Foundation Skills/Reflection as a way of self-evaluating teaching practice/Objectives

Reflective practice
So, reflecting on your holiday experiences is not just about looking at photos, or talking about good excursions - it is more than that!

At this stage, you may be able to identify particular stages (in a cyclical process) as you reflect on the holiday: Planning, Implementing, Review, Improve, Share.

I'll avoid mentioning too much about theorists, but you may notice similarities in the above stages with Kolb's experiential learning cycle, which you've come across earlier in this course. Recall the steps in his cycle: Concrete experience, Reflective observation, Abstract conceptualisation, and Actice experiementation.

Course evaluations
By now, you'll realise that getting students to evaluate your teaching is just one source of information to inform your reflective practice and make improvements (but a very important source of information!). In addition to teacher or lecturer evaluations, your institution may also ask students to evaluate individual courses and programmes.

Larger educational institutions have formal structures in place for the above types of evaluations. If you work in a university or polytechnic, this will certainly be the case, and it is your duty to be familiar with the process and the expectations of your particular institution.

Improving teaching practice
The whole point of self-evaluating your teaching practice is to make improvements so that your students have the best learning experiences that you can offer. If students are happy, they'll tell others about the course, and if they perform well in your programme they may veey well get very good employment! What more do we want as teachers?