Reflection (from Latin reflexio - turning back) is the process of self-knowledge by the subject of internal mental acts and states. The concept of reflection arose in philosophy and meant the process of an individual’s reflection on what is happening in his own mind.
Reflection is the subject of study in various spheres of human knowledge: philosophy, methodology, science, psychology, acmeology, management, pedagogy, ergonomics, conflictology, etc.
A.V. Khutorskoy believes that reflection is a mental-active and sensory process of awareness by the subject of education of his activity, aimed at studying the activity that has already been carried out (remember, identify and realize).
M.V. Zakharenko believes that reflection is an incentive to independent creativity, ingenuity, and forecasting one’s educational path)
“A significant factor influencing the effectiveness of reflective activity is the variety of its forms, corresponding to the age characteristics of students and having different semantic purposes...”
A.V. Karpov, S.Yu. Stepanov, I.N. Semenov is distinguished:
reflection of mood and emotional state (aimed at establishing emotional contact with the group, identifying the degree of satisfaction with its work), at the beginning and at the end of the lesson;
reflection on the content of educational material (reveals the level of awareness of the content covered and is aimed at obtaining new information);
reflection of activity (carried out at different stages of the lesson and consists of understanding the ways and techniques of working with educational material, searching for more rational techniques)
Reflection in pedagogy is the process and result of participants in the educational process recording the state of their development, self-development and the reasons for this.
One of the definitions of reflection, available for clarification, is this: “Reflection is a thought directed at a thought” (or “directed at itself”). Perhaps the essence of reflection is not that it is a thought, but that it is self-directed and that reflection is a genetically secondary phenomenon. Reflection appears when insurmountable difficulties arise in the functioning of practice, as a result of which a practical norm (need) is not met. Reflection is the movement of practice beyond itself. Reflection is the otherness of practice. Reflection is a procedure that removes a practical difficulty. Reflection - development and renewal of practice. So, reflection is the turning of practice towards itself, reflection is derived from the cessation of practice. The highest form of practice, reflecting the essence of human ability, is activity. The latter cannot develop without reflection. The attributes immanently inherent in activity in their procedural existence - material, product, norms, methods and means of activity, as well as being an actor are not in themselves reflexive, but can be addressed to themselves if there are difficulties in their functioning.
In the psychology of creativity and creative thinking, reflection is interpreted as a process of comprehension and rethinking by the subject of stereotypes of experience, which is a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of innovation. In this context, it is customary to talk about the reflexive-innovative process, reflexive-creative abilities (I.N. Semenov, S.Yu. Stepanov), and also to highlight different forms of reflection (individual and collective) and types (intellectual, personal, communicative, cooperative ). The introduction of reflection into the context of psychological research and consideration of it from the point of view of personal-semantic dynamics made it possible to develop a conceptual model of the reflexive-innovation process, as well as a methodology for studying it through a content-semantic analysis of the discursive (speech) thinking of an individual and a group in the process of solving creative problems. The use of this technique for the empirical study of the unfolding of reflection in the process of individual solving small creative problems (the so-called “consideration problems”) led to the identification of different types of reflection: in intellectual terms - extensive, intensive and constructive; in personal terms - situational, retrospective and prospective (S.Yu. Stepanov, I.N. Semenov). Consideration of the relationship between reflection, creativity and human individuality made it possible to study the problem of the creative uniqueness of the individual and the role of reflection in its development (E.P. Varlamova, S.Yu. Stepanov).
Reflection on goal setting in a teacher’s innovative activities has the following characteristics:
Direct analysis – goal setting from the current state of the pedagogical system to the final planned goal;
Reverse analysis – goal setting from the final state to the actual one;
Goal setting from intermediate goals using both direct and reverse.
Reflective activities include:
understanding the value of education as a means of developing personal culture;
objective assessment of one’s educational achievements, behavior, personality traits;
taking into account the opinions of other people when determining one’s own position and self-esteem;
the ability to correlate the efforts made with the results of one’s activities
Reflection includes:
Constructing inferences, generalizations, analogies, comparisons and assessments;
Experience, remembering;
Problem solving.
The development of concrete experimental work in Russian psychology devoted to the study of reflection was prepared by the elaboration of this concept by I.M. Sechenov, B.G. Ananyev, P.P. Blonsky, L.S. Vygotsky, S.L. Rubinstein and others, first at the theoretical level of psychological knowledge as one of the explanatory principles of the organization and development of the human psyche, and above all its highest form - self-awareness. And now the concept of “reflection” is used as an explanatory principle for revealing the psychological content of various phenomena and facts obtained in experimental studies of specific subjects of psychological study: thinking, memory, consciousness, personality, communication, etc.
In pedagogical innovations, there is always a new idea discovered by the teacher himself or borrowed, therefore innovative experience must be comprehended and generalized in the form of an idea or concept. In this regard, the teacher needs to master scientific and methodological reflection, which allows one to correlate one or another innovative system with a variety of tasks of a specific study. Methodological reflection is associated with the subject’s awareness of the totality of methods and means, from the point of view of their adequacy to the goals of innovative activity, its object and result.
Reflection in the innovative activity of a teacher has the following characteristics:
Direct analysis - from the current state of the pedagogical system to the final planned goal;
Goal setting - from intermediate goals using both direct and reverse analysis;
Analysis of the significance of motives and their achievability;
Analysis and assessment of predicted results and consequences of achieving goals, selection of an actual goal.
Topic No. 4. The importance of reflection in teaching activities
Before you begin studying topic No. 4, complete the following reflective practice in writing in your notebooks:
During your educational (research) practice, you prepared and conducted your first lesson/activity/event. Your plans, worries - everything was embodied in him. Now there are only worries: did you get what you wanted or not?
Please read and seriously consider the following questions. Slowly, honestly and openly (after all, only for yourself!) try to answer them. You can choose any questions and in any order.
For this activity to produce results, devote enough time to it - as much as it takes to comprehend and understand everything. It's even better if you do this in writing in your journal. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t go very smoothly the first time, because you still need to learn how to talk to yourself.
Was my lesson strategy successful? How could the lesson be structured differently to make it more effective?
Did my students learn anything in the lesson? If yes, then thanks to what? If not, for what reason?
Did anything special happen during the lesson? If so, what exactly and why?
How well did my lesson draw on the students' knowledge, experiences and interests? How could this be done better?
How flexibly did I adapt the lesson flow to student responses and behavior?
How did my students feel about what we did together in class? How did they feel when they left the lesson? Did they feel comfortable in the lesson?
Did I manage to maintain discipline in the classroom? Which of my classroom techniques worked best and which didn't work as well? Why? What should have been done differently?
Was I able to manage my own emotional state throughout the lesson? If not, why not? What should I consider for the future?
What was the hardest thing for me in class? What required special effort on my part? Why? What should you do next time under such circumstances?
Were my teaching techniques effective? Is what the children learned really related to the way I taught them? What should I consider for the future?
Could this lesson have been taught differently? If so, how exactly? Which side of the lesson should be given more importance: content, methodological, emotional?
What motives did I rely on for my students in the lesson? Did I consider their intrinsic motivation or did I attract mainly external incentives? How else could you encourage them to study and succeed?
How objectively did I evaluate the students’ academic work? Did you comment on the marks given in a way that was clear enough for the students? How did grades affect the students’ mood and the entire course of the lesson?
Have I given students the opportunity to manage their learning activities independently? If so, what exactly? If not, why and how should it be done?
Did I rely on learning theory in preparing for and delivering the lesson? To what extent is the lesson taught consistent with my chosen learning theory?
What new things did I understand and realize about the art of teaching as a result of this lesson? What useful experience did you gain by analyzing yourself and this lesson? What do I need to do to become a more successful teacher?
Topic plan No. 4:
Parable about the teacher and the point
One day, the Teacher showed the students a blank sheet of paper with a black dot in the middle and asked: “What do you see?”
First student: “Point.”
Second: “Black dot”.
Third: “Bold point.”
Then the Teacher replied: “You all saw only a dot, but no one noticed the big white sheet!”
P.S. This is how we judge a person, by his small shortcomings.
4.1. The role and place of reflection in the activities of a teacher
The specificity of pedagogical activity lies in entering the social context in the system of relations “I and Others,” which actualizes the personal plan in reflection. This is due to the need to analyze and comprehend another person - an interaction partner, as well as reflexive self-analysis and self-assessment.
The difference between a teacher’s professional reflection and other types of reflexive processes is manifested in the fact that its meaning-forming, “core” relationship is the “teacher-pupil” relationship.
For a teacher, reflective thinking means correlating one’s professional action with the student at whom it is directed, from the standpoint of assessing its effectiveness for the student’s personal and intellectual development.
Reflection of this kind, when consciousness reflects not only one’s own action, but also another person to whom this action is directed, requires a special personal position of the teacher, based, firstly, on the professional and personal centering of the teacher on the student, when in any educational/ In the educational situation, the rights, interests and the very individuality of each pupil are in the foreground for the teacher.
Secondly, for the practical implementation of such centering of the teacher, his personal involvement in the educational/educational situation is necessary, which he experiences as awareness of his involvement and responsibility for its outcome.
The structure of pedagogical reflection includes two plans - operational and personal.
The operational plan of the structure of pedagogical reflection is represented by constructive, prognostic and motivational components that correspond to the most important aspects of his practical activity (design and adaptation of educational material in accordance with the student’s capabilities, forecasting his possible difficulties, stimulating his independent actions in solving a problem, etc.).
The teacher’s personal plan of reflective thinking is revealed in his professional and personal focus on the student in the learning process (subjective orientation), as well as in his personal involvement in the reflexively displayed educational/educational situation, which is manifested in his understanding of his involvement and responsibility for the results of the student’s educational activities .
The main condition for the occurrence of reflection is difficulties in activity. It is possible to overcome difficulties only by isolating and realizing them. In the teaching profession, reflection plays an important role. A constant reflexive review of one's theoretical base from the perspective of daily professional practice allows the teacher to become competent in his professional field. The founder of analytical psychology, C. Jung, argued that a teacher is doomed to be competent.
Competence is a special type of knowledge organization that provides the ability to make effective decisions in a certain subject area of activity. Research into the psychological nature of competence allowed M. A. Kholodnaya to identify the following characteristics of the type of knowledge organization that distinguish a competent person:
Diversity (many different knowledge about different things);
Articulation (elements of knowledge are clearly identified, while all of them are in certain relationships with each other);
Flexibility (both the content of individual elements of knowledge and the connections between them can quickly change under the influence of certain objective factors, including when knowledge turns into ignorance);
Speed of updating at the moment in the right situation (promptness and easy accessibility of knowledge);
Ability to apply in a wide range of situations (including the ability to transfer knowledge to a new situation);
Selection of key elements (in the diversity of knowledge regarding a given subject area, individual facts, provisions, definitions are recognized as the most important, decisive for its understanding);
Possession of not only declarative knowledge (knowledge of “what”), but also procedural knowledge (knowledge of “how”);
Having knowledge about one's own knowledge is the result of reflective self-control.
The professional competence of a teacher is a qualitative characteristic of a specialist’s personality, including a system of scientific and theoretical knowledge in the subject area and in the field of pedagogy and psychology.
Components of professional competence of a teacher:
The motivational-volitional component includes: motives, goals, needs, values, stimulates the creative manifestation of the individual in the profession; presupposes interest in professional activities;
The functional (from Latin functio - execution) component in the general case manifests itself in the form of knowledge about the methods of pedagogical activity necessary for the teacher to design and implement one or another pedagogical technology;
The communicative (from the Latin communico - connect, communicate) component of competence includes the ability to clearly and clearly express thoughts, convince, argue, build evidence, analyze, express judgments, convey rational and emotional information, establish interpersonal connections, coordinate one’s actions with the actions of colleagues, choose the optimal communication style in various business situations, organize and maintain dialogue;
The reflexive component is manifested in the ability to consciously control the results of one’s activities and the level of one’s own development and personal achievements; the formation of such qualities and properties as creativity, initiative, focus on cooperation, co-creation, and a tendency to introspection. The reflective component is a regulator of personal achievements, the search for personal meaning in communication with people, self-government, as well as a stimulator of self-knowledge, professional growth, improvement of skills, meaning-making activities and the formation of an individual work style.
The indicated characteristics of a teacher’s professional competence cannot be considered in isolation, since they are integrative, holistic in nature, and are a product of professional training as a whole.
The role of reflection is also significant in a teacher’s understanding of his professional experience, since it is not the experience itself that is used, but the thought derived from it (K.D. Ushinsky). The combination of a professional’s experience and his reflection provides, according to D. Posner, the key to the development of professional skills: “experience + reflection = development.” The reflexive integration of the teacher’s theoretical knowledge and his practical experience gives rise to a qualitatively new education of a professional, filled with personal meaning - leading ideas that take on the function of regulating his activities. Beliefs, value orientations, and personal attitudes of a teacher are the core of any leading idea. In addition, the leading idea also has a subject plan: these are the basic principles that guide the teacher when selecting teaching methods, ways of presenting educational material, and establishing a style of communication with students and colleagues.
Reflective comprehension contributes to the “ripening” of leading ideas to the level of their internal acceptance. As a result, the teacher’s “sensitivity” to the problems of professional reality increases, the potential of his practical thinking is enriched by the author’s strategies (the ability to think in his own way, original), which allows him, by identifying in a particular phenomenon its general pedagogical essence, to make the most effective decisions.
Mastering by a teacher the culture of reflective analysis of his professional experience contributes to his professional and personal maturity, i.e. wise teacher. Researchers include the qualities of a wise person as the ability to be observant and receptive, to see the essence of phenomena and be able to make reasonable decisions in difficult professional circumstances; be open to any information and accommodate different points of view; understand and accept other people's problems; not to be categorical in judgments and assessments, to be critical in assessing any knowledge, including your own. A wise person is characterized by a question-and-answer form of knowledge, in which there is a high proportion of feelings of doubt, akin to the nature of reflection. Teacher and wisdom: in the social sense - the expected relationship of concepts. In a professional practical sense, it is a goal that a teacher sets for himself and achieves throughout his life.
Reflection is a powerful catalyst for the professional and personal growth of a teacher. According to A. A. Bizyaeva, teacher reflection is present in:
In the professional thinking and self-awareness of a teacher;
In educational interaction with the student;
In creating the image of a teacher;
In the prevention of professional deformation of a teacher's personality.
V. G. Anikina, sees the importance of reflection in the teacher’s solution to problem-conflict situations (PCS).
4.2. The content of reflection at various stages of teaching activity
In the interpretation of reflexive processes in Russian literature, two approaches have developed: 1) reflexive analysis of consciousness, leading to an explanation of the meanings of objects, and their construction; 2) reflection as understanding the meaning of interpersonal communication. In this regard, the following reflexive processes are distinguished: self-understanding and understanding of another, self-esteem and assessment of another, self-interpretation and interpretation of another. Reflection is not just the subject’s knowledge or understanding of himself, but also finding out how others know and understand the “reflector,” his personal characteristics, emotional reactions and cognitive (related to cognition) representations.
E. V. Piskunova argues that in order to ensure systematic updates, each teacher must be adapted to changes in professional activity, have a developed ability to understand himself and the environment, and be ready for constant self-education and practical activity.
V.A. Slastenin argues that the content of reflection is different at different stages of pedagogical activity. Reflection on the processes and components of activity becomes even more complicated due to the need to record the results of activity and their relationship with the predicted goal (performance assessment), the content of the image of “I” and other elements of the “I-concept” (self-esteem).
Each level of reflection determines the special content of the teacher’s capabilities, awareness and experiences. When reflecting on the boundaries of possibilities, fixing the difference between oneself and others, the teacher experiences a state of contradiction and a desire to resolve it. Knowledge and use of reserves for understanding and changing limitations leads the teacher to experience success in teaching.
Reflexive processes in a teacher’s self-awareness
The most important area of a teacher’s reflective analysis is his professional self-awareness. A teacher’s ability to analyze and evaluate his feelings and relationships, the strengths and weaknesses of his personality, and the degree of their compliance with professional tasks indicates his psychological maturity.
The conditions in which the teacher’s activities are carried out provide him with few opportunities for in-depth self-analysis. It is well known that the practical activities of a teacher require a high degree of efficiency and dynamism. As scientists' observations indicate, on average, every two minutes of educational interaction with students confronts the teacher with the need to make a decision. The rapidity with which educational situations change, on the one hand, and their repetition, even routineness, on the other, lead to the fact that teachers rarely make alternative decisions and more often act stereotypically, resorting to automated patterns of behavior.
Other experimental data indicate that teachers often already “know” their students without ever seeing them in person. The reason for this phenomenon is the result of their practical experience, which is personified in the collective image of a certain “average” student, regarding whom the teacher, without realizing it, predicts and even implements interaction tactics.
The mentioned errors in the professional behavior of a teacher arise in the absence of the practice of constant analysis of one’s activities and oneself as its subject. Reflection on one’s actions, carried out both simultaneously with them and retrospectively, allows the teacher to refrain from impulsive and stereotypical actions and consciously regulate his activities taking into account all objective conditions.
Reflection formalizes and consolidates the teacher’s self-concept, contributing, on the one hand, to the dynamism of its content, and on the other, maintaining its stability. In the case of a teacher’s low self-esteem, a negative self-concept, which destructively affects both professional “well-being” and the nature of his interaction with the student, it is reflexive self-analysis, especially in the context of group psychotherapeutic training, that becomes an effective correctional tool.
Discussion of the problem of a teacher’s self-concept from the point of view of its reflexive control raises another important question. The teacher solves the professional problem of developing the student’s intelligence, building a special line of education for each specific child, taking into account his individual psychological characteristics. At the same time, he must be aware of the degree of influence of his own individuality on the educational process.
An authoritative teacher comes to the class with excellent professional training, has an original teaching style, and, moreover, a bright personality. “Is this good for the student?” - asks Professor M.A. Kholodnaya, the author of many scientific works on the psychology of intelligence. The answer would seem to be clear. However, not all so simple. “For some children, whose mentality coincides with the mentality of the teacher, this is an undoubted success in life. But what will happen to a child who tends to think about a problem alone, while the teacher organizes lessons in an active dialogue mode, including children in heated discussions? What should a child who loves to express judgments that stun him and those around him, “play” with ideas, do if the teacher is focused on drawing up visual graph diagrams highlighting the main facts and the main logical connections between them? .
A strong teacher runs the risk of projecting his personal characteristics into the content of the lesson, using the power of his authority to impose as the only “correct” ways of processing information that reflect his individual style, and without meaning to, he can slow down the intellectual development of a student with a mentality different from his own. . Many teachers can give examples of the “incomprehensible” failure of a student who is capable in other subjects.
The solution to this serious problem is related to the observance of the rights of the child and therefore the teacher bears special responsibility for it. The teacher’s awareness of his individuality, which constitutes his self-concept, should become part of his professional culture.
Each person, to one degree or another, knows the way of his mind: his preferred ways of working with text, his approaches to solving problems, his developed strategies in decision-making, even his typical mistakes. For a teacher, it is important not just an approximate knowledge of oneself, but a deep reflective study of one’s individuality. The thought contained in the poet’s famous phrase “We cannot predict how our word will respond” is not a permit for a teacher. He is obliged to predict - this is his professional duty.
For example, an individual psychological characteristic of a teacher is a cognitive style of thinking, which bears the influence of reflexive properties. Acting as an individually unique way of processing information about a current situation (methods of its perception, analysis, categorization, evaluation, etc.), cognitive style has a noticeable impact on the procedural and resulting aspects of pedagogical interaction.
It can be assumed that in a decision-making situation, a teacher with a reflexive cognitive style will show less haste and more prudence, which will save him from many mistakes that those with an impulsive style make in a hurry. It can also be assumed that a teacher with a reflective style will unwittingly encourage students to unhurried and in-depth reflection, while an impulsive teacher will tend to reward students for quickness and spontaneity in generating ideas and hypotheses. At the same time, a reflective teacher will “slow down” impulsive students, reproaching them for their “extraordinary lightness of thoughts,” and teachers with an impulsive style will unwittingly irritate the slowness and indecisiveness of students with a reflective style. But this happens only if this teacher does not think about the degree and nature of the influence of his individuality on students.
So, professional reflection provides the key to understanding not only what a good teacher does, but also how exactly he does it. The teacher questions himself: Who am I? What is my role? What am I working for? - encourage him to constantly reflexively comprehend and support his professional philosophy, consisting of a system of value orientations and basic principles that set the meaning of his activities, help in defining goals, and become arguments in decision-making. In this context, the teacher’s reflection acts as his ability to analyze, comprehend and construct the meaning-forming value basis of his activities, based on the reflection of himself as a subject of activity, personality and individuality in the system of social relations.
Questions and tasks for 4.2.
1. Think about why the teaching profession needs the teacher’s ability to think reflectively? What other professions also require a person's reflective abilities?
2. What is the specificity of pedagogical reflection as opposed to, for example, the reflection of an actor or investigator?
Z. What constitutes the content of a teacher’s professional reflection? Why can a teacher’s reflection be considered panoramic?
4. A Greek proverb says: “He who believes is happy, he who doubts is wise.” In what doubts do you think the wisdom of a teacher is demonstrated?
7. Give your interpretation of the concept of pedagogical reflection.
8. Think about which of your school teachers you would now call a reflective teacher? What is your opinion based on? Was this teacher different from all your other teachers? If yes, then what exactly? How did your teacher’s reflective ability manifest itself in relation to you?
9. Give a brief psychological description of pedagogical competence. What role does reflection play in the development of a teacher’s professional competence?
10. Give your interpretation of the “formula” of teacher professional development by D. Posner: “experience + reflection = development.” How do you feel about the idea that this result is more than just the sum of two terms?
11. What do you think gives rise to leading ideas in the professional consciousness of a teacher? Try to give your definition of the concept of a teacher’s professional credo. Do you see a connection between this concept and the concept of a leading idea? What do you see as the purpose (function) of the leading idea in the teacher’s practical thinking? Remember your favorite teacher. Consider what guiding ideas guided his decisions and how they influenced the development of your personality.
12. Have you ever thought about the psychological phenomenon of human wisdom? Try to give your own definition of the concept of “wisdom”. What role do you think the ability for reflective thinking plays in the development of a person’s wisdom? Have you ever met a wise person in your life? How was he different from all other people? Was there a noticeable tendency towards reflection in him?
Reflective workshop
Exercise “Who Am I?”
Goal: to get an idea of your cognitive style (according to the parameter “reflexivity - impulsiveness”).
It is known that our ideas about ourselves develop gradually and are rarely revised. The way we perceive and evaluate ourselves has a huge impact on our choice of life goals and strategies, as well as on the emotional state that colors our lives in either bright or gray tones. For a teacher, the nature of self-attitude is doubly important, since it determines the entire atmosphere of interaction with students and leaves its mark on their soul.
Therefore, the tradition of reflective “inventory” of oneself is absolutely necessary for a teacher, i.e. conducting an objective and thoughtful analysis of your qualities, goals, relationships. What you think about yourself, how you feel about yourself, how deeply you understand yourself - you can find out about this by reflecting on the following questions.
It is advisable to write down your thoughts in your diary. Don’t be lazy to write them down in detail, only in this case will you be able to get the most complete picture of yourself. Returning to these recordings again may bring you the discovery of new sides in yourself.
Who am I? What do I strive for in life? Do I understand what my life wants from me?
Was I able to achieve what I dreamed of? If yes, then thanks to what? If not, what stopped me?
Can I win? What victories have I achieved? What did it cost me?
Am I a capable person? What abilities do I have? What abilities would I like to have?
Do people close to me value me? Why do they value me?
What qualities of mine bring them disappointment?
How can I be more useful and useful to them?
What impact am I having on their lives?
What have I always wanted to do in life? What have I always been especially good at? Am I doing this now? Why don't I do it?
What upsets me most in life? For what reason?
What worries me the most? How often do I experience this condition? Why?
What do I value most in life? How often do I get this? What am I doing for this?
What brings me the most satisfaction in life? To what extent does this depend on myself?
What mood usually prevails during the day? How is it determined? How does this affect the success of my activities? How does this affect the people around me?
What kind of person am I? What is my character? Can I live in peace with myself? Do other people feel good about me?
What image do I have of myself? How does this idea affect my life: the goals I set for myself, the way I achieve them?
Test "Impulsivity"
The test proposed here makes it possible to find out about a person’s tendency to make insufficiently thoughtful, informed decisions. Answer the questions below in writing, selecting “yes” or “no”:
1. Do you notice some haste in making decisions?
2. In everyday life, is it common for you to act on the spur of the moment, without thinking about the possible consequences?
3. Do you follow the rule “Measure twice, cut once” when making decisions?
4. Do you have a tendency to speak without thinking?
5. Do you tend to act under the influence of feelings?
6. Do you tend to think carefully about what you are planning?
7. Do people who cannot quickly decide on something irritate you?
8. Are you a reasonable person?
9. When you intend to do something, are emotions more important to you than reason?
10. Is it typical for you to be reluctant to go through different options for a long time when making a decision?
11. Do you often scold yourself for making hasty decisions?
12. When you make a decision, first of all you think, what will it lead to?
13. Do you usually hesitate and cannot make a decision until the last moment?
14. When solving even a simple question, do you have to think everything through?
15. In the event of a conflict, can you, without hesitation, rebuff your offender?
Decryption key:
For answers “YES” to questions 1,2,4,5,7,9,10,11,12,15 and answers “No” to questions 3,6,8,13,14, 1 point is awarded. The higher the score, the more pronounced the tendency to impulsive actions; the lower the score, the greater the tendency to be reflexive when making decisions.
4.3. The role of teacher reflection in educational interaction with students
Introduction.A Tale of Another Point of View
(Source: Vachkov, I.V. Psychological exercises for trainings [Electronic resource] / I.V. Vachkov. Access mode: http://www.trepsy.net/parable/stat.php?stat=5118 (access date: 02/12/2014).
Little Point A, like other kids, was taught by her parents from early childhood:
– It is impossible for dots to live without the ability to communicate correctly. To do this, you always need to remember the most important secret: in order to understand another, you need to stand on his Point of View.
– What is it like to stand on the Point of View? You can also crush it! – Point A squeaked in fear.
– This means looking at things through his eyes, understanding how he sees the world, what he thinks, what he feels.
– Transform into another point? – clarified the quick-witted Point A.
– Right! You must be able to become another point. But don't stop being yourself.
Point A diligently studied at the Point School and diligently mastered the most important and most difficult science - to stand on Another Point of View. The dots were tiny and easily aligned with each other, so the teaching went well. From the teacher, Point A learned that there are creatures in the world that are thousands of millions of times larger in size than points. She really wanted to look at them. One day during the holidays she went on a trip.
Point A flew very quickly, so that everything around flashed, merging into a continuous motley ribbon. “This way I won’t be able to see anything!” – Point A said to herself, stopped and looked around. She found herself in a summer forest, not far from a large anthill. Sitting down on a hummock, she saw two ants between the stems of grass, snatching a small stick from each other.
– Why don't you want to understand each other? – Point A was surprised. – Stand on the Other’s Point of View!
– Like this? - asked the ants, sniffling angrily and looking sideways at her. - Try it yourself!
– But you are so big for me. It is very difficult for me to stand on your Point of View.
– Then don't lecture us! - declared the ants, starting to fight for the stick again.
– Stop! I will try.
Point A tuned in as she was taught and became the first ant. She realized that she wanted to take possession of this stick in order to bring it to the anthill and earn praise from dad for her hard work. Then Point A stood at the Point of View of the second ant and felt concern for her sick sister, who needed to secure her crib with this stick.
– Now try to stand on each other’s Point of View! - suggested Point A. - First of all, just tell us why each of you needs this wand.
The ants grumbled, but followed her advice. A few minutes later they were cheerfully and amicably dragging the stick to the anthill. Point A smiled and flew on. She made her next stop on a tree branch next to two young starlings.
– Let's fly over the meadow!
– No, first over the lake!
– Over the meadow!
– Over the lake!
– Stop bickering! - said Point A. - Stand on the Point of View of the Other. What's easier? And you will be able to come to an agreement!
The starlings stared in bewilderment at the Point, barely visible to them.
– Can you do it yourself? – one of them asked incredulously.
– Actually yes. But you are so huge for me...” said Point A, however, sighing, she tried to turn into each of the birds in turn.
It turned out that the first starling was hungry and wanted to catch midges over the meadow, and the second was full, and he wanted to frolic above the water and admire his reflection. Point A taught the starlings to stand at the Other Point of View, and when they found out each other’s desires, they quickly agreed that they would first fly to the meadow so that the first starling would satisfy his hunger, and then they would play together over the lake.
Point A was already tired, but decided to continue the journey. This time she flew for a long time and sat down to rest on a large gray mountain, which for some reason was moving. The mountain turned out to be an elephant hurrying across the savannah to a watering hole. Sitting on the back of an elephant, Point A admired the surroundings for some time, but accidentally looked down and screamed desperately:
– Wait! Stop!
The fact was that the elephant raised his huge leg over the partridge's nest. Mama Partridge spread her wings over the small, pockmarked eggs in horror, as if this could save them from the fate of being crushed. Hearing the squeak of Point A, the elephant froze - with his leg raised - and moved his eared head in bewilderment, not understanding where the sound was coming from. Point A screamed at the top of her lungs:
– You are casually ready to crush the partridge's nest and its nest! But try to take her place. Stand at her Point of View! How do you think she feels?
The elephant, unable to discern the source of the screams, said irritably:
– And who will stand on my Point of View?
– I would try... But you are such a giant! Just the tip of your tail could accommodate billions of dots like me,” Point A said in confusion.
– So you can't see the world through my eyes? So what do you ask of me? – and the elephant’s leg began to fall threateningly.
– No no! I can do it! – Point A hastily cried.
She gathered all her strength and became an elephant. She understood where the giant was in such a hurry: his baby elephants were very hot, and he wanted to bring water in his trunk to give them a refreshing shower.
– Now try to stand on the Point of View of a small partridge, which cannot carry its eggs away from under your huge feet and is ready to die along with the unhatched chicks, trying to save them,” Point A said in a tired voice. “Try to see the gigantic foot inexorably descending on you.” and feel all the helplessness of a small creature.
The elephant thought. He carefully placed his foot away from the nest and bent down, carefully examining the frightened partridge.
– Please forgive me for disturbing you,” said the elephant. “I’ll go back the other way.”
– Hooray! – exclaimed Point A. – You’re great! So huge, you managed to stand on the Point of view of a tiny partridge. You deserve admiration.
– No,” the elephant said seriously. “You deserve admiration, little one, smaller than whom there is nothing in the world.” You know how to stand at the Point of View of any creature - from the largest to the smallest. You teach us all to understand Other Points of View. And from this we become kinder.
Tired Point A squeaked gratefully and flew on.
Questions:
What is the purpose of reading this fairy tale?
What does it have to do with the question of the role of teacher reflection in educational interaction with students?
Do you agree with the position of Point A? Why?
Depending on what leading idea guides the teacher’s strategy - traditional (the teacher is the central figure, directs the student’s learning to acquire the “correct” information) or humanistic (the central figure is the student, his goal is to learn to learn, the teacher organizes and facilitates the process of cognition) , distinguish between authoritarian and reflexive management.
Under authoritarian management, the teacher is the subject of the pedagogical process, while students are only objects that are forced to act in the direction indicated by the teacher.
Reflexive management, which implements the humanistic strategy of pedagogical interaction, firstly, puts students in the position of an active subject of learning, secondly, develops their ability to self-manage their own learning and, finally, organizes the learning process as a solution to educational and cognitive problems based on a creative dialogue with students.
The teacher’s reflection acts as the main psychological mechanism for organizing such educational interaction, because its practical implementation is possible only under the conditions if:
On the one hand, the teacher will reflect a picture of the students’ inner world, understand his expectations and interests, share his concerns and joys;
On the other hand, it will regulate the activities of students from the point of view of the student himself, from the point of view of his development in the process of active interaction with other people, from the point of view of the formation of his personal mechanisms of self-regulation.
With this approach to the learning process, the psychological structure of the teacher’s activity can be presented as a process of reflexive management of “other activities”, which is the object of control on the part of the teacher.
One of the conditions for a teacher’s successful reflexive management of interaction with students is a high level of his social-perceptual abilities, which ensure the process of adequate perception and understanding by the teacher of his students, and through them - in a mirror image - of himself.
As a practical example that reveals this aspect of pedagogical activity, let us present the problem of maintaining discipline in the classroom. This problem can be solved by an authoritarian management style, in which both the teacher and students will lose. The optimal approach, from the point of view of researchers, is one based on the assumption that order in the classroom depends not so much on how often and actively the teacher intervenes in the activities of students, but on how the teacher organizes the lesson. Knowing the interests and needs of children, their individual psychological characteristics and reflectively reflecting them in their minds, the teacher builds a flexible lesson scenario that takes into account ways to hold students’ attention and attract them to active participation in joint activities using the following techniques:
It is necessary for each student to report in some form for the results of their work in the lesson. For example, if the class is assigned to listen to a presentation from a peer, students should be asked to make notes in their notebooks reflecting their understanding of what they heard, and then invited to comment on these notes or ask questions or evaluate what they heard;
It is necessary to use signals, for example, when asking questions, address different children at random, which will keep everyone on edge, or offer them tasks where one of the students must come up with answer questions on the go, and everyone else must answer, etc.
Here is another side of a teacher’s practical activity that requires his social-perceptual abilities: interaction with difficult teenagers. It happens that the daring behavior of a teenager, his emphatically independent position, and resistance to all pedagogical actions lead the teacher to despair and spiritual bitterness. In this situation, the only correct and professional way out is to try to internally take the place of a teenager, look at the situation and yourself through his eyes. This can help the teacher understand the hidden motives of the student’s behavior and find a way out of a conflict situation with him.
As is known in psychology, the main motives in human behavior are related to the achievement of certain goals. A. Adler identified four main types of goals that determine the child’s behavior: this is his need to attract attention, show power, take revenge, or look helpless and inadequate. Moreover, these goals are hierarchical: this means that at first our difficult teenager may do something unpleasant for us, just to attract attention to himself. Let's say it didn't work out. Then he will deliberately act in his own way, demonstrate disobedience. If such behavior is suppressed, one can predict that he will develop a desire for revenge in some form (for example, even deliberate silence with an offended look). And in the end, you can expect completely inadequate, helpless behavior (hysterics, crying).
Therefore, in order to understand the student’s behavior, the teacher needs to understand his goals and how they are interpreted in his behavior. Reflection makes the teacher wiser because he does not enter into conflict with the teenager, demonstrating his superiority and thereby humiliating him, but resolves the conflict from the perspective of the child’s needs based on understanding and support. Another thing is that you need to know these needs so that you have something to reflect on.
Another side of the teacher’s reflexive ability, manifested in interaction with students, is his ability to listen to his interlocutor. Listening as an active cognitive and communicative process determines the effectiveness of feedback at all levels, contributes to a better understanding of the partner and the successful achievement of the goal of communication. Research on communication processes suggests that effective listening skills are the result of specific training. The main strategy in teaching listening is to change the passive position of the listener to an active position.
Active or reflective listening is based on a person taking responsibility for what he hears by confirming, clarifying, checking the meaning and purpose of the message received from another. The literature devoted to the development of reflective listening skills emphasizes that this type of listening is based on a person’s reflective ability to reflect the feelings and experiences of the speaker, and to interpret the inner meaning of the interlocutor’s remarks in his speech. “Reflexively listening to a child means “returning” to him in a conversation what he told you, while indicating his feeling.”
The professional need for teachers (and parents) to master this way of listening is explained by its high potential for establishing mutual understanding, reducing communication distances and generating a sense of trust. It’s not for nothing that psychologists call this kind of listening “helpful listening.” An example from the book by psychologist T. Gordon [cit. according to 3, p. 70]: The father of a fifteen-year-old girl, returning from a parenting course where he was introduced to the method of reflective listening, found his daughter in the kitchen discussing her school with a classmate in unflattering terms. “I sat down on a chair,” my father later said, “and decided to listen to them, as I was taught - reflexively, no matter what it cost me. As a result, the guys talked without closing their mouths for two and a half hours, and during this time I learned more about my daughter’s life than in the previous few years!”
Mastering the skills of reflective listening is possible through special training and reflective self-control. Scheme of the stages of reflective listening: internal, sincere acceptance of the interlocutor, empathic attunement to him; clarification; paraphrasing; reflection of feelings; summarizing (see Psychology of attention: a reader / edited by Yu. B. Gipperreiter, V. Ya. Romanova. - Moscow: CheRo, 2001. - 856 p.).
Questions and tasks for 4.3.
1. What is the psychological content of reflexive management? Under what conditions is it implemented? How does reflexive management differ from authoritarian management? Which of the above types of management, in your opinion, most corresponds to the objectives of teaching at school? How do you understand the phrase “the psychological structure of a teacher’s activity can be described as a process of reflexive management of “other” activities (students’ activities)”?
2. What role does reflection play in the social-perceptual abilities of a teacher? Do you think reflection can objectively reflect the internal state of the interlocutor? Can we trust the image of ourselves that we get from a reflexive “scanning” of our relationship with a partner, or is it a “distorting mirror”? Does reflecting on relationships help improve them? You can test your opinion on this issue by doing the following exercise.
3. Conduct reflective listening with your friends and parents in accordance with its technique (see Reflection. Pedagogical reflection: lectures and workshop on psychology [Electronic resource]. - Access mode: http://www.vashpsixolog.ru/lectures-on -the-psychology/134-other-psychology/792-reflection-teacher-reflection (accessed 11/15/2013).
Reflective workshop
Exercise “Put yourself in someone else’s shoes”
Remember your recent conflict with a work or study colleague in which you behaved arrogantly or, as psychologists say, from a position of “above”.
Relax, close your eyes and imagine yourself in the place of the teacher you were talking to.
Introduced? Now, internally, silently ask him, what impression did he get from communicating with you? Think about what your interlocutor might say about you.
Then replay your conversation in your mind in a way that leaves your partner with a good impression of you. What changed? Have you realized that, first of all, your internal position has changed? Have you realized what position this is? If previously, consciously or unconsciously, in communicating with this colleague for some reason, you sought to prove your authority to him, now you approach this person, internally tuning into dialogue from a position of equality. Think about which position is most optimal for you to maintain full communication with your work colleagues. Also analyze your internal position in communicating with your students in practice.
4.4. The role of reflection in creating the image of a teacher
A teacher’s ability to purposefully manage his image, that is, the impression he would like to make on others, is entirely determined by his reflexive ability to reflect his individual characteristics and the expectations of others regarding himself. The image of a teacher or his public self, consciously created by him, is an important component of his professional culture and has a profound impact on the entire sphere of his activity and communication.
Image is a very complex formation that has several components.
Image structure (according to L.M. Mitina):
The first of the components is the image as the impression that a person makes on others when he appears and which remains with people in his absence. “This is the tip of the iceberg, most of which is hidden from us, but all this part embodies the whole.” The paradox of the image is that it can be different for the same person, since it depends not only on who creates it, but also on who perceives it and how.
External and internal sides are important components of the image. The external side of the image consists of everything that is visible to the observer: appearance, clothing, demeanor, timbre and strength of voice, gait. An important detail for the teacher: psychological studies have revealed a pattern of social perception, which consists in the fact that others tend to attribute much more positive personal qualities to an outwardly attractive person than to an “ordinary” or unattractive person.
The inner side of the image is what is manifested in a person’s actions and speech and what reflects the spiritual world of a person, his intellectual level, worldview. The external and internal sides of the image can correspond and complement each other (“everything in a person should be beautiful...”). They may also come into conflict with each other.
The procedural side of the image reveals itself in a person’s activity, reflects the level of his activity and manifests itself in such characteristics as energy, speed, flexibility, emotionality.
The central component of the image is a person’s life strategy, reflecting his goals and values, what psychologists call a “legend”.
There is a distinction between individual and social image. Each stage in the development of society sets its own image content. The means of fine art and mass communication play a major role in modeling, consolidating and disseminating the image. In the 50-60s of the XX century. in our country, the image of a teacher was steadily associated with those heroines of the films “The First Teacher”, “First-Grader”, whose roles were played by the famous actresses Vera Maretskaya and Tamara Makarova. The images they created set the social image of the teacher of those years: a pretty woman in a dark dress with a white collar, smart, strict, but fair, always restrained, taciturn, dedicated to her work.
Only in the late 60s did a new image of a teacher emerge, based on the role of a teacher, talentedly played by V. Tikhonov in the beloved film “We’ll Live Until Monday.” He filled the image of a teacher with rich human content and the spirit of the times, and determined for many years the standard of image that teachers aspired to.
The image of an intellectual, a highly educated and well-mannered person with an orientation towards spiritual values, who does not shy away from the benefits of modern civilization (fashionable clothes, good physical shape, fluency in electronic equipment), which a modern teacher strives to maintain, despite his social vulnerability, evokes respect and sympathy from him students, and in itself is a factor in education.
How can a teacher work on his image? The teacher’s creation of his individual image is based on a reflexive reflection of all components of the structure of the social image regarding his personality and individuality. Obviously, one of the important conditions for the success of a teacher in working on his image will be his awareness and acceptance of behavior that reflects a sincere, friendly interest in people, openness to contact, desire for participation and help, reflecting the humane meaning of his profession. Of course, such behavior will be perceived as sincere if it reflects the person's true values.
The image embodies a model of the expected role behavior of a teacher, which should reflect the needs of the time. The modern school, which is increasingly acquiring the features of an educational institution of an open society, will also require a corresponding image of the teacher as a person who is liberal, open and attractive in communication. Everything in such an image is significant, including its emotional components. Let us note one, in our opinion, important detail: unfortunately, the image of a modern teacher is not always associated with a smile. Serious, attentive, focused, even very kind (inside), but smiling? Hardly. Meanwhile, the teaching profession in its social expectation requires showing signs of optimism and goodwill to people.
German psychologist V. Birkenbiel, who studies the characteristics of social perception, noted: “A person who does not know how to smile is already a “bad” person in himself. He has no agreement with himself, no peace within, he is constantly dissatisfied with something, etc. With such an attitude it is difficult to achieve success, no matter where one works" [see. 2]. It is clear that this circumstance significantly harms the image of the teacher. And if we also take into account the power of a smile’s influence on the mood of another person, especially a child, as well as its magical property of contagion, then the need for a conscious reflexive adjustment of one’s image becomes obvious to the teacher.
Many useful books have been written about positive thinking, self-acceptance and self-approval. Indeed, for a smile to naturally bloom on your face, you need the same emotional state in your soul. After all, it has long been known that all good things begin from love and respect for oneself, from an inner mood of joy. This is important for everyone. For a teacher, this is also a necessary part of his professional duties.
Reflective workshop
Think about someone you know whose image attracts your attention. What do you think is most important in the impression this person makes on others? What metaphor could you use to describe this impression? Do you think this person is aware of the impression he is making? Think about how he achieves this effect? Is it the external or internal side of his image that determines your perception? Are they in harmony with each other?
Now think about the impression you make on others. Do you often think about your image? Answer yourself, what kind of image are you trying to create? What are you doing for this? What in your image do you pay special attention to: appearance, clothing, your physical form, demeanor, your mood, intellectual level, interests, values?
Is it important to you what others think about the impression you make? How will you know about this? Do you try to meet the expectations of people in your circle or do you feel independent from this?
Have you ever changed your image? If yes, for what reason? What exactly did you do for this? Did the “legend” of your image change or just its external image?
Do you think a person can objectively control his image or does this require outside opinion or advice?
Do you think the way a person treats himself influences his image? Is it possible not to trust yourself and have the image of a confident person?
Watch yourself: do you smile often? How do you imagine yourself interacting with students: reserved or smiling? Think about it, with what face do you usually enter the classroom? Analyze yourself: do you smile more often at your students, or colleagues, or even strangers? If you are holding back your smile, think: what is stopping you?
4.5. The role of reflection in the prevention of professional deformation of a teacher’s personality
Professional maladjustment gradually develops from professional adaptation. Psychologists claim that of all professions, the professions of the “person-person” system are the most susceptible to the formation of maladaptive changes in personality.
The teaching profession is one of the most deforming of the personality of its subject. If a teacher does not control the breadth of manifestation of his role behavior, then it gradually invades all areas of his life, makes his behavior inadequate to the situation, which significantly complicates his relationships with others.
The professional desire to simplify concepts that are difficult for students turns into the habit of taking a simplified approach to solving their personal problems. As a result, it gives rise to excessive straightforwardness in judgment and inflexibility of thinking.
In addition, professional life in the world of “correct answers” imperceptibly develops in the teacher the conviction that he is always right, which gives rise to didacticism as the desire to teach everyone. It has been noted that over the years, language teachers develop a special prominence, articulation, and tendency to repeat themselves in their speech. In addition, they exhibit an involuntary painful reaction to mistakes. They just want to fix everything! And, without noticing this, they correct not only their students. The instructive manner of speech gradually penetrates into the sphere of personal relationships.
The need to “hold students in hand” creates excessive power and authoritarianism in the teacher’s character, which gradually “dries out” the natural cheerfulness and sense of humor.
In the structure of professional deformation, two components are distinguished:
Initial inclinations;
Actually professional deformations. Here, the initial inclinations represent a certain background against which the profession unfolds its deforming influence.
Professional deformation, from the point of view of its mechanism, is considered as a consequence of a violation of the system of personal and professional reflexive self-regulation of the individual and manifests itself as excessive dominance of the “Professional Self” in the field of the “Human Self.”
Professional deformation was considered to be an age factor in the teaching profession. However, research by Abramov and Yudchits indicates that such deformation begins already during their studies, when students’ everyday attitudes and stereotypes are destroyed, and a professional picture of the world is formed.
An analysis of the professional behavior of some teachers revealed a tendency to impose their image of “I” on students. By passing on to their students samples of ready-made experience, elevated to the rank of immutable truth, they have a special influence on those schoolchildren who have decided to choose a teaching profession: students form the first elements of the foundation for future professional deformations. Excessive expression of typically pedagogical traits becomes an extreme version of the norm in the teacher and begins to be designated as an accentuation among schoolchildren.
All these circumstances not only interfere with the teacher’s work, undermining its very meaning from the inside, giving rise to an oppressive feeling of dissatisfaction with a sincere desire to “put in one’s soul,” but also dramatically affect the teacher’s personal life.
In psychology, one of the manifestations of professional deformation is mental burnout syndrome (“bumout”): emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduction of one’s personal achievements. Emotional exhaustion for a teacher means a decreased emotional background and increasing indifference. Depersonalization affects relationships with other people and is associated with a feeling of dependence or negativism, with the appearance of cynicism, i.e. devaluation of previously significant feelings and relationships. A reduction in personal achievements is expressed in a noticeable decrease in personal and professional self-esteem, with a loss of faith in one’s strengths and abilities.
Not all teachers who are affected by the problem of professional deformation will go to a psychotherapist. Many of them simply have no idea what is happening to them, shifting responsibility for the troubles that arise either to others (“such is the time now,” “such are the children now,” etc.), or engaging in painful self-accusation.
Therefore, the first step in the prevention of professional deformation should be a kind of reflexive scanning of one’s behavior, one’s relationships with others, one’s mood. The constant practice of reflective observation of oneself and analyzing oneself in different situations as if through the eyes of another (according to the reflexive formula I am the performer - I am the controller) will help you understand your individual and role behavior. The process of realizing one’s “Human Self” and “Professional Self” will support or gradually restore the teacher’s behavioral flexibility as an optimal combination of his individual behavior patterns and various professional (role) interaction patterns.
Reflexive scanning of your role behavior can be accompanied by procedures for self-diagnosis of your personal qualities (studying the level of rigidity, anxiety, neuroticism, locus of control, etc.). The information received will allow you to better understand yourself and, if necessary, make the necessary adjustments to your professional behavior.
4.6. The role of reflection in solving problem and conflict situations
Reflection is a basic process in resolving problem-conflict situations (PCS), and performs a number of functions:
Assessing the complexity of a situation for a teacher. There is a reflexive determination of the possibility of using the semantic resources of the individual in the search for solutions, recording the manifestation of a potential transition to new levels of resolving the situation;
Assessment of the end of the solution to the situation. Reflexive determination of the readiness of a decision and the individual’s exit from a state of uncertainty;
Building a personality image. Formation of a person’s self-image in a problem situation, as well as identification of supporting personal meanings and semantic connections necessary for solving PCS, which perform the function of justifying the decision made;
Search and identification of “external” meanings. Appeal to “external” semantic resources, which are most often identified by the individual as belonging to significant Others (parents, friends, books, etc.);
Expanding the semantic field of the situation. The teacher’s construction of additional, new conditions in the resolved situation and new reflective positions that expand the semantic horizons of the situation;
Construction and resolution of reflexive conflict. Actualization of the semantic position of the “I” and new, built reflexive positions of the teacher. Carrying out a collision in dialogue, dispute of different, opposite, ambiguous meanings with the aim of their creative transformation and awareness of new contents of meanings and semantic connections;
Expansion of the teacher’s “semantic space” (acceptance, introduction into the hierarchy of personal meanings of new semantic contents of meanings and semantic connections as personally significant).
Based on the selected reflection functions of V.G. Anikina developed a reflexive model of the process of resolving problem and conflict situations. This model takes into account the processes of meaning awareness, meaning correction, and meaning formation that occur in the search for a solution to the PCS.
In the reflexive-functional model of PCS resolution, five levels of decisions are identified: emotional decisions, stereotypical decisions, standard decisions, new decisions, creative decisions. The transition from one reflexive level of decision-making to another involves the inclusion of all reflection functions of the previous level.
Theoretical provisions of the reflexive-functional model of ACL resolution:
Reflection is functionally included in the process of resolving problem-conflict situations (PCS). Mastering the versatility of reflection allows the individual to reach a creative level of resolving situations;
Reflection has a communicative, dialogical nature;
Based on the concepts of internalization and exteriorization, it is possible to model the reflexive process in solving the PCL with the aim of its correction and development;
The inclusion of participants in reflective practice in dialogue and subsequent reflective interaction can be carried out based on “sign objects” of culture.
Reflective training “Resolving problem and conflict situations”
Goal: formation of a reflective culture and competence of students in solving problem-conflict situations.
Tasks:
1. Students’ actualization of reflection and its functions in solving problem-conflict situations.
2.Development and formation of skills in meaning-making and sense-awareness.
3. Formation of a creative approach to solving problem and conflict situations.
4. Awareness of the role of one’s creative activity in the constructive transformation of life.
5. Awareness of the main typical “mistakes” when solving problem-conflict situations.
Group size: 9 – 12 people.
Training effectiveness parameters:
Change of emotional attitude and perception of problem-conflict situations. For example, changing feelings of fear, uncertainty, despair, hopelessness to interest, curiosity, calmness;
A clearer understanding of the differences between conflict and problematic situations;
Selection of reflexive strategies in solving PCS;
Using a wide range of functional manifestations of reflection in solving PCL;
Understanding the role and significance of reflection in the effective and creative resolution of PCS.
Structural components of reflective training:
Initial reflection by group members on the uniqueness of their personal relationships, manifested at all levels of life.
Identifying the most common ways of interpreting conflict situations and understanding new positions in order to understand one’s position in them, their meaning for oneself and others.
Construction and design of semantic alternatives based on mastering the functions of personal reflection in resolving problem and conflict situations.
Awareness of the elements of making alternative decisions and overcoming the main mistakes typical of PKS participants.
Achieving a constructive result - updating and implementing the functions of personal reflection when the subject resolves a PCS that is significant to him. Generalization of principles for solving personal problems and conflicts.
Areas of activity for participants in reflective training:
Carrying out reflexive and innovative procedures aimed at solving problems posed in reflexive practice.
Doing homework.
Discussion and reflection on the results of reflex practice in order to understand them.
Contents of the reflective training “Resolution of problem and conflict situations” (
Exercise:
Read the material by I. Atwater. I’m listening to you... (see Psychology of attention: a reader / edited by Yu. B. Gipperreiter, V. Ya. Romanova. - Moscow: CheRo, 2001. - 856 p.), conduct reflective listening with your friends and parents.
In your journal, write down the answers to the following questions:
What worked/didn’t work?
Was it easy to establish contact with the interlocutor? Why?
Were you comfortable communicating using reflective listening?
From your point of view, was it comfortable for your interlocutor to communicate with you?
Sections: General pedagogical technologies
Recently, scientists and practitioners have been constantly discussing the issue of improving the professional training and activities of teaching staff. Based on the analysis of pedagogical activity, standards have been developed that include a set of competencies that allow a teacher to successfully solve his functional tasks.
According to V. Shadrikov, I. Kuznetsov and others, competence in the field of personal qualities can be revealed through such a key indicator as pedagogical reflection.
A large number of applied studies of reflection, including in the field of pedagogical activity, show the lack of a unified methodology for understanding the professional reflection of a teacher. In this regard, the results of studies often do not correlate with each other and even contradict each other (I.A. Zimnyaya, E.F. Zeer, A.A. Radugin, N.G. Suvorova, etc.).
The problem of reflection and the impact of the profession on the individual constantly attracts the attention of researchers and still remains relevant. The sustained interest in various aspects of pedagogical reflection is explained, on the one hand, by a complex of psychological and social issues related to the life path of these people, and, on the other, by the problematic nature and unresolved nature of many important aspects of these phenomena.
Only a teacher who thinks, doubts, and analyzes himself becomes a true master of his profession. Only such a thinking, reflective teacher can solve professional tasks in which there can be no template: the task of developing the personality of a growing person.
In the scientific literature there are practically no works covering the entire range of tasks facing researchers of the problems under consideration: from the emergence and development, to the correction and overcoming of professional deformations of the teacher’s personality, as well as the development of pedagogical reflection. Thus, insufficient theoretical development determines the relevance of the problem of professional reflection as a condition for productive pedagogical activity.
As object research is pedagogical reflection.
Subject research is: professional reflection as a condition for productive pedagogical activity.
In this study, we set our purpose: to study professional reflection as a condition for productive teaching activity.
We supplied tasks:
- analyze psychological and pedagogical literature on this issue;
- define the conceptual apparatus on this topic;
- consider methods for developing professional reflection among teachers.
In accordance with the purpose, object, subject, and objectives of the study, we put forward the following hypothesis: We assume that professional reflection contributes to productive pedagogical activity.
Methodological basis Our research includes works devoted to professional reflection as a condition for productive pedagogical activity (I.V. Vachkov, I.A. Zimnyaya, L.V. Korneva, N.V. Kuzmina, O.S. Nozhenkina, etc.).
Research methods: theoretical and methodological analysis, generalization and interpretation of scientific theoretical data.
Practical significance is that the materials of the conducted theoretical research can be the basis for a block of seminars and trainings for teaching staff of secondary schools, technical and higher educational institutions.
Professional reflection as a condition for productive teaching activity
The role of pedagogical reflection in the professional activity of a teacher
The teaching profession is one of the most internally contradictory. Its dialectic is based on the confrontation between conservatism and innovation, the tendency to preserve traditions and constant renewal, to deny oneself of yesterday. So now, in the age of information technology, time requires a change in the very functions of the teacher. If previously the main function of the teacher was to transmit social experience (in the form of knowledge and ways of knowing), then in a modern school the teacher is expected to solve the problem of designing and managing the process of individual intellectual development of each individual student. Accordingly, such forms of teacher activity as the development of individual strategies for teaching different children, educational and pedagogical diagnostics, individual counseling, etc. come to the fore.
The practical implementation of such activities presupposes a high level of professionalism of the teacher, an important component of which is his ability for professional reflection.
The importance of reflection in a teacher’s work is truly great and diverse. Reflexive processes literally permeate the entire professional activity of a teacher, manifesting itself both in the situation of direct interaction with children, and in the process of designing and constructing their teaching and educational activities, and at the stage of introspection and self-evaluation of one’s own activities, oneself as its subject. The need for a teacher’s reflective attitude to his activities is determined by many factors that determine the multifunctionality of the teaching profession. Let us try to consider in more detail the role and place of reflection in the activities of a teacher.
Reflection - This is a necessary property of a teacher’s practical thinking, manifested in the application of general knowledge to specific situations of reality. Without reflexive elaboration, the professional subject knowledge that makes up conceptual ideas is immobilized and, as it were, “scattered” in the mind, which does not allow it to become a direct guide to action. A constant reflective review of one's theoretical base from the perspective of daily professional practice allows a teacher to become competent in his or her professional field. The founder of analytical psychology, C. Jung, once noticed that a teacher is doomed to be competent.
The role of reflection is also significant in a teacher’s understanding of his professional experience. After all, it is known that it is not the experience itself that is used, but the thought derived from it. Moreover, it is the combination of a professional’s experience and his reflection that provides the key to the development of professional skills:
“experience + reflection = development.”
Indeed, as research shows, the reflexive integration of a teacher’s theoretical knowledge and his practical experience gives rise to a qualitatively new education of a professional, filled with personal meaning - leading ideas that take on the function of regulating his activities.
The leading ideas of the teacher in a concentrated form contain his professional program, guiding his practical activities. Beliefs, value orientations, and personal attitudes of a teacher are the core of any leading idea.
The leading ideas of a teacher are his unique credo, which develops over time as a product of the teacher’s understanding of his experience and the experience of his colleagues from the perspective of his professional knowledge and personal beliefs.
Mastering by a teacher a culture of reflective analysis of his professional experience contributes to his professional and personal maturity. In other words, it allows him to become wiser.
We discussed some aspects of reflection in the professional thinking of a teacher. Let us consider how the teacher’s reflexive ability manifests itself in other areas of his activity.
As is known, the uniqueness of a teacher’s professional activity lies in the fact that it is structured according to the type of communication, i.e. interaction and communication in the “teacher-student”, “teacher-pupil” system. From this point of view, learning acts as creative communication between teacher and children, as a process of joint search and action. The learning process, based on such interpersonal interaction, is organized and managed by the teacher.
Depending on what leading idea guides the teacher’s strategy - traditional (the teacher is the central figure, directs the child’s learning to acquire the “correct” information) or humanistic (the central figure is the child, his goal is to learn to learn, the teacher organizes and facilitates the learning process) , distinguish between authoritarian and reflexive management. Under authoritarian management, the teacher is the subject of the pedagogical process, while children are only objects that are forced to act in the direction indicated by the teacher.
Reflexive management, which implements the humanistic strategy of pedagogical interaction, firstly, puts the child in the position of an active subject of teaching and upbringing, secondly, develops the child’s ability to self-manage his own learning and, finally, organizes the learning process as a solution to educational, cognitive and educational problems on the basis of creative dialogue with children.
One of the conditions for a teacher’s successful reflexive management of interaction with children is a high level of his social-perceptual abilities, which ensure the process of adequate perception and understanding by the teacher of his students, pupils, and through them - in a mirror image - of himself.
As is known in psychology, the main motives in human behavior are related to the achievement of certain goals. A. Adler identified three main types of goals that determine the child’s behavior:
- this is his need to attract attention,
- show power
- take revenge or look helpless and inadequate.
Therefore, in order to understand the child’s behavior, the teacher needs to understand his goals and how they are interpreted in his behavior. Reflection makes the teacher wiser because he does not enter into conflict with the child, demonstrating his superiority and thereby humiliating him, but resolves the conflict from the perspective of the child’s needs based on understanding and support. Another thing is that you need to know these needs so that you have something to reflect on.
Let's discuss another aspect of the teacher's reflexive ability, which manifests itself in interaction with the child - his ability to listen to his interlocutor. Of all the skills that determine communication, the ability to listen is the most necessary, and that is why it requires improvement to the greatest extent (N.G. Suvorova).
In fairness, it is worth recognizing that of all the speech skills in the professional training of a teacher, the ability to listen receives the least attention. Meanwhile, listening as an active cognitive and communicative process determines the effectiveness of feedback at all levels, contributes to a better understanding of the partner and the successful achievement of the goal of communication.
The professional need for teachers (and parents) to master the method of listening is explained by its high potential for establishing mutual understanding, reducing communication distances and generating a sense of trust. It’s not for nothing that psychologists call this kind of listening “helpful listening.”
The most important area of a teacher’s reflective analysis is his professional self-awareness. The ability of a teacher to analyze and evaluate his feelings and relationships, the strengths and weaknesses of his personality, the degree of their compliance with professional tasks indicates his psychological maturity (L.M. Mitina).
Objectively speaking, the conditions in which the teacher’s activities are carried out provide him with few opportunities for in-depth self-analysis. It is well known that the practical activities of a teacher require a high degree of efficiency and dynamism. As scientists' observations indicate, on average, every two minutes of educational interaction with a student confronts the teacher with the need to make a decision.
The rapidity with which learning situations change, on the one hand, and their repetition, even routineness, on the other, lead to the fact that teachers rarely make alternative decisions and more often act stereotypically, resorting to automated patterns of behavior.
Reflection also formalizes and consolidates the teacher’s “I-concept”, contributing, on the one hand, to the dynamism of its content, and on the other, maintaining its stability. In the case of a teacher’s low self-esteem, a negative “I-concept”, which destructively affects both professional “well-being” and the nature of his interaction with the student, it is reflexive self-analysis, especially in the context of group psychotherapeutic training, that becomes an effective correctional tool (V.M. Krol ).
Of course, every person, to one degree or another, knows the way of their mind: their preferred ways of working with text, their approaches to solving problems, their developed strategies for making decisions, even their typical mistakes. But what is important for a teacher is not just approximate knowledge about himself, but a deep reflective study of his individuality.
Let's take, for example, such an individual psychological characteristic as cognitive style. Among many of them, we highlight the one that bears the influence of reflexive properties. Acting as an individually unique way of processing information about the current situation (methods of its perception, analysis, categorization, evaluation, etc.), cognitive style has a noticeable impact on the procedural and resulting aspects of pedagogical interaction.
It is safe to assume that in a decision-making situation, a teacher with a reflexive cognitive style will show less haste and more prudence, which will save him from many mistakes that those with an impulsive style make in a hurry. It can also be assumed that a teacher with a reflective style will unwittingly encourage children to slowly and deeply think, while an impulsive teacher will tend to reward children for quickness and spontaneity in generating ideas and hypotheses. At the same time, a reflective teacher will most likely “slow down” impulsive children, reproaching them for their “extraordinary lightness of thoughts,” and teachers with an impulsive style will unwittingly irritate the slowness and indecisiveness of children with a reflective style. But this happens only if this teacher does not think about the degree and nature of the influence of his individuality on children.
Let us consider the features of the teacher’s reflection regarding the functional positions that he occupies when carrying out his activities. The professional activity of a teacher is realized in the specific conditions of educational work. The totality of these conditions that have developed at a given moment in time is usually called the pedagogical situation (V.M. Krol).
Every individual pedagogical situation is characterized by an objective internal contradiction between the goal set by the teacher and the possibility of its immediate achievement. This initially sets the situation to one or another degree of problem. Removing this problem is nothing more than the process of the teacher solving a certain pedagogical problem.
So, the activity of a teacher in its practical sense is the solution of a specific pedagogical problem. Each teacher, solving such a problem, goes through the following stages:
- designing the subject content and forms of children’s activities that are necessary to achieve the goal;
- execution of the planned project in direct interaction with children;
- final assessment of achieved results.
The implementation of each of these stages puts the teacher in a certain functional position:
- the teacher as a designer of his own activities in teaching children - an “expert in presenting information”;
- a teacher as an organizer of children’s activities to solve an educational task - a “communication expert”;
- the teacher as the creator of his own experience is a “researcher-analyst”.
In each of these functional positions, the practical thinking of the teacher, directly included in his activities, contains both analytical and constructive processes.
Reflective processes are present at each stage of solving a pedagogical problem, manifesting themselves in different ways.
In the reflexive position of “information presentation expert,” the teacher makes his planning actions the subject of analysis, i.e. the reflexive processes of his consciousness are directed towards the content of the upcoming lesson and acquire a constructive character. The teacher makes a reflective assessment of his projective actions, correlating them with the specific individual characteristics of the children and the possibilities of their development. This allows him to transform the complex into the simple, the uninteresting into the exciting, which is one of the most important professional skills of a teacher.
When a teacher comes to class, he is immersed in the process of educational interaction (communication expert). The subject of his reflection is the process of educational interaction itself, children, their actions, emotional reactions, relationships. The focus is on the teacher’s reflection and his own actions aimed at realizing the objectives of the lesson. The teacher’s reflection in such situations can be called interactive; it accompanies the actions, coinciding with them in time.
The peculiarity of this reflexive position is its direct intertwining with practical activities, which often confronts the teacher with the need to make decisions “in real time,” i.e. Here and now. This requires the teacher to demonstrate such qualities of practical thinking as flexibility, criticality, speed and prudence.
The reflection of a teacher solving the problems of a “researcher-analyst” is of a review nature and is aimed at analysis, evaluation, generalization of his experience, and comprehension of the experience of other teachers. The need for a teacher’s reflective attitude to his activities is determined by the fact that the source of a teacher’s professional growth is his constant reflection on his experience. However, it is impossible to do this fully without comparing your experience with the experience of other teachers.
And, on the contrary, a teacher can understand and transfer valuable things from the experience of colleagues into his own activities only by correlating this with his own individual experience. Mechanically incorporating into your professional tactics even the most remarkable developments of other teachers, following any innovative methods without reflectively understanding them in the context of your individual style, as a rule, does not bring the expected success and leads to disappointment in the borrowed methods.
So, depending on the functional position of the teacher in the educational process, his reflection can take the following forms:
- “expert in presenting information” - constructive reflection;
- “communication expert” - interactive reflection;
- “researcher-analyst” - review reflection.
Thus, a reflective teacher must be able to take the child’s point of view, imitate his reasoning, foresee possible difficulties in his activities, understand how the child perceives a certain situation, and explain why he acts one way and not another. Moreover, the teacher must reflectively reflect the “inner picture of the world” that the child masters, but also purposefully transform it, deepen it, and develop it, which contributes to productive pedagogical activity.
Development of professional reflection among teachers
We chose a training session with teachers as the main method for developing pedagogical reflection. During this methodological event, teachers can become familiar with ways to develop self-reflection and have the opportunity to actively apply these exercises on themselves “here and now.”
The training session includes an information block and practical exercises.
The duration of a training session is from 1 to 1.5 hours.
Target: promote the development of professional reflection of teachers in teaching activities.
Tasks:
- update teachers’ knowledge about pedagogical reflection;
- introduce teachers to various methods of reflection;
- provide an opportunity to apply the acquired knowledge in practice.
Equipment: magnetic marker board, markers, reference tables with abstracts of the information block, feedback questionnaires.
PROGRESS OF THE CLASS
Procedure “Reflection “Here and Now””.
Target:
- familiarity with the essence of the reflection process;
- practicing reflection skills.
Each participant is invited to express his or her idea of what is happening to him and the group. This can be done in any form - verbally, non-verbally, with a drawing on a piece of paper, etc. After this procedure is completed, the facilitator gives the basic concepts of reflective work.
1.The concept of reflection. In a brief psychological dictionary, the concept of reflection is given as follows: reflection (from Latin reflexio - turning back) is the process of self-knowledge by the subject of internal mental acts and states. Reflection is not only self-understanding, self-knowledge. It includes processes such as understanding and evaluating another. With the help of reflection, one achieves a correlation of one’s consciousness, values, opinions with the values, opinions, relationships of other people, groups, society, and finally, with universal ones. To reflect on something means to “experience” it, “pass it through your inner world”, “evaluate it”.
2.Pedagogical reflection. According to research by L.A. Karpenko. Reflection is the ability of an adult to analyze his educational activities and predict the results of his influence on the child. A reflective teacher is a teacher who thinks, analyzes, and explores his or her experience. This is, as D. Dewey said, “an eternal student of his profession.”
3.Types of pedagogical reflection. Domestic scientists S.V. Kondratieva, B.P. Kovalev propose types of reflection in the processes of pedagogical communication:
1) Social-perceptual reflection, the subject of which is the rethinking, re-checking by the teacher of his own ideas and opinions that he formed about children in the process of communicating with them.
Exercise “My pedagogical credo.” Teachers need to formulate a motto, create an image, a symbol, an emblem of their teaching activity - a drawing, a quatrain, a diagram, a gesture, a proverb, a pantomime, etc.
Projective drawing “I am a teacher.” Teachers depict themselves in their profession on album sheets. After finishing the work, a discussion is held.
Issues for discussion:
What can you say about the characteristics of the person depicted?
- What can you say about the personal characteristics of the person depicted?
- What advantages does the depicted person have (professional, personal)?
- What would you like the person depicted to change about himself (professional qualities, personal qualities)?
2) Communicative reflection consists in the subject’s awareness of how he is perceived, evaluated, and treated by others (“I am through the eyes of others”).
Exercise "Carousel"
Purpose of the exercise:
- developing quick response skills when making contacts;
- development of empathy and reflection in the learning process.
The exercise involves a series of meetings, each time with a new person.
Exercise: It’s easy to get in touch, keep up the conversation and say goodbye. Group members stand according to the “carousel” principle, i.e. face each other and form two circles: the inner fixed and the outer movable
Example situations:
- In front of you is a person whom you know well, but have not seen for quite some time. Are you happy about this meeting...
- There is a stranger in front of you. Meet him...
- There is a small child in front of you, he was scared of something. Approach him and calm him down.
- After a long separation, you meet your loved one, you are very happy to meet...
Time to establish contact and conduct a conversation is 3-4 minutes. Then the presenter gives a signal, and the training participants move to the next participant.
Exercise “Self-Portrait”
Purpose of the exercise:
- formation of skills to recognize an unfamiliar person,
- developing skills to describe other people based on various characteristics.
Imagine that you are about to meet a stranger and you need him to recognize you. Describe yourself. Find the signs that make you stand out from the crowd. Describe your appearance, gait, manner of speaking, dressing; You may have gestures that attract attention. Work takes place in pairs. During the performance of one of the partners, the other can ask clarifying questions so that the “self-portrait” is more complete. 15-20 minutes are allotted for discussion in pairs. At the end of the task, participants sit in a circle and share their impressions.
3) Personal reflection- understanding one’s own consciousness and one’s actions, self-knowledge.
Exercise “Three names”
Purpose of the exercise:
- development of self-reflection;
- formation of an attitude towards self-knowledge.
Each participant is given three cards. On the cards you need to write three versions of your name (for example, what your relatives, co-workers and close friends call you). Then each group member introduces himself using these names and describing the side of his character that corresponds to this name, or perhaps caused the name to appear.
Exercise “Without a mask”
Purpose of the exercise:
- removing emotional and behavioral rigidity;
- developing the skills of sincere statements to analyze the essence of “I”.
Each participant is given a card with a written phrase that does not have an ending. Without any preliminary preparation, he must continue and complete the phrase. The statement must be sincere. If the rest of the group senses a falsehood, the participant will have to take another card.
- I especially like it when the people around me...
- What I really want sometimes is...
- Sometimes people don't understand me because I...
- I believe that I...
- I feel ashamed when I...
- What especially irritates me is that I...
4. Forms of reflection
Reflection is considered in three main forms depending on the functions it performs in time: situational, retrospective and prospective reflection.
Situational reflection acts in the form of “motivations” and “self-esteem” and ensures the subject’s direct involvement in the situation, comprehension of its elements, analysis of what is happening at the moment, i.e. reflection is carried out “here and now”. The subject's ability to correlate his own actions with the objective situation, coordinate, and control elements of activity in accordance with changing conditions is considered.
Retrospective reflection serves to analyze and evaluate activities already performed and events that took place in the past. Reflective work is aimed at a more complete awareness, understanding and structuring of the experience gained in the past; the prerequisites, motives, conditions, stages and results of activity or its individual stages are affected. This form can serve to identify possible mistakes and look for the reasons for your own failures and successes.
Perspective reflection includes thinking about upcoming activities, an idea of the progress of activities, planning, choosing the most effective methods designed for the future.
5. Reflection functions
In your opinion, what are the functions of reflection? (conversation with teachers).
In the pedagogical process, reflection performs the following functions:
- design (design and modeling of the activities of participants in the pedagogical process);
- organizational (organization of the most effective ways of interaction in joint activities);
- communicative (as a condition for productive communication between participants in the pedagogical process);
- meaning-creative (formation of meaningfulness of activity and interaction);
- motivational (determining the direction of the joint activities of participants in the pedagogical process towards results);
- correctional (inducement to change in interaction and activity.
6. Features of exercises aimed at developing reflection.
Reflection - the main way to gain new knowledge. Knowledge about oneself and others does not come to a person from the outside, but only through oneself, through constant reflection of what happens to you every minute, “here and now.” These are the ways that help you realize and comprehend your inner world:
Method one:
Relaxation . Relaxation is physical and mental relaxation.
The purpose of relaxation : preparing the body and psyche for activity, focusing on one’s inner world, freeing oneself from excessive physical and nervous tension, or, conversely, providing the opportunity to gather oneself.
Relaxation is necessary:
- to prepare the body and psyche for in-depth self-knowledge and self-hypnosis;
- in stressful moments, conflict situations that require endurance and self-control;
- in responsible and difficult situations, when you need to relieve fear and excessive tension.
How to relax: take a comfortable position (sitting in a chair), close your eyes and begin to take a deep abdominal breath and slowly exhale through your mouth, relieve accumulated tension, fatigue, until you achieve internal relaxation.
Method two:
Concentration - this is the concentration of consciousness on a specific object of its activity. Concentration is based on attention management. It is possible to focus attention on an object, on sensations, on emotions and feelings.
Exercise "Yes"
Purpose of the exercise
:
improving empathy and reflection skills.
The group is divided into pairs. One of the participants says a phrase expressing his state, mood or sensations. After which the second should ask him questions to clarify and find out the details. For example, “It’s strange, but I noticed that when I’m in this state, the color of my clothes is about the same.” The exercise is considered completed if, in response to questioning, the participant receives three affirmative answers - “yes”.
Method three:
Visualization- this is the creation of internal images in the human mind, that is, the activation of imagination with the help of auditory, visual, gustatory, olfactory, tactile sensations, as well as their combinations.
Image-reflexive procedure “Tree”
1) The psychologist invites the participants to imagine some kind of tree, after which he begins to ask questions:
- What kind of tree is this?
- Where does it grow?
- Is it high or not?
- What season?
- Day or night?
- Smells, sounds, sensations?
2) After the participants have each imagined their own tree, the psychologist suggests feeling and feeling how each participant approaches their tree, runs their hand along its trunk, hugs it and... enters it, becomes this tree.
- What is it like to be this tree?
- What and how does everyone feel in this role?
- Do the roots go deep into the ground?
- Is the crown thick? Is the tree stable?
- Does the rain wash it away?
- Does the sun warm him?
- Does the earth provide a foothold?
3) After the participants have completed the exercise, there is a group discussion about the visualization results.
Method four:
Self-hypnosis - this is the creation of attitudes that influence the subconscious mechanisms of the psyche. Self-hypnosis is a statement that success is possible, expressed in the first person in the present tense.
Exercise “Feedback”.
Teachers fill out a feedback form.
To summarize, it should be said that reflection really has practical significance and importance. In order to better organize our activities, speed up the process of self-improvement, reveal our creative potential, and more freely express our feelings on paper, both negative and positive, each of us can create our own personal growth program, which will reveal the facets of interpersonal relationships in a new way, increase level of empathy for other people. Working on yourself is the internal organization of your whole life, it is the style and content of life
Conclusion
In the course of studying professional reflection as a condition for productive teaching activity, we made the following conclusions:
1. Reflection in the pedagogical process is the process and result of recording by the participants of the interaction the state of their own development and the reasons that ensured it; the process of self-identification of the subject of pedagogical interaction based on their current situation; mutual reflection, mutual assessment of the interaction between participants in the pedagogical process: the teacher’s reflection of the child’s inner world and state of development and vice versa.
2. In order to develop professional reflection among teachers, it is effective to use training sessions, an example of which we have described.
Pedagogical reflection is the teacher’s ability to mentally imagine the child’s current picture of situations, and on this basis to clarify ideas about himself. Reflection means the teacher's awareness of himself from the point of view of students in changing situations. It is important for a teacher to develop healthy, constructive reflection, which leads to improvement of activity, and not to its destruction by constant doubts and hesitations.
In a theoretical, conceptual understanding, reflection acts as a form of active rethinking by a person of certain contents of individual consciousness, activity, and communication.
In a broad practical sense, reflection is considered as a person’s ability for introspection, comprehension and rethinking of their subject-social relationships with the outside world and is a necessary component of developed intelligence.
A teacher’s professional reflection influences the level of professionalism and pedagogical skill, which is manifested in the teacher’s ability for professional self-improvement and creative growth based on psychological mechanisms of introspection and self-regulation, helps to overcome and prevent such negative phenomena as early “pedagogical crises”, “pedagogical exhaustion, detection discover professional problems in one’s own experience, “shaken” negative professional stereotypes, which increases the productivity of teaching activities.
Professional reflection of a teacher is the most important professionally significant quality, which consists in the teacher’s evaluative understanding of himself as a professional, activity as a form of creative self-expression and interaction with children as a way of managing the educational process at the personal, activity and interactive levels and determining the level of his professional suitability.
The article presents the results of a study of the personal perspective reflection of teachers at different levels of pedagogical competence.
One of the determining factors in a teacher’s professional and personal self-improvement is the interaction and mutual influence of personal and perspective reflection. Using the method of independent characteristics, which consisted of each subject compiling a self-characteristic and an essay “What an ideal teacher should be,” the components of the content of personal and perspective reflection of 62 subjects of the upper and lower levels of pedagogical competence were studied.
It has been established that teachers at the top level of pedagogical competence in self-characteristics (personal reflection) identify significantly more qualities than teachers at the lower level. Thus, highly competent subjects described themselves using 132 qualities, and teachers of the lower level of competence named 107 qualities. There are 75 and 50 qualities listed for an ideal teacher, respectively.
For both groups of teachers, these qualities, in accordance with their content, were divided into blocks separately for personal and perspective reflection.
In the content of personal reflection among teachers at the top level of pedagogical competence, 8 blocks are identified: characteristics of professional self-improvement, characteristics of professionalism, characteristics of one’s teaching work, emotional-dynamic qualities, communicative qualities, attitude to work, personal self-improvement, reflection.
In the same group of subjects, the qualities included in perspective reflection were also combined into 8 blocks. However, instead of the “characteristics of one’s teaching work” block, a block of intellectual qualities was identified. It should be noted that in terms of the number of qualities, blocks of perspective reflection are significantly inferior to blocks of personal reflection.
For teachers of the lower level of pedagogical competence, 8 blocks were allocated in personal and 7 blocks in perspective reflection.
When assessing the qualities included in the content of the prospective reflection of teachers at both levels of pedagogical competence, both the qualities included in the named blocks and individual qualities that were not included in any of the blocks were taken into account.
To study the uniqueness of perspective reflection, qualities that were absent in the content of personal reflection were identified.
It was found that with approximately equal samples of subjects of both levels of pedagogical competence (30 people at the upper level of competence and 32 people at the lower level), teachers at the lower level named more than 2 times more such qualities characterizing long-term reflection than teachers at the upper level. Thus, these subjects have a significant discrepancy between personal and perspective reflection, which is an incentive for self-improvement.
In general, out of 75 qualities characterizing the long-term reflection of teachers at the lower level of pedagogical competence, 39 qualities (52%) were not included in the content of personal reflection. The differences in this criterion between both types of reflection among teachers at the top level are less pronounced (18 qualities (36%) out of 50). This is an indirect confirmation of the correctness of classifying these teachers as the lower level of pedagogical competence, who adequately evaluate themselves and see the distance between the real results of their activities and a sufficiently high level of their ideal self.
All of the above indicates that highly competent teachers have a less pronounced difference between personal and perspective reflection than lower-level teachers. At the same time, among highly competent people there is a closer connection between the two types of reflection.
The main differences between the content of personal and perspective reflection for both groups of subjects were identified in the block of communicative qualities (44.4% for the upper level and 30.8% for the lower level of pedagogical competence). In the remaining blocks of both types of reflection, the differences in their constituent qualities between teachers of different levels of pedagogical competence are expressed to a lesser extent, with the only exception being the “professionalism” block, in which the highly competent test subjects have slightly more qualities that distinguish the ideal self from the real self. It has been established that a number of qualities of personal and perspective reflection included in the blocks “systematic professional and personal self-improvement” and “communication with children” constitute a relatively constant core that ensures the stability and stability of the teacher’s personality. As relatively stable and professionally significant, they are also included in the content of perspective reflection, and quite often in a modified form: “I want to work even better,” “become kinder,” “be more demanding,” etc., i.e.
highly competent teachers resort to assessing their future self in a comparative aspect, based on the current level of development of these qualities in themselves as a kind of starting point, on the basis of which the further development of these qualities is predicted.
For teachers at the lower level of pedagogical competence, the qualities of personal reflection, which are also included in long-term reflection, are of the nature of simple repetition, without changes or new nuances.
A comparison of the qualities of identical blocks in the content of personal and perspective reflection of both groups of subjects indicates a significant heterogeneity of the qualities included in them with their low frequency, one of the reasons for which is that the named qualities that are close in meaning are actually synonymous: “has achieved professionalism”, “sufficiently competent”, “good professional”, etc. One of the reasons for the high heterogeneity and low frequency of qualities included in the blocks characterizing the content of personal and perspective reflection is the high level of individualization of self-characteristics, which differ in content among different subjects. In general, this tendency is more pronounced in highly competent subjects.
This trend is illustrated by the following examples.
1. Block of communicative qualities:
- “I want to be understood” (and not just “to understand others”, as was the case in the real Self);
— “I want to be interesting for students” (and not just “get interested in my subject”);
— “I want to work with like-minded people” (a tendency to bring one’s self closer to the teaching staff);
- “become more tolerant”;
- “be more diplomatic.”
2. Block of characteristics of your professionalism’.
— “become competent” (the highest level of professionalism, not named in self-characteristics);
- "high professionalism".
3. Personal self-improvement block:
- “make your life more interesting”;
— “happiness depends on self-improvement”;
- “correct character.”
4. Block of reflexive qualities:
- “find the meaning of your life”;
- “gain respect for yourself.”
5. Block of emotional-dynamic qualities:
- “I want to feel a sense of satisfaction from work.”
6. Block of professional self-improvement:
— “use your knowledge in the creative process”;
- “to engage in scientific work.”
The last block also names more specific contents of one’s ideal self: “learn English and Polish”, “I will carefully consider working with gifted children.” Among teachers at the lower level of pedagogical competence, such extraordinary, non-standard qualities are mentioned much less frequently.
In general, among low-competent subjects, the heterogeneity and frequency of qualities that distinguish perspective reflection from personal reflection are significantly lower. Cases of refusal to write essays “What a real teacher should be like” have been identified: “I no longer care what I can become,” “such tasks are more suitable for teenagers, but we are already formed,” “there is no time to think about myself,” “I don’t know.” what to write."
The self-characteristics of a number of teachers at the lower level of pedagogical competence are characterized by excessive brevity (unsubscribes) and formalism, which manifests itself in the recording of predominantly subjective qualities. These teachers write little about their personality, limiting themselves to stating: “how the personality came to be.” This indicates a lack of interest in oneself, poor knowledge and understanding of oneself, and a lack of need to know one’s “I.” These teachers do not understand that knowing one’s “I” is the main condition for self-improvement. Only teachers at the top level of pedagogical competence were found to have deep self-analysis.
1Professional reflection is a central component of students’ professional self-determination. There are conditions and means for developing professional reflection in the learning process. Modern educational standards are more aimed at equipping a future specialist with knowledge rather than at developing his professionally significant personal characteristics. Of great importance for the training of a specialist is the development of his professional reflection as a personality trait, thinking and condition necessary for his creative self-realization and achieving a high level of professional skill. And the learning process in higher education should be focused on task and problem levels. As a result of this process, in the structure of the professional activity of a teacher-psychologist, reflection will acquire a system-forming character and become the personal basis of his professionalism.
reflexive-innovative process.
conditions and means of forming reflection
professional reflection
retrospective reflection
perspective reflection
situational reflection
reflection
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7. Shchedrovitsky G. P. Reflection in activity // Questions of methodology. - 1994. - No. 4. - P.76-121.
Studying at a university, mastering the knowledge and skills necessary for future professional activities, contributes to the awareness of one’s professional maturation, the formation of professional reflection in students, which is the main, central component of students’ professional self-determination.
In Russian psychology, the beginning of the study of reflection was laid by the works of I. M. Sechenov (1953), B. G. Ananyev (1976), L. S. Vygotsky (1986), B. V. Zeigarnik (1969), S. L. Rubinstein (2001), etc. In modern psychology, the methodological basis and conceptual problems of reflection are considered by A.A. Brushlinsky, V.A. Polikarpov (1999), E. P. Varlamova, S. Yu. Stepanov (2000), I. N. Semenov (2001), A. S. Sharov (2000) and others.
The volume and polyphony of the psychological content of reflection, its multifunctionality, and a rich range of signs and properties indicate the importance and uniqueness of the place and role of reflection in the integral structure of a person’s personality.
In education, A. A. Bodalev identifies the following types of reflection:
- social-perceptual reflection, aimed at rethinking and re-checking the subject’s own ideas and concepts about the person being cognized;
- personal reflection of one’s communication with other people and the qualities of one’s own personality, manifested in communication with others (self-knowledge itself);
- communicative reflection, which consists of the subject’s idea of how others perceive, evaluate, and treat him;
- metareflection, that is, the idea of what the people being known think about themselves.
Depending on the functions that reflexive processes perform in a given situation, three types of reflection are distinguished:
- Situational reflection - acts in the form of “motivations” and “self-assessments” and ensures the subject’s direct involvement in the situation, comprehension of its elements, and analysis of what is happening.
- Retrospective reflection - serves to analyze activities already performed, events that took place in the past.
- Prospective reflection - includes thinking about the upcoming activity, an idea of the progress of the activity, planning, choosing the most effective methods of implementation, predicting possible results.
Some authors distinguish between intellectual and personal reflection. Intellectual reflection is aimed at analyzing the substantive content of a problem situation and one’s place in it, which, in turn, is determined by the content of a life task, as well as the possibility of transforming it. Personal reflection is directed at the person himself who finds himself in the search process, and accordingly leads to a rethinking of his entire activity as a whole.
In our opinion, the theoretical significance of the classification of the main types and levels of reflection lies not only in overcoming the narrowing of the concept, but also in determining the dual (both personal and interpersonal) nature of reflexive phenomena, as well as the multi-level organization of reflexive processes as in the structure of a separate personality, and in the communicative and cooperative space.
Reflection is considered in the works of G. P. Shchedrovitsky as a conscious activity process, as a mechanism for the development of activity. The author points out that reflection is organized mentally with the help of linguistic means and is aimed at activity as its subject. The main psychological difficulty in this case is reflexively going beyond one’s own activities, which requires additional procedures and additional logical knowledge. The complexity of the process is associated with the fundamental difference in the means, knowledge and meanings of the reflected and reflective positions.
V.I. Slobodchikov, considering reflection as an integral act that passes through a number of levels in its formation and genesis, defines the essence of reflection as a gap, a bifurcation, going beyond the limits of the process. The author identifies as the first condition for the deployment of reflection - stop process. This condition itself is the basis for the subject’s distinction between himself and the movement he carries out. Next level - fixation process in other material (speech-actions, thought-actions, path diagrams). Stopping and fixing are at the core objectification (awareness). It is this level of reflection that usually appears in the form of its own norm, rule. The implementation of subject-object relations in cognition is possible at the next level of reflection associated with generalization content in the form of law, principle, method and alienation from it.
Summarizing the theoretical positions of a number of authors, we consider reflection as a mechanism of self-knowledge, active personal rethinking of individual consciousness, with the help of which the self-improvement of the individual and the success of his activities and communication are ensured.
There is also a problem in defining the concept of “professional reflection”. Particularly important is the question of the content of this concept within the framework of professions of the “person-person” system, the distinctive feature of which is a rich psychological background that complicates any technological regulation of activity. In these conditions, “practical reflection,” as defined by D. Schon, as the ability to integrate existing theoretical knowledge and a research approach in order to find the optimal solution to ambiguous practical problems and problems, becomes an indicator and manifestation of high professionalism, which is characterized by thoughtfulness and humanism.
It is a person’s awareness of his professional aspirations, emerging skills and abilities, knowledge and abilities developing in work, that is nothing more than professional reflection manifesting itself. Professional reflection, along with intellectual and personal reflection, form a holistic view of the individual about himself, his qualities, physical and intellectual prospects, significant social roles and functions, value orientations and goals, and professional abilities.
Professional reflection is the correlation of oneself, the capabilities of one’s “I” with what the chosen profession requires; including with existing ideas about it. These ideas are flexible - they develop. It helps a person formulate the results obtained, predetermine the goals of further work, and adjust his professional path.
We believe that considering the ability to reflect in educational activities as a formed personal property that ensures successful simultaneous awareness of the activity being performed (its structure) and the means of regulating this activity from the point of view of their effectiveness, including the ability to identify the individual characteristics of one’s own activity and analyze its results, allows determine the conditions and psychological and pedagogical means of forming this ability.
A number of scientific studies have formulated the conditions and means for the development of professional reflection in the learning process (Table No. 1).
Conditions and means of forming reflection
Table 1
|
Conditions for the development of reflection |
Means of forming reflection |
|
1. Formation of motivational readiness for the development of reflexive abilities. |
Organizing special interaction with the student to discover the meaning and motivational significance of reflection, developing a conscious desire to focus on the process and results of mental activity. |
|
2. Students’ knowledge of the structure and content of educational activities, the presence of ideas about effective ways to regulate them. |
Mastering a complex of methodological knowledge: about the structure of activity, types of scientific thinking, logical principles underlying scientific knowledge, the logic of evidence and explanations. System of external requirements for organizing activities. |
|
3. Overcoming preoccupation with one’s own activities, providing a position of analysis for performing additional mental actions. |
Inclusion of students in dialogues, debates, controversial situations, dialogue mode, conversation method, transition to the position of a new activity through modeling situations of future professional activity, placing the student in the role of a teacher. Combining the analysis of the subject content of an activity with the analysis of one’s own methods of activity (sign-symbolic, structural-logical diagrams, generalizing tables for structuring large sections of the studied material). |
|
4.Training of intellectual self-regulation. |
Development of conscious actions of self-control (analysis of goals, conditions, methods, results, training in self-esteem, correction of mistakes, stimulation of self-analysis processes, etc. Development of scientifically based educational and methodological aids that perform organizational, monitoring and management functions, creating conditions for self-control, self-correction, and activation of educational activities (specially formulated questions, self-control algorithms). Development of processes of self-observation, monitoring the presence or absence of knowledge, habits of evaluating results. |
|
5. Development of the creative component of thinking. |
Stimulation of independent formulation of scientific problems in developmental education. The presence of problem situations that can be resolved jointly, taking into account the results of individual creative activity (“portfolio of achievements”). |
|
6.Developmental content of forms of control. |
Replacing the marking system with a system of criteria, formulating exam questions that focus not on reproducing the finished product, but on finding a solution to the problem. An exam as a practical activity of a specialist, a set of basic actions included in a future specialty. |
| 7. Implementation of the principles of systematicity and problematization in combination with the use of reflection as a method in every step of professional activity. |
Game-based learning (organizational and developmental games), group work (knowledge exchange, interpersonal skills), professional activities, solving educational and production problems. |
|
8. Subject-subject interaction and live communication. |
Dialogue forms of work, tasks to understand the following development goals, setting goals for self-development, encouragement to express actions in words. |
Training highly qualified specialists at the modern level involves not only organizing a deep, systematic and high-quality acquisition of fundamental knowledge by them, the formation of relevant practical skills, but also the development of their motivational and need sphere, abilities for self-realization and creativity.
Unfortunately, modern educational standards are more aimed at equipping a future specialist with knowledge than at developing his professionally significant personal characteristics. Meanwhile, modern research in labor psychology, pedagogy and psychology recommends a transition to new educational and upbringing technologies, in particular, to personality-oriented and competency-based training and education.
In the light of this approach, the development of professional reflection as a personality trait, thinking and condition necessary for his creative self-realization and achieving a high level of professional skill is important for the training of a specialist of any profile. And in this case, the learning process in higher education should be focused on the task and problem levels.
S. Yu. Stepanov and I. N. Semenov developed the concept of a reflexive-innovative process, the essence of which boils down to the fact that a person, at the moment of a collision with a problem-conflict situation, performs an act of reflexive-innovative interaction. Conventionally, such interaction is designated as the “man-world” system. A problem-conflict situation is resolved when an innovative effect occurs either in relation to a person (a person changes) or in relation to the world (a change in the surrounding reality, a change in the conditions of activity). The innovative effect arises in the process of searching for a creative solution, where a certain level of reflection of the conditions of the problem and the deciding subject itself acts as a necessary condition.
It is problem situations in the process of studying at a university that set the vector for the formation and development of professional reflection. This development becomes especially important for students - future educational psychologists. Since professional reflection is an essential component of the professionally important qualities of the chosen profession. But problem-conflict situations are important not only in the process of academic learning (within seminars, training and advisory classes), but also in practical activities within the framework of educational and industrial practices. As a result of reflexive-innovative interaction, either the student changes - in the direction of professional formation and development, or the activity changes - within the framework of the practical application of knowledge. According to this scheme, we work with students of the Faculty of Psychology, giving them the opportunity to solve problematic problems while still at the learning stage. But the research continues, and the results of the work done will be published by us in the future.
As a result of this process, in the structure of the professional activity of a teacher-psychologist, reflection will acquire a system-forming character and become the personal basis of his professionalism.
Reviewers:
- Andropov Vladimir Petrovich, professor, doctor of psychological sciences, head. Department of Psychology, Mordovian State University. N. P. Ogareva, Saransk.
- Rodionov Mikhail Alekseevich, Professor, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Professor of the Department of General Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Perm State Pedagogical University named after V. G. Belinsky, Penza.
Bibliographic link
Romanova M.V. PROFESSIONAL REFLECTION OF TEACHING PSYCHOLOGIST STUDENTS: METHODOLOGICAL ASPECT // Modern problems of science and education. – 2012. – No. 2.;URL: http://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=6091 (access date: 02/01/2020). We bring to your attention magazines published by the publishing house "Academy of Natural Sciences"
