This resource offers teachers a simple framework to seamlessly add reflective practice to their day and encourages educators to critically reflect on instructional planning and practice. Commonly used in other busy professions, the SOAP Notes structure makes it easy to reflect on student progress through any lesson or learning activity, regardless of grade band or content area. Each category—Subjective, Observation, Assessment, and Planning—allows for documentation of obstacles, difficulties, or challenges within a lesson so educators can address these concerns in subsequent lessons. Each chapter features an in-service teacher who used SOAP Notes reflections in their classrooms to improve their instruction and student learning. Contributors are from diverse teaching backgrounds, schools, and student populations. The authors include instructions for using the template in a variety of scenarios, blank worksheets, completed SOAP examples, and important take-aways. Whether there is an hour or only minutes in the day to focus on reflective practice, these teachers demonstrate how this framework makes this activity possible in any classroom. Ideal for preservice and in-service teachers, administrators, and other education professionals across K–12 settings, this accessible read demonstrates the ease of reflective practice while celebrating teacher voices. This simple structure makes adding reflection and intention to teachers’ routine immediately doable.

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A practical guide to the essential practice that builds better teachers. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher is the landmark guide to critical reflection, providing expert insight and practical tools to facilitate a journey of constructive self-critique. Stephen Brookfield shows how you can uncover and assess your assumptions about practice by viewing them through the lens of your students' eyes, your colleagues' perceptions, relevant theory and research, and your own personal experience. Practicing critical reflection will help you… Align your teaching with desired student outcomes See your practice from new perspectives Engage learners via multiple teaching formats Understand and manage classroom power dynamics Model critical thinking for your students Manage the complex rhythms of diverse classrooms This fully revised second edition features a wealth of new material, including new chapters on critical reflection in the context of social media, teaching race and racism, leadership in a critically reflective key, and team teaching as critical reflection. In addition, all chapters have been thoroughly updated and expanded to align with today's classrooms, whether online or face-to-face, in large lecture formats or small groups. In his own personal voice Stephen Brookfield draws from over 45 years of experience to illustrate the clear benefits of critical reflection. Assumptions guide practice and only when we base our actions on accurate assumptions will we achieve the results we want. Educators with the courage to challenge their own assumptions in an effort to improve learning are the invaluable role models our students need. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher provides the foundational information and practical tools that help teachers reach their true potential.

This practical and engaging book introduces readers to reflective practice in English language teaching. Assuming no background knowledge, Thomas S. C. Farrell clearly and accessibly walks through ways that teachers can integrate and implement reflective practice in the classroom and in other contexts to benefit their teaching and their own professional development. Each chapter covers an important dimension of reflective practice and features many ready-to-use activities that are designed to empower teachers and allow them to overcome challenges they’ll face throughout their careers. Covering many types of reflection and the many purposes it serves, this book addresses written reflection, lesson planning, classroom observation, classroom management, group communication and more. This resource is ideal for preservice and early career language teachers and is an important supplement to courses in language education and applied linguistics programs.

Use 80 reflection breaks as individual discussion starters or as part of a comprehensive professional growth plan that is perfect for teachers at all levels.

Now in its second edition, Teaching and Learning through Reflective Practice is a practical guide to enable all those involved in educational activities to learn through the practices of reflection. The book highlights the power that those responsible for teaching and learning have to appraise, understand and positively transform their teaching. Seeing the teacher as a reflective learner, the book emphasises a strengths-based approach in which positivity, resilience, optimism and high performance can help invigorate teaching, enhance learning and allow the teacher to reach their full potential. This approach busts the myth that reflection on problems and deficits is the only way to better performance. The approach of this new edition is an ‘appreciative’ one. At its heart is the exploration and illustration of four reflective questions: What’s working well? What needs changing? What are we learning? Where do we go from here? With examples drawn from UK primary teacher education, the book reveals how appreciative reflective conversations can be initiated and sustained. It also sets out a range of practical processes for amplifying success. This book will be a must have for undergraduate and PGCE students on initial teacher training programmes. It will also interest practising teachers, teacher educators and those on continuing professional development courses.

Most psychology research still assumes that mental processes are internal to the person, waiting to be expressed or activated. This compelling book illustrates that a new paradigm is forming in which contextual factors are considered central to the workings of the mind. Leading experts explore how psychological processes emerge from the transactions of individuals with their physical, social, and cultural environments. The volume showcases cutting-edge research on the contextual nature of such phenomena as gene expression, brain networks, the regulation of hormones, perception, cognition, personality, knowing, learning, and emotion.