Guidelines for writing a reflection

A reflection:
- is about your personal experiences;
- is written from the writers own viewpoint (the I-perspective);
- makes clear what didactical choices you make and why;
- focuses on strong and weak points, pitfalls and challenges, on what
makes you enthusiastic and what you find difficult;
- refers to specific examples from your teaching context;
- contains practical proposals and action points to improve your
teaching: what are you going to do differently in future, and how?


An example of self-reflection:

Self-reflection on developing active learning

It definitely takes time to learn a proper method of teaching and to develop your own style. When I
try to describe the qualities of a good teacher, the first aspects that spring to mind are being a
good professional, a specialist with outstanding experience in his/her discipline and someone who
has achieved the capacity of synthesis and a real understanding of his/her field of work. However,
to achieve recognition and make a name for yourself in your field takes many years of dedicated
work. Then again, being a good specialist does not necessarily mean that you are a good teacher.
It probably takes a certain charisma to attract an audiences attention and to hold their interest for
a two-hour lecture.

As a young lecturer with over 5 years lecturing experience and 10 years research experience, I
know that I have reached the point in my field of expertise where I understand the complexity of
the subject I am teaching: helicopters. This understanding enables me to capture the attention of
the audience and explain phenomena from a multidisciplinary perspective. In the last two years I
have succeeded in attracting the students attention and making my lectures interesting.

Wankat [1993] affirmed that Professors who want to become master teachers do need to develop
skills in the performance aspects of lecturing. I believe that this is true and I am continually trying
to improve my lecturing skills. I try to present facts and thoughts in a clear, coherent and
fascinating way and to make use of the appropriate resources (either experimental or visual) in
doing so. My level of success depends on the time I invest in preparing my presentations. At one
point, I decided to write down after every lecture the parts that appealed to the audience, with the
aim of incorporating similar elements in all my lectures.

I believe that a course should always contain a balance between appealing and less appealing
sections. There are times when I have to explain more difficult subjects which the students find
hard to digest and have to work hard to understand. As a teacher, I try to emphasise the beauty of
such complex components by putting the difficult information in a broader context. I try to inspire
the students to get them to understand. Setting modest homework assignments also tends to
improve the students understanding. In addition, I have also realised that I can improve the way I
communicate complex information by briefly returning to difficult concepts in subsequent lectures.

As a good teacher, I believe I have to have the power of conviction. I therefore try to present my
own perspective and develop arguments to support it. Sometimes this does not come easily, as I
also work intuitively and I have trouble externalising my subconscious thoughts.

I believe that a good teacher has to impose standards and to be firm in his/her judgement of
students and should not diminish the level of exigency for inadequate students. This is a difficult
quality for me to attain as young teacher, since I have a genuine understanding of students
problems. However, experience has taught me that some students try to take advantage of more
lenient teachers and so limits need to be set and students have to recognise them.

Giving lectures is a time-consuming task for a young lecturer like me. Although I have worked with
students for over 5 years, it still takes me a lot of time to prepare the lectures. I know exactly what
it is like to be a student listening to a difficult lecture and so I try to keep an eye on the students
during my lectures to gauge how much they understand of what I am telling them. When preparing
a lecture, I have to think about all kind of issues in advance. Can I accurately reproduce equations
without notes? Are my presentations on the overhead projector clear? How much detail can I
comfortably cover in the time available? What is a good balance between theory and examples?
How closely should the lectures follow the textbook? What are the important points and what
needs to be emphasised? I often over-prepare, spending a lot of time on one lecture (almost 20
hours a week for 4 hours of teaching). In addition to teaching, I have to do research work, write
proposals, finish papers and give guidance to individual students. All of these matters involve a
multitude of mental skills.

An additional concern when I am standing in front of a class is the fear of not knowing all the
answers. In the Spoken English for Lecturers course which I took at the Faculty of Technology,
Policy and Management (March-April 2005), I learned useful tips on how to deal with questions.
Now I know that if I am confronted with a difficult question that I am unable to answer immediately,
I can either throw it back to the audience (Interesting. What do you think?) or postpone the
answer (I dont know that off the top of my head. Can I get back to you on that?). I have also
learned that I can reward a good question with a positive comment (Good point! Im glad you
asked that.) and that I should always check that I have understood the question (If I understand
you correctly, what you mean is....). When answering questions from the class, it is often difficult
to stimulate discussion. Asking the class a question does not necessarily mean that the teacher is
interacting with the students. On many occasions, asking a question can silence an audience. To
really generate a discussion by asking a question, I have realised that the best way is to divide the
main question into smaller questions first and try to elicit the answer to these questions.

In conclusion, when I reflect on my lecturing skills I am reminded of the words used by Professor
Van Holten, who characterised me during my annual evaluation as having high potential. I know
that I possess the aptitudes of a good teacher, but I am very much aware that without continuous
training even a good teacher can soon be out-of-date.