My early experiences of learning in the State education system of the UK clearly affected my career and attitude to education. In the main, I was taught by root, this had the affect of making me become bored and if I am honest, I did not take full advantage of my education.

Later realising I still had some untapped potential I enrolled on a course in Higher Education. I expected the same teaching methods that I had experienced earlier in my life, but instead found a more progressive, student centered approach. My motivation was high and I achieved my Certificate in Education.

I took these varied experiences with me when I entered teaching some ten years ago. I soon found that most learners at the college were I worked were poorly motivated, lacking drive and ambition. Part of my duties was to observe other teachers and provide feedback and mentoring. Observations led me to conclude that in many cases the student’s lack of motivation was directly linked to the uninspiring lessons served up by my colleagues. Sadly, during feedback sessions, many teachers failed to effectively evaluate their lesson.

Clearly if you as a teacher want to enhance the learning process you need to provide the catalyst that will ignite the students interest and be aware of what affect the learning process is having on them.

You may well be familiar with these words:

“I hear I forget, I see I remember, I do I understand”

(Confucius: teacher, philosopher, and political theorist, 551-479 BC)

It should therefore follow that the TESOL teacher who talks to much using little or no visual stimulation will be far less successful than the teacher who engages the students getting them actively involved in the learning experience allowing elicitation of the target language.

So what has this to do with self analysis and the TESOL course? The answer really is quite simple, because without some degree of reflection on their work, teachers will never be aware of how boring and ineffective their lessons are. Are they talking too much? Do they use visual stimuli? Are the learners actively involved in the process?

It would therefore be fair to say that to analyse effectively there is a need to reflect on the process you have just completed.

There are many theories on self reflection dating back as far as Confucius, but in my opinion the work of David A Kolb is by far the most relevant, other theorists such as A.Schon have simply developed Kolb’s original work.

Kolb describes himself as a “contemporary advocate of experiential learning,”  and is well known for his cyclical pattern (experiential learning cycle) of learning from experience, through reflection and conceptualization to a further experience.

Put in simple terms we have an experience (in this context a lesson), reflect on the process, then ask ourselves what actually happened and importantly why it happened before planning for the next experience (lesson).

It is a fact that from an early age we all use reflective practice, it’s just that we don’t label it as such. A child who for example touches something hot, soon learns from the experience and avoids hot surfaces in the future. As we become older we have many positive and negative experiences. In most cases we benefit from the event but sadly some of us never learn from the experience repeating the same mistake over and over again. This inability to learn is probably because we only partially complete Kolb’s cyclical pattern jumping off at some point before the process is complete.

Mastery of the reflective process often leads the practitioner towards developing the ability to reflect in action. In other words to be able to carry out the process of self reflection whilst completing an action, moving on, and completing the task. Other periods of self reflection might happen in the same time frame.

Kolb’s aim is to help create the “reflective practitioner,” a professional, who uses reflective practice every day in the self development process. This would seem to be an appropriate target for the developing TEFL teacher as the importance of continued professional development is paramount and self reflection can and should be an integral part of this process.

 Experiential Learning D.A. Kolb 1984

Mike Rose (TEFL course Phuket Thailand)
2nd- 27th July 2007