The Intersection of My Experience

What I’ve Noticed About Myself

I was fortunate to have two wonderful parents with slightly different world views: one taught me to consider practicality and prudence—a “plan for the worst but hope for the best” message, while the other stressed the importance of not hesitating out of fear of failure—a “the best laid plans…” mentality. Together they instilled a habit of thoughtful planning with the acceptance that obstacles and errors were inevitable and crucial for growth. That habit has guided me in all aspects of my life inside and outside the classroom: plan, reflect, and adjust.

I am endlessly consciously and subconsciously reflecting. While I now have a more sophisticated understanding of this skill I developed over time—thanks to the reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action work of Donald Schön²—I have always understood that reflective practice was foundational to the improvements I’d made in all aspects of my personal and professional life.

What I’ve Noticed About Students

I had often wondered why so many of my students had difficulty progressing in their learning and identifying issues with necessary skill development, or struggled to show even marginal growth after repeated assessment opportunities. Having only a cursory understanding of the academic term “metacognition” or how to teach it, I attempted to force my students to be more reflective—with poor results. My early attempts were based on trite question prompts like “Why were you unsuccessful?” or “How will you improve on this?” These prompts elicited short, equally trite responses like “Study harder,” or “Read over the notes more.” These typically weak reflective responses are an indication that students may not have the training to reflect with depth, which researchers³ explain is a result of educators like myself, often lacking the knowledge to properly introduce metacognitive training into class. In addition, the shallow responses are typical of students who are likely to be skeptical of the importance of reflection,⁴ leading to lackluster responses that are likely crafted to meet the expectation of the teacher.^5,6

What I’ve Noticed About Teaching

Even within my relatively short 12­­–year career, my teaching strategies and resources have changed with alarming frequency. What began as lecture-style teaching with a standard white board and paper handouts, quickly moved through a digital projector and a reservable bank of laptops, an interactive white board with cloud computing, and finally a division-wide “bring your own device” policy launched along with an unspoken expectation to move towards a paperless teaching environment. However, it is notable that these changes occurred with little to no training or professional development on the technology, or in the pedagogical shifts necessary to make full use of the technology. Where I began with more traditionalist teaching, I found myself stumbling through personalized, project-based, or collaborative learning.

What I’ve Noticed About Technology

The acknowledgement of technological skill development as a means of preparing students for future learning needs is recognized in the Future of Education and Skills 2030 project⁷ of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This project outlines the need to prepare students to use the technologies that are present and emerging and mentions the importance of personalized learning environments for future skills training. For some students, these new technology-based learning environments, which allow them to take a more active role in learning, requires a novel degree of self-regulation then necessary in traditional lecture-style learning.⁸ Although I was aware that skills like goal setting, planning, and self-control were crucial to independent learning, I was often so busy with the business of incorporating technology that I did nothing to promote them.

Taken together, I recognize the role that reflection has played in my improvements, personally and professionally, and I have noticed that students struggle to reflect on their learning. Both technological advances and simple necessity are changing the method of educational instruction to more personalized, computer-based learning opportunities, and these environments require a student have additional skills to navigate the technology and take an active role in learning. It has been my general experience that students lack self-regulation skills, that reflection is an important component of this process, and that these skills are essential to actively learn in these environments.