Critical Reflective Paper

Critical Reflective Paper
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Critical reflection is a multi-layered analysis that permits teachers to make sense of complex experiences by:
a) thinking about their assumptions and biases
b) framing problems of practice through multiple professional perspectives
c) critiquing their frames of reference from broader social, political, and moral perspectives and
d) making commitments and taking action that is informed by such reframing.

This Critical Reflection Journal assignment walks you through the kind of thought-process that allows teachers to step outside of a thought provoking experience, to put into perspective, and to react to it in constructive ways. The “scaffolding”, or steps, provided to guide you through this assignment give you an opportunity to practice “deconstructing: an experience –thinking about the “situatedness” of a particular critical incident in the larger system of power- and using that new framework to make a thoughtful and purposeful response.

To begin the assignment, reflect on your early field experience at George Washington Community School and decide on a critical incident that you observed and/or experienced that evoked a strong personal emotional response and seems worthy of more thought and attention. This could be something you react to as you reflect on your reading assignments, class discussion or conversation with peers. As you reflect on this difficult or confusing experience through a series of different lenses, you will see more layers of meaning and be able to bring more of what you know and believe to the task of formulating significant question about this critical incident and generating personally relevant answers. In short, you will be practicing the kind of self-directed reflection that is essential to being a professional educator.

Your Critical Reflection Journal should include the following sections:

A. Description of the Critical Incident
Choose an incident that is thought provoking, complex and likely to draw you into an exploration of ideas, beliefs, and disposition you have learned about in your classes. Completely describe the critical incident or practice you have selected as the focus for this entry. Your entry should include sufficient detail so that the reader can easily understand your focus. This section should be purely descriptive. Simply explain what you saw or experienced or the way something worked. The description should be about 2-3 paragraphs in length.

B. Feelings
In this section, briefly describe your feelings in relation to the event. Your feelings are emotional responses whereas your thoughts are cognitive responses. Therefore, do not mix your thoughts and feelings (such as happiness, anger, frustration, etc.). For example, do not write: “I feel that I should have been more concerned.” This sentence describes a thought not a feeling. Your feelings should be candid and written in short sentence or bullets.

C. Thoughts
In this section, describe your initial thoughts and opinions in relation to the description and feelings you provided in sections A and B. Essentially, you are trying to convey what you were thinking at the point in time in which the event occurred.

D. Deconstruction
This section invites you to analyze your first thinking about the critical incident and to explore it from multiple perspectives. Your goal is to become more aware of your own assumptions and biases and apply theories and concepts what you have learned as a teacher education candidate about diversity and learning and the larger systems of power at work in schools to see the experience in a more complex way. You will need to do two different analyses – one very personal and the other more academic – and then synthesize your thinking across these two analyses.

D1. Underlying Assumptions
Study your description, feelings, and thoughts for assumption and biases. Ask yourself what assumptions or biases are embedded in the way you described the event. Remember that finding assumptions or biases is OK. We all have biases and assumptions that are sometimes difficult to recognize or reconcile. In this assumption-checking step, you are NOT required to find every assumption, but find at least two assumptions to focus your thinking for the remainder of this process.

D2. Multiple Perspectives
Once you have identified your assumptions, reflect on them. You should use what you have learned to consider the soundness or legitimacy of your assumptions or biases. What would the prominent educators whose perspective has been introduced in your courses have to say about the incident and your response?

Use what you have learned in class to think about this incident from three different perspectives. Connect each perspective to a specific educator, article or class experience. In other words, use what you have learned to identify some additional lenses you can use to examine this incident in more detail. Be sure to cite your work. Practicing being a professional and make specific connections to the teachers, theorists or researchers who share the perspective you are using as a lens. For example, if this event is related to a student that did not speak English, make connections to articles that might explain what this child is experiencing.

Your perspective could include what you could say about the incident from the standpoint of: social justice, standards-based education, inclusion, poverty, school climate, classroom community, social status, intellectual differences, development, differentiation, language, etc.

D3 Further Analysis
Consider how sections D1 and D2 fit together.

In what ways, has your socialization influenced your description, feelings, or thoughts? Consider the influences of your cultural background. How has your socialization – including the culture you grew up in and the things you were exposed to and not exposed to during your childhood, adolescent, college, or professional experiences – influenced your thinking? In what ways did your prior socialization “set you up” to feel the way you did, or think the way you did, or react the way you did?

Are your personal responses and assumptions aligned with the educational perspectives you are learning? In what way, does your view of the incident make sense when you look through different lenses or so you see other possible way to think about the incident?

Given this time to reflect critically, do you see your assumptions or feeling as valid given what you experienced and the dynamics of your relationships with students, teachers, or community members? What about your entry was inclusive, sensitive, knowledgeable, and professional? What was not so informed? What can you say you have learned from this analysis?

Weighing issues from multiple perspectives is complex because you must be willing to question your own attitudes towards diverse students and urban schools. Hopefully, you will learn that teaching is not a neutral act. Recognizing your biases early in your profession will help you promote a healthy and caring classroom that is conducive to learning.

E. Reframing and Taking Action
Critical reflection involves considering your identity (cultural background, assumptions or biases), your professional knowledge and skills, your commitments to students and the profession, the context of schooling that influence your teaching and students’ learning. By being deliberate in the exploration of these many different aspects of any teaching experience, you can usually crate the space for the construction of new possibilities. By being reflective, you stop the action long enough to see whether you are really living according to an informed philosophy of education r whether other powerful forces are co-opting our efforts.

The last step of this critical reflection process is the most important. It is the proactive step wherein you envision what you want the future to be like.

Close your reflection by:
 Describing what you see as the new possibilities arising from this situation.
 Articulating at least one guiding principle, you plan to keep in mind to help you move towards this new, improved vision of your teaching.
 Sharing one concrete action step that you plan to take.

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