APPROACHES TO CLASSROOM INVESTIGATION IN TEACHING
Teaching is not about delivering knowledge as if it were a kind of merchandise. We teachers have such a huge responsibility to our profession that we must be concerned to be better developing our teaching abilities. Nonetheless, it is not about seeking the perfect formula to be a perfect teacher. We might have heard many times that experienced teachers are better professionals. However, what is experience? Is it just spending time teaching? Is it problems overcome through years practicing?
Years and years working in front of the group does not make experience, it is more about how we have grown as teachers, how we have been aware of our strengths and weaknesses in our daily practice and in what way we have use them to have a development that serves us to improve our performance.
Jack C. Richards and Charles Lockhart 1996 refer to this development through exploring classroom processes; this exploration involves many procedures which will serve us as a starting point to be aware of our own teaching style. These procedures are:
· Teaching journals
· Lesson reports
· Surveys and questionnaires
· Audio and video recordings
· Observation
· Action research
These procedures will lead us through a ‘’critically reflective teaching’’ or ‘’exploratory teaching’’. The most important advantage is that we decide by ourselves based on this what aspects or characteristic of our performance we can change. Since it is us who discover in which aspects we are not fulfilling learners’ expectations and necessities and it is not someone else who tells us. It happens all the time and not only in the teaching area. When we discover something by ourselves, then we accept it and we are more willing to change.
There also are other approaches in which more people are involved, such as collaborative daily keeping where a group of teachers participate and they are supposed to learn from each other, autobiographies where student also participate to collect teaching reactions and peer observation where a colleague is present along the class to later report back his feedback to the teacher. However, I think these approaches have the disadvantage I mentioned above, it is not a total self-evaluation, hence we take the risk to doubt the result.
‘’Critical reflection involves examining teaching experiences as a basis for evaluation and decision making and as a source for change’’ (Barlett 1990, Wallace 1991).
Reflecting teaching is being aware of what we are doing and why we are doing this as Barlett (1990) points out. It appears so simple however most of the time we do not have this awareness of our behavior. Hence, the approaches mentioned above will help us to develop this awareness, it is not the same knowing that we are explaining something as to actually see it in a video, being able to see this since another perspective change our point of view and enable us to make action in order to improve those aspects in which we are not achieving our objective.
To sum up, the reflecting teaching approach is an excellent option in order to develop our teaching awareness and plan strategies to overcome the difficulties or mistakes we make. When we apply the action research after our own feedback then we are gaining experience and growing as teachers.
REFERENCES:
· Towards reflective teaching. Jack. C. Richards. Department of English, City Polytechnic of Hong Kong.
· Reflective teaching in second language classroom. Jack C. Richards and Charles Lockhart. Cambridge. 1996. pp. 1-15
· http://etheses.nottingham.ac.uk/271/1/Guilloteaux_PhD.pdf
· http://www.ise5 14.org.uk/prim3/new_guidelines/Investigations/Poss_aproach.htm
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