The Story of the Question
The inquiry topic I chose to study is how I can become a more reflective teacher. I first learned the term "metacognition" in a middle school art class. My 7th and 8th grade art teacher stressed the process of "thinking about our thinking" as we made art, rather than the final art product we produced. Metacognition has always been in the back of my mind, but I had never intentionally practiced it regularly. The graphic above illustrates how I felt about metacognition for a long time: an exhausting way to search through my own brain in an attempt to learn something.
The idea of reflection was presented on one of my first days at Penn, when a professor encouraged us to journal for five minutes every day. I’ve kept a personal journal for years, but the idea of keeping a journal about my teaching had never crossed my mind. So I began a teaching journal. While I did not journal every day, I frequently revisited the idea that I could become a better teacher by thinking about my teaching. I quickly realized two things. First, I realized that the kind of journaling I was doing was, in fact, metacognition! Second, I realized that I was not very good at thinking about my teaching! I envied some of my classmates’ abilities to analyze their lesson plans, their teaching practices, and their classroom management strategies. At the end of the fall semester, at a descriptive review meeting with my classroom mentor and my Penn mentor, I wrote that I wanted to improve my ability to think about my teaching – I wanted to become a more reflective teacher. Since then, I have either acquired or recognized several tools for reflection, put them into practice, and become better at analyzing my teaching.
I also chose this inquiry topic because I wanted to study a question that would have practical implications for my teaching career. I teach in the Dominican Republic, so an inquiry into grading, standards, or even culturally-normed classroom behavior or management issues would not be practical. Using reflection to improve my teaching, however, will help me be a better teacher regardless of the country, school setting, grade level, or language in which I teach. Reflection has become a way for me to continually refine my teaching, so I decided to form a cohesive portfolio from my scattered thoughts and practices over the past year.
The idea of reflection was presented on one of my first days at Penn, when a professor encouraged us to journal for five minutes every day. I’ve kept a personal journal for years, but the idea of keeping a journal about my teaching had never crossed my mind. So I began a teaching journal. While I did not journal every day, I frequently revisited the idea that I could become a better teacher by thinking about my teaching. I quickly realized two things. First, I realized that the kind of journaling I was doing was, in fact, metacognition! Second, I realized that I was not very good at thinking about my teaching! I envied some of my classmates’ abilities to analyze their lesson plans, their teaching practices, and their classroom management strategies. At the end of the fall semester, at a descriptive review meeting with my classroom mentor and my Penn mentor, I wrote that I wanted to improve my ability to think about my teaching – I wanted to become a more reflective teacher. Since then, I have either acquired or recognized several tools for reflection, put them into practice, and become better at analyzing my teaching.
I also chose this inquiry topic because I wanted to study a question that would have practical implications for my teaching career. I teach in the Dominican Republic, so an inquiry into grading, standards, or even culturally-normed classroom behavior or management issues would not be practical. Using reflection to improve my teaching, however, will help me be a better teacher regardless of the country, school setting, grade level, or language in which I teach. Reflection has become a way for me to continually refine my teaching, so I decided to form a cohesive portfolio from my scattered thoughts and practices over the past year.