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Teaching Excellence Through Mindful Reflection

Did you just complete your annual evaluation and struggle to provide evidence for your commitment to teaching and your teaching effectiveness?

“We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.”– John Dewey

Image of a laptop, notebook, and coffee mug on a table at a coffee shop
Photo by Nick Morrison from Unsplash

As Boise State moves toward a greater focus on teaching quality and evidence of teaching effectiveness, reflective teaching is a critical tool in developing a continuous quality improvement, or professional development, plan. This interactive workshop helped participants define reflective teaching, develop strategies for “self-observation,” and begin to develop tools and strategies for thinking about their teaching and their teaching effectiveness. Participants left the session with a completed reflection, a second in-process, and a reflective teaching plan.

This workshop built on the works of Brookfield, Danielson, Fink, Kolb, and our own Framework for Assessing Teaching Effectiveness (FATE).

Workshop Reflection Tools

Intentional teaching reflection can help you have more great days and fewer not-so-great teaching days.

  • Get into the habit of reflecting on your work
  • Think about when you avoid reflection
  • Identify what you are good at
  • Structure your process across the evaluation period
  • Make the most of professional development
  • Keep your portfolio up-to-date
  • Familiarize yourself with the evaluative criteria
  • Show what you have learned

For more information, follow-up with a CTL consultation.

References

Brookfield, Stephen. Critically reflective practice. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions; 1998;18,4; pg. 197.

Fink, L Dee. Creating Significant Learning Experiences. Josey-Bass. 2013

Reflective Teaching Journal

Shawn R. Simonson, Brittnee Earl & Megan Frary (2021) Establishing a Framework for Assessing Teaching Effectiveness, College Teaching, DOI: 10.1080/87567555.2021.1909528

Written By:

Shawn Simonson