UNIVERSIDAD AUTNOMA DEL ESTADO DE MEXICO

LICENCIATURA DEL ENSEANZA DEL INGLS

UA: REFLEXIVE TEACHING

ACTIVITY 2: APPROACHES TO CLASSROOM INVESTIGATION

ASSESSOR: PILAR DEL ROSARIO NUEZ DURAN

STUDENT: MARIA DE LA LUZ SAUCEDO CAMPOS

LERMA, SEPTEMBER 5th, 2016.

APPROACHES TO CLASSROOM INVESTIGATION

To be a teacher it is not an easy task because there are many aspect that are
involved in the teaching learning process. The first aspect that I consider is the
most important is to teach with love: It has to do it in all the levels since beginners
until advance, and a good teacher takes time to prepare classes in detail, having a
lot of features into consideration like students feeling, their learning style, their likes
and dislikes and also their academic progress.
Nowadays there are many approaches that might be a guide for teachers to realize
how they are doing in class, these approaches will help to develop and enhance
their teaching style .
a) JOURNALS: They are written response to teaching events for the purpose
of the later reflection. They can include personal reactions, questions,
observations descriptions of important aspects of the lesson, ideas and or
reminders of things to take action on. They can also be video journals.
Entries in the journal should be made on a regular basis, daily if possible.
For the journal to have a positive impact in the teaching style, the teacher
should review the entries regularly. On this way, the teacher will be aware of
what was not obvious at the moment of writing or recording it.
b) LESSON REPORT: This is a structured inventory which enables teachers to
describe their reflections of the main features of the lesson. They describe
what actually happened from the TEACHERS point of view. They help to
monitor the teacher s own teaching. The lesson report should be designed
to match the aims and content of the course. The teacher needs to review
the reports instead of modify any strategies and material which are currently
using and this way, improve, the aspects of the lesson which needs
improvement.
c) SURVEYS AND QUESTIONNAIRES: These tools are very important to
collect information about some specific aspects of teaching and learning.
That means, these surveys might be designed to focus on students attitude

towards the activities during a lesson, their believes about their learning
styles and preferences for learning activities, motivation, etc. This
information can be gathered relatively quickly and used to focus on real
students needs.
d) AUDIO OR VIDEO RECORDING OF LESSON: one part of a lesson can be
obtained from an actual recording of it, using an audio or video recorder
strategically placed in the classroom depending of the chosen focus which
might be the teacher, a student or a group of students. The recordings can
be heard several times so as to get those details which are not easy to
notice during the class time. But there is a disadvantage of this approach is
that only a fragment of the class is recorded, unless there is someone else
doing the recordings, in which case the class might be disrupted. This
approach is not to be used so often since the analysis of the tapes and
videos is rather time consuming.
e) OBSERVATION: This approach is used in various language lessons. The
main aim of observation is to witness, learn and analyse different aspects of
teaching. It should be taken more as a way of gathering information than a
way of evaluating. It is the observers obligation to contact the teacher to be
observed and get some information about the class. When the observer is in
class his function should be limited and never give opinions during the
lesson. The feedback should be given to the teacher who gave the class as
soon as possible, either in a written or oral way. In this way the observation
is useful for the observer and the cooperating teacher to know some details
that might not have been noticed during the class time. Before the observer
enter to a class, he has to take into consideration in some aspects, the
structures, teachers management, students performance , teacherstudents rapport , etc.
f) ACTION RESEARCH: This approach refers to a teacher initiated
classroom investigation in order to increase the teachers teaching
awareness and hence to promote any necessary changes. The action
research should recur in cycles which are:
for collecting information which will be later analyses so as to decide the
necessary changes

Action, develop an action plan and out it into action.

Observation. focus and monitor the effects of the action if it worked or not.
Reflection, Reflect on how effective the changes were and its significance. If
necessary, start a second action.
Every event take place in a class can be useful to develop a deeper
understanding of teaching through a critical reflection. If the teacher wants
to get advantage he /she have to find ways to capture the and make
modification which will greatly enhance the teachers ability to manage the
class.
REFERENCES:
Richard, J. (2007) Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classroom.
Cambridge University Press

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