Challenging Practices: Self-Reflection
The Challenging teaching practices group invites teachers to clearly set and express high expectations for students and then to express confidence that all students can achieve them. By assessing prior knowledge to establish baseline measures and using assessment tools and techniques to measure growth, teachers can help students achieve by understanding which content needs extra support in the classroom. Teachers look for opportunities to provide timely, low-stakes or ungraded feedback that resembles coaching more so than correction. They share the results of assessments and are explicit about criteria for success. And, since teachers utilizing the Challenging practices are continually seeking to push students beyond self-perceived limits that transcend mere academics, self-reflection can be a valuable tool for instructors and students alike.
The sections Five Number Summary in Boxplots and Datasets and Z-Score and the Empirical Rule represent a transitional point in the course materials, one that begins to turn the cognitive perspective from the technical to the conceptual. While learning to describe data from boxplots, conceptual understanding from the graphs they saw previously is transported to this new representation. Then, as they learn to calculate z-scores and apply them to the Empirical Rule, students will find the calculation alone is no longer the desired result but rather the means to another statistical interpretation. This section marks the completion of a base-layer of knowledge required for inference and the beginning of a new journey toward statistical reasoning and analysis. The gentle perspective pivot that begins to occur in the course in these sections provides the impetus for both teacher and student to spend a little time reflecting on their strengths, opportunities, and growth. Teachers can use the feedback from a reflection exercise to adjust their teaching and students can use it to adjust their learning.
How to use self-reflection
In the previous Teaching Tips, you found ways to re-introduce students to services and supports they may have overlooked previously, connected with struggling students, and helped achieving groups to grow stronger. Students should be aware of their growth and of any areas that need extra focus and effort. You can leverage this with a timely self reflection activity, either during the first few minutes of class or as a low-stakes or ungraded out-of-class activity.
Teach in synchronous spaces
- Stop-Start-Continue This un-graded activity is performed during the first few minutes of class and gives students a way to reflect on the class environment and structures as they pertain to the student’s own learning experience. The instructor introduces the activity by distributing slips of paper with three fill-in blanks labeled start, stop, and continue. The students are instructed to, without talking to a classmate, write one sentence or phrase following a model phrase you demonstrate on the whiteboard or projection screen (see the three model statements below). Leave the room for three or four minutes to give students time to write without your being nearby. The most important part of this activity happens when you share the results of the stop-start-continue with the class at the next meeting, and announce a small change you are willing to make as a result of your analysis. This gives the students agency, confidence in the learning environment, and builds their trust in you.
- The three model statements. Project these or write them on a whiteboard, then leave the room for a few minutes:
- Stop: “This isn’t working for me. I’d like you to stop doing this.”
- Start: “I think this could work for me. I’d like you to start doing this.”
- Continue: “This is working for me. Please continue doing this.”
- The three model statements. Project these or write them on a whiteboard, then leave the room for a few minutes:
- Grow and Tell This activity is incorporated into the wrap-up discussion at the end of the Forming Connections activity by taking a few moments to ask students how they grew today. You can make this as casual or formal as you wish. The idea is just to get students to reflect on the ways they interacted with the material and to share it with others. Examples of phrasing include:
- Did anyone make a mistake today that led to understanding?
- What surprised you about today’s activity?
- Did anyone learn a new word or terminology today?
- Explain how you challenged yourself to achieve today? And did it work (its okay if it didn’t!)?
- How did you help the class today? Or, how did you hinder it? (Be sure to express grateful praise for the candor of a student who admits to being a hindrance!)
- What to Know Wrap-Up At the beginning of class, ask students to set the tone for the activity by summarizing the What to Know preview assignment. This not only invites students to reflect on their efficiency for compiling information from the preview, it helps you reiterate the expectation that the What to Know is required for the Forming Connections classwork. This will help students who may be relying too heavily on their groupmates to complete the activity during class.
- Also note the Super-short Student Survey listed in the Asynchronous Teaching suggestions below.
Instructor guides for in-class delivery [link to these in pdf form]
- 4D Corequisite Activity Instructional Guide
- 4E Corequisite Activity Instructional Guide
- 4D Forming Connections Instructional Guide
- 4E Forming Connections Instructional Guide
Asynchronous Delivery
Incorporate the ideas above into the discussion board or by having students complete a short reflection assignment for a low- or no-stakes grade.
teaching asynchronously online
- Super-short Student Survey For situations in which you are not interacting frequently with students face-to-face, or for asynchronous online classes, a VERY short survey may work well to have students reflect and provide you feedback on their experience in the class. Send a super-brief announcement in a lighthearted tone to elicit more responses. “Please reply to my super-short, three-question survey” works better than a statement of rationale or expectation. The surveys can be tailored to different levels of success in the class — use the course analytics to sort students by involvement or progress. Ideas for questions include:
- Stop-Start-Continue: Use the stop-start-continue model questions above as survey questions to save class-and analysis time.
- Targeted Topic Feedback: A quick survey to assess class understanding or class participation immediately after (or during) an activity. The first three are yes/no/maybe choices. The fourth is a write-in space.
- Yes/no/maybe: Did you complete the What to Know assignment prior to class today?
- Yes/no/maybe: Did you come to class prepared to learn?
- Yes/no/maybe: Did you do give your best effort in class today?
- Write-in: What is one thing you did really well today in class and one thing you wish you could have done better?
- Discussion Board Reflection Students can help one-another reflect and learn from one another during this discussion board activity. To encourage participation, it can count as a low-weight, low-stakes grade. Ask students to reflect on their performance in the class so far meta-cognitively and support and encourage one another. They shouldn’t discuss how they are doing in the class or tell their grade (prohibit this, in fact).
- They should make two statements:
- what they feel they do well and why, and how the course supports that, and
- what they wish to improve at doing, and why they think they struggle in that area or how the course impedes success.
- Then, in their responses, they should address two areas:
- whether they, too feel they do well in that area the poster succeeds, and why or why not, and
- offer encouragement or tips from personal experience for improvement in the challenging area, even if they also struggle with it.
- They should make two statements:
Micro-Reflection: Self-Reflection
Self-reflection is powerful tool for growth. When students take time to reflect in the academic space, even just to answer one or two quick questions during a class introduction or wrap-up, it invites them to identify their strengths and to expose growth opportunities that they may not otherwise realize. The teacher who participates in the reflection space gains insight into the students’ learning processes and perceptions as someone new to the discipline. The teacher who willingly elicits reflection from the students about the learning environment or instructional practices and who can reflect objectively in return to consider making small changes to either empowers students. These difficult, vulnerable practices are time-consuming, but necessary for growth. Finding ways to incorporate them efficiently into your teaching helps you to create an environment and philosophy that embraces the Challenging group of evidence-based practices:
- Prior Knowledge: evaluating prior knowledge to create a baseline measure and use it during a unit to made adjustments to instructional focus.
- Assessment: explicitly stating the criteria for success on assessments and sharing assessment results with students to help them understand how well they are mastering the material.
- Formative Feedback: providing feedback that resembles coaching and validates effort while highlighting what is needed for mastery.
- Self-Reflection: providing opportunities for students to reflect metacognitively to identify their strengths and ways to adjust to learning the course material.
- High Expectations: clearly setting and expressing high expectations together with confidence that all students can achieve them; developing ways to push students beyond their self-perceived limits (which can be influenced by a range of extra-academic factors).
Self-Reflection was introduced in the Teaching Tips page prior to Five Number Summary in Boxplots and Datasets with specific examples for performing the practice to facilitate student learning during the Forming Connections activity. Hopefully, you had a chance to practice them in your class. If so, please use the questions below for a brief, honest, and compassionate reflection on your teaching practice.
Reflection Questions
- Did you use one of the Self-Reflection ideas (or one or more other practices in the Organized teaching practices listed above) in your teaching? What did you like about the experience?
- If you tried one of the ideas, did you find that it was effective? What would you like to have done differently? If you didn’t try one, what would help you in the future to be more inclined to include self-reflection in your teaching?
