Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher

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Chapter 10 looks at the particular contributions that the literature of critical reflection can make to the reflective effort. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

Chapter 5 describes how to use learning journals, and other techniques to see through students' eyes. Filled with illustrative examples from a wide variety of classroom settings, the volume explores in detail what critical reflection is and why it is so vital for becoming a skillful teacher. Stephen Brookfield―the award-wining educator and bestselling author―explains how to confront the ­contradictions involved in creating democratic classrooms by using critical reflection as a tool for ongoing personal and professional development. Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education, he is the author of numerous books on teaching, including The Skillful Teacher(2015), Teaching for Critical Thinking(2011), and The Discussion Book(with Stephen Preskill) (2016), all from Jossey-Bass. I have seen Stephen Brookfield in conferences and he is a brave educator, open to tackle some of the issues most of us would rather not.

Most appealing is Brookfield's openness to how the various techniques may be individually tailored by educators to fit unique situations. The second edition that is being reviewed here saw the light of day in 2017, more than two decades after the first. Chapter 6 outlines the critical incident questionnaire and gives a case study illustration of its use. This is the second Brookfield book that I have read, after starting with his revised edition of The Skillful Teacher (2015).

Filled with practical tools and expert insight, this volume helps facilitate a journey of constructive self-critique. What I love about this simple, anonymous survey is that it provides clear insight into how students experience my teaching. It earned rave reviews after its initial publication, and several friends recommended it highly to me years ago.Houle Award for Outstanding Literature in Adult Education, he is the author of numerous books on teaching, including The Skillful Teacher (2015), Teaching for Critical Thinking (2011), and The Discussion Book (with Stephen Preskill) (2016), all from Jossey-Bass. The CIQ has surprised me on numerous occasions in which I thought I was "bombing" a teaching session.

Despite the continuity of the core thesis in the second edition, Brookfield has done something rather unusual for a new edition in completely rewriting “the whole book from the opening sentence to the last” (ix). Targeting faculty at all levels and across disciplines, this personal guide explores how practicing critical reflection can help align faculty with desired student outcomes, to view their practice from new perspectives, and engage learners by using varied teaching formats. Having someone who conveys such similar challenges as my own was quite helpful, both in terms of knowing that my concerns are common, but also by providing practical ways to reflect in different ways and take actions to develop my teaching even further.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. At the very point that I thought I was failing, numerous students gave feedback that suggested the opposite.