposefully seek out knowledge that goes beyond implementation matters, i.e. routines – what and how it works (see Attard’s view below), only.

• Tsangaridou & O’Sullivan also found that reflection research is usually often based on the philosophical and/or political orientation of the scholar.
  • Own note: The biased nature is what makes reflections incredibly rich to our context and needs of students, not necessarily bad. My reflections seems to me to be focus on a certain perspective that sometimes get in the way of my own teaching. This is where it is important to seek more and learn.

• Wackerhausen’s (2008) “anatomical structure of reflection” suggest two levels in the way reflection takes place. There is the foregrounded concepts in which we actively employ and that are explicitly present in our reflections. “ These foreground concepts operate on a tacit background of taken for granted assumptions and knowledge, but the background assumptions implicitly delimit the conceptual boundaries within which the foreground concepts can be unfolded in our reflections…” He also suggest that the reflector is biased by context, interest, motivation, value, etc.
  • Own note: I believe we all engage in reflective practises, whether we are aware of it or not. The moment we delve deeper to professional development knowledge, our awareness of what we do goes up and we start creating our own reflective practises that works for us. The big push for departments is to see consistency in this practises and to benefit from this awareness collectively, as well as the initial individual purpose. Formalised reflective practises potentially creates loads of data and the challenge is to leverage on this systematically within a workable reflective structure for self and department. The “taken for granted” comment is a very real situation where we potentially stop learning as teachers and operate on surface knowledge. This is where the different levels of reflections occur like mentioned above. Background assumptions may range from the practical input-output perspective, i.e. what and how it works, to the more complex what happens between input and output, i.e. why it works.

• “…Attard argues that critical reflections on his own experiences enabled learning, and that reflection is best understood by engaging in reflection (Attard & Armour, 2006). More specifically, Attard (2007) states that “examining past experiences to understand and change present and future practices is a stronghold of reflective practice, but this is hard work… as it goes against the natural tendency of creating routines” (p. 155)…”
  • Own note: This almost gives me the name for something that I observe often, routines! A wonderful habit, well exhorted for learners, that sometimes creates a self-directing practice of complacency within departments and individuals.

• “…Tsangaridou & O’Sullivan (1997) aimed to understand teachers’ reflection from a descriptive rather than prescriptive perspective (i.e. what reflection is, rather than what it ought to be). The authors distinguished between micro- and macro-reflection, with the former being “reflection that gives meaning to… day-to-day practice” (p. 7) and the latter being reflection in professional development over time…”
  • Own note: Not all reflections are equal and it does not help to force certain type of reflections onto teachers who have not buy in. Rather it should be about what works for the teachers, currently and in the long term. However, we do need to be aware of reflective practises and that requires a bit of positive peer encouragement at times. My current approach I am struggling with is how to get the realisation for those around me that the whys of teaching has very satisfying and successful outcomes for the whats and how.

• “…Keay (2006) also found that although newly qualified teachers (NQTs) were educated to become reflective practitioners, more experienced colleagues who were unfamiliar with reflective practice actually influenced some of the participants to become less reflective…”
  • Own note: Is this a survival strategy? It is common to see NQTs coming in with amazing practises. It can all quickly level down if departments are not deliberate about leveraging on this professional enthusiasm.

This review carries on looking at pre-service, and to some extent in-service, reflective habits and suggestions for future focuses. I wrote more about it in my previous article. The above derived from the paper should be easily understood, observable and appreciated, I think. We are creatures of routines. The planning and implementation of routines takes over our professional life. In a recent discussion with fellow management level colleagues on the what and how of teaching as indicated in a typical unit-plan, there was negligible interest to the why of what we are doing. For academic subjects, this is almost permissible as much structures of certification and moving up the levels has given that why question an implicit response of just needing to do well in school. However, the day-to-day strategy implementation and facilitation for learning requires that awareness to make learning deliberately effective, as opposed to it taking place in spite of our presence. Even more so for PE, where formal levels of desired outcomes are not as observable and therefore easily dismissed as not a priority.  Luckily for us, PE is aligned to a basic need of all humans needing to move recreationally for quality of life and this is what we can leveraged on to get learners to move with our educational intention, implicitly or explicitly.

References

Standal, Ø., & Moe, V. (2013). Reflective Practice in Physical Education and Physical Education Teacher Education: A Review of the Literature Since 1995. Quest (00336297), 220-240. doi:DOI: 10.1080/00336297.2013.77353