Professor Steve Walsh, English language teacher, teacher educator and Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University focuses his research, among others, on how reflective practices can enhance CPD of (language) teachers.
See the website of Newcastle University for more information on Professor Steve Walsh:
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/ecls/staff/profile/stevewalsh.html#background
As part of our study week, Walsh introduced us to some of his research areas and discussed significant aspects in regard to teachers' CPD with us.
Reflective practices, especially dialogic reflection, are an important means of fostering teachers' professional development. Teachers have to adapt their teaching to their environment, their students' personalities and needs and to the constantly changing requirements of our society. Reflective practices help teachers detect weaknesses in their lessons as a basis for the development of alternatives for future teaching scenarios.
The significance of reflection has been underlined for decades, but teacher reflections have not been very effective due to the underrating of data-led descriptions.
Reflections should be closely linked to the respective data. Data could be feedback from an observer, student feedback or, ideally, a video as a basis for enhanced observations.
It may at first seem intimidating to know that a lesson is video-recorded, but firstly, one quickly forgets about the camera installed in the classroom, and secondly, videos are a powerful tool for ungraded observations with developmental purposes. Videos can be replayed, recapped, reviewed and teachers can comment on the videos to foster reflection. Embedding technology in reflective practices is generally a means of enhancing teachers' CPD and should therefore become more common in classrooms.
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