development and evaluation of a model for teacher reflection

The eighties will be known as a decade of reform, a time when several key reports highlighted serious deficiencies in education and alerted the public to the possibility of a crisis in this country. It has been suggested that for education to improve, teachers must become more aware. What is needed, many believed, is for teachers to become more reflective. Reflection, in the context of teaching, refers to teachers thinking systematically about their work, evaluating what happens in the classroom and eventually making changes to improve teaching and learning. Although the literature was replete with theory on how a practitioner can approach the act of reflection, there was no practical model which could be directly applied to the classroom situation. The purpose of the study was to provide teachers with a practical model for daily reflection in the classroom. A model was designed using reflection, decision making and problem solving theory. The model was tested using a two-phased pilot study, followed by experimental use by 60 teachers in grades K-12. Participants used the Teacher Reflection Model for 10 school days and filled out and returned a questionnaire. The questionnaire provided Likert-type attitude statements that were rated by the respondents on a scale of from 1 through 5, according to their agreement or disagreement with the statement. The attitude statements were designed to measure the practicality of the model. The average of the scores of the attitude statements became the Attitude Index for the teacher and provided a measure of practicality for the Teacher Reflection Model. Several subgroups within the sample of 60 teachers were compared using a t-test to analyze whether there was a significant difference in their average Attitude Index. Linear correlation tests were run to evaluate the relationships between the computed Attitude Index, the years of teaching for the respondents and the average time needed to fill out the Daily Reflection Form. Results of the study indicate that the Teacher Reflection Model is a practical instrument to assist teachers to reflect and that the questionnaire was a reliable instrument to evaluate the model. Several recommendations for improving the model are included in the study.