Today as I spoke to one of my teachers regarding her reflections, it brought me back to another similar conversation regarding my support of solitary reflection – on why I chose such an approach for improving “my teaching and learning”.
Often, teachers adopt new techniques or attend courses as approaches to improving teaching and learning. The focus is on the actions of teaching and the “how” of teaching. I also believe that such focus is important but I find that these methods alone do not deepen our own sense of belief, resulting in teachers often doing things just for the moment in time.
Why embark on reflection in my teaching and learning in the first place? For one reason, I am not a vocal person, more of an introvert. Reflections help me voice out my inner thoughts, feelings and beliefs as I go about thinking about teaching and learning, about the students and about my subject. But why the need to journey through my inner self? I believe in doing this because teaching is a very human activity, and ultimately it has to come out from one’s inwardness, for better or for worse. As mentioned in my previous reflection, when the teacher finished the teaching, such teaching is made personal to from the teacher to the students. As teachers teach, we observed the condition of the inner self projected onto the students and the experience in the classroom does affect the teacher’s inner self no more or less. Hence, I view teaching as a mirror of one’s inner self. And if I am willing to look into our own inner wardness, and learn from it regardless good or bad, I can gain self-awareness – and like learning, knowing myself is important to good teaching as I know my subjects, my content and my pedagogy.
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