ELT in Brazil

Today I was invited to give a talk about Reflective Teaching as part of the CertPT course for a group of teachers who work as trainers or want to do so. As teachers, we are quite aware of what Teaching is (though I believe we could investigate this in a future blog post). It is curious how we create an unusual entity by adjectifying teaching as reflective. By talking about reflective teaching we assume the existence of unreflective teaching which seems to be something to be avoided. It would be an interesting route to investigate the meaning behind reflective teaching by contrasting it to unreflective teaching. Let’s focus our efforts on the matter at hand: What is Reflective Teaching?

Thinking is the main craft of philosophers, not exclusively philosophers, of course, but the love for wisdom and its investigation is clearly at the core of this field. According to Socrates, for instance, thinking is the path towards happiness. “Nonsense” – says the reader, “everybody thinks. We think about what to wear for work, what to have for breakfast, what song to listen to on our way to work, and whether or not we should obey Google Maps and follow the route it has chosen for us.”. Obviously, however, this is not the kind of thinking that Socrates was talking about, otherwise, everyone would be leading happy lives, according to him, and we know that is not the case. What he meant was that only deep, critical thinking could lead to happiness. He was so adamant about this that he dedicated his adult life to helping the citizens of Athens think more deeply about common and mistakenly simple concepts such as friendship, justice, beauty, and love. For Socrates, only those who knew what love was could actually live a life of love. Only those who knew what justice was could perform just actions. In this search to help Athenians think deeper and live happier, Socrates was sentenced to death under the accusation of corrupting the youth with doubts and uncertainty. Too dangerous for the establishment.

Aristotle followed and, after tutoring Alexander the Great when he was Alexander the Small all the way to conquering most of the Western world at that time, decided to open a school of thought in Athens. Aristotle believed that only through deliberate, voluntary actions could one perform an action vested in justice. To him, justice could not be an accident. If an action served to right a wrong by proportionally equalizing both sides of an interaction, the action would only be just if it was deliberate and voluntary. There was no such thing as accidental justice.

Similarly, Kant will later (much later) say that an action only carries moral value if it is deliberate, voluntary, and principled. An action done by accident, habit, or interest carries no moral value. It’s not that the action is evil, mind you, it simply does not have moral value. For instance, not stealing something because you are afraid of being caught has nothing to do with morals. Going to the gym every day out of habit also has nothing to do with morals. On the other hand, jumping into the pool to help a drowning kid out of principle – not habit, not love, not instinct – is a moral action. Also, he adds, that people will only live happy, moral, lives when rational decisions trump desires and instincts.

“Where are you going with this?” – asks the bored and rather annoyed reader. You’re right, better get right to it. Notice how much value is put on acting under a principled and deliberate approach. It is only through deliberate, rational, aware, lucid thinking that we can transcend the habitual, the mediocre, and live a life of excellence. Here, I believe, we get close to a definition of what the word reflective might mean. Perhaps what we are looking for is a kind of teaching that escapes the gut feeling, the habit, and the instinct of teaching in a certain way. It seems that when talking about reflective teaching we are describing a principled, deliberate, and lucid teaching.

In this sense, reflective teaching would be the teaching that is done based on principles. A principled teaching moment is not one that happens by accident or habit but by lucid, deliberate actions toward a certain goal. Notice how the focus is on what the teacher does and the intentions and principles behind those decisions. It is through analyzing these principles and reasons that one can increase the chances of being a more effective educator, be it a teacher or teacher educator. Also, the emphasis on the reasons behind the decisions is not accidental. Teaching is not a simple math equation where, if a student brings a knowledge of 5 to class and the teacher adds a 2 then the student leaves the class a 7. There are an infinite number of variables at play in the teaching/learning relationship most of which the teacher has no control over. It is unfair, therefore, to place all the weight of the success or failure of a class on the shoulders of the often underpaid teacher whilst ignoring all these chaotic variables and their influence on the learning/teaching phenomenon.

What we should do, however, is investigate and analyze the teacher’s approach and identify (1) how deliberate, voluntary, and lucid their decisions were and (2) the principles and beliefs behind these decisions and their validity. This investigation is likely to produce a much fairer assessment of what went on in class and might nudge teachers toward an educational approach that is much more effective, affective, and just and steer us away from habitual, mediocre, stuck-in-a-rut teaching.