Research Of A Middle School Teacher's Reflection On Teaching

With more concerns about teachers' professional development, reflection on teaching, as a key to improving teachers' professional development and achieving effective instruction, has been attracting more and more attentions from both theoretical and practical circles in education. Overseas studies and researches on teachers' reflection are abundant in quantity and miscellaneous in content. Home article and works about reflective teaching are also very rich in number, but most of them, translated and edited, are introductions to overseas research results, and adopt documents as the research method. In research contents, home studies mostly concentrate on discussions about concept of reflective instruction and its formation, on theoretical basis, and theoretical analyses of the characteristics, contents, strategies and modes in reflective teaching. Reflection on teaching is an educational phenomenon that is context- and practice-specified, therefore, bare translation and introduction of overseas research methods and top-down theoretical deduction can not lead to theories and practical patterns of reflection on teaching which is operable and fitting with local realties. To compensate this deficiency in home studies, different research methods should be adopted, especially bottom-up research, to enhance field research of the processes of a teacher's reflection on teaching.Field research, conducted with the principle of choosing an ordinary teacher and reviewing its reflective behaviors in teaching, have shown that the research results of previous studies in contents and methods of reflection, and influential factors in this process. Specifically, the survey reveals the teacher's reflection on teaching process, teaching environment, and characteristics, strong points and weak points etc.; reflective methods adopted by the teacher, such as individual preparation for lessons, postscripts, annual summary, thesis papers, reading theoretical documents, and talking with students and colleagues, and network; factors influencing reflection such as a school's teaching environment, life pressure and personal commitment. Though these studies have brought forth some seemingly operable instruction suggestions, these suggestions are hard, even impossible, to be conducted, for these studies have adopted a top-down research method. In real instruction, aspects and links of reflection on teaching are influenced by society, school and the instructor itself. Therefore, paying attention to the context and holisticity of reflection on teaching and adopting bottom-up research methods will certainly lead to improved efficacy and accountability.