Looking Back

 Introduction

  As I look back at this reflective blog and the last semester of learning in this course I will structure each part of this final entry into two four categories. These are:

1. I learned that.

2. I learned this when.

3. This learning matters.

4. In the light of this learning

Part 1

Reflective vs Reflexive Actions

  The reflective-reflexive habit is not new to me. Certified teachers are expected to be very familiar with the term and administrators frequently ask teachers to reflect on lessons, units and activities. I was drilled on the do's and dont's of reflective practice while  completing a post graduate diploma in education from the University of the West Indies, School of Education, St. Augustine. So its certainly useful for me to look back and ask: What did I learn?

At the start of the course I was not sure  about the term reflexive as opposed to reflective and I spent some time trying to clarify this. I watched the videos in the course but I could not get a full grasp of this. Then I read a paper by Stingu (2012) where the author cited Dewey (1933) and shared this direct quote:

‘active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in light of the grounds that support it and the further consequences to which it leads’ (p. 9).

  The same author follows this by citing Schon (1983) who distinguished between reflection on action and reflection in action. For simplicity I will say that reflexive practice is the same as reflection in action and reflective practice is reflection on action.

  My next question is: Why does this matter? Here I will focus particularly on the significance of reflexive practice in the context on a pre-service teacher with limited experience and share a hypothetical anectdote below:

  In a lesson about fruit dispersal to 8 year olds the teacher says this:

'Fruits like this tomato and and this cherry and this apple are brightly colored to attract birds and other animals'

  Later in the lesson she asks students for some reasons why birds are attracted to ripe mangoes. She is expecting someone to say because of its bright yellow appearance but one girl says:

'Miss its sweet and tasty but its not red'

  Next comes the acid test of the true ilk of the educator. She must introspect while in mid-lesson and rewind her thoughts and go back to her initial discussion on fruits. Now she realizes that all of her examples were red fruits and she takes the time to clarify. An unfortunate and very poor course of action would be to tell the student to think back to the earlier discussions without providing scaffolding. The student could be allowed to reflect in action by the teacher saying this: 'Is red the only bright and attractive colour you know?'

  This learning does not matter very much to me in my daily practice but when I do engage in reflexive activity or reflection in action I am reminded about this course and I know that the next time I mentor a pre-service teacher or deliver a course or workshop on teaching that this clear  understanding of reflexive practice would be another string to my bow.

  When I implement formative quizzes using tools like Kahoot I often pause mid quiz to clarify and scaffold as needed because the immediate feedback from each learner that follows each question creates the opportunity to reflect in action and to set students up to do their own reflection.

Part 2

A Reflective Model for the Science Teacher

  From the discussion forums and the group activity in this course a recurring theme was the reflective models and how they relate to teaching and learning in online environments.

In going about this course I reflected on the Kolb model and how it could be useful in my practice as a science teacher.

The Kolb Model

 

FIGURE 1 

 I felt that the Kolb model was very appropriate for use in teaching science and I found support for this from  Mathieson, L. (2016). 

  This diagram above was taken from Zull (2002, p.18) and is presented in the website Reflection4Learning (n.d) It makes a connection between specific areas of the brain and how each section relates to specific parts of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model. While the concrete experience here is great for hands-on activities it can apply in online learning environments. For instance this video on in vitro fertilization (IVF) also known as the test tube baby is a concrete experience and to get students to reflect critically. 
The teacher could set up an online discussion forum asking students to relate their understanding or the video to this image on the cover of Time magazine from 1978.

                                                                FIGURE 2  
The discussion could be extended to ask students (who are 17+ years old) to hypothesize on how their peers who don't take Biology would interpret this cover image. To complete the Kolb cycle the students could be required to interview a peer and share the findings on a collaborative space. 

  Once this data is analyzed and discussed then it could lead to more questions. For example: Does art limit or promote scientific understanding and awareness?
The cycle can then be started again with yet another thought provoking image from the cover of Time magazine (1989).

                                                                 FIGURE 2

Conclusion  

In EDLM 6200 this semester, I learnt that Kolb's reflective model is of great relevance to science teaching and this matters because it can serve as a good framework for getting science students to engage in critical reflection. In light if this learning it would provide me with a great theoretical framework that is well documented in the literature to support workshops like this one entitled Using Apps to teach Real Science.

 References 

Endangered Earth. (1989, January 2). Time, 133(1).

Mathieson, L. (2016). Synergies in critical reflective practice and science: Science as  
        reflection  and   reflection as science. Retrieved from https://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol13
        /iss2/4/

Stîngu, M. M. (2012). Reflexive practice in teacher education: facts and trends. Procedia - 
        Social and Behavioral Sciences, 33, 617–621. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.01.195

The Test Tube Baby. (1978, July 31). Time, 112(5).

Why Reflect? - Reflection4Learning. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/
       reflection4learning/why-reflect  

The e-Multiple Choice item as a Reflective Tool

Today we completed our group presentation for this course. My team's presentation is available here. I was prompted to reflect by an observation made by our course coordinator Dr. Marshall-Stuart. A discussion about how a multiple choice item could be used as a reflective tool ensued and I suggested that if a gamification tool like Kahoot or a well designed Moodle quiz is used that these can make for good reflective tools by students and teachers in action and on action. In this post I will develop this point more, provide clear examples and support my thesis with reference to the literature.

A skillfully constructed multiple choice item is akin to an onion. As students attempt to select the correct response they must be pushed to draw upon their mastery of two or more understandings. Then after peeling back these layers of the onion they must make connections between them to arrive at the correct answer.  When an assessment item like this is used it calls for thinking at the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy. I will demonstrate this with an example.

The question  below is taken from Cambridge International Examinations (CIE)

                                Figure 1 (CIE, IGCSE- Past Exam Question) 

To arrive at a successful response the student must use a knowledge of the pH scale AND relate it to safety. In addition to that the question sets a real world context.

Imagine that this question is nestled in the Moodle LMS as a quiz and a student attempting the quiz selects D. This is an incorrect response but instead of including a pop up box that says sorry try again, the discerning educator would include feedback as follows:

This is very alkaline and while it would neutralize the acid it might not be the best choice. remember oven cleaners are powerful and made to clean sticky left-over materials. 

 Quizzes in the Moodle LMS allow for second attempts so if this is allowed then the student can go on to select A which is the correct response. Figure 2 below provides some detail about how this tool functions and it is extracted from my work in the laboratory course.

                                                                         Figure 2

                    

At the end of the quiz the teacher will receive feedback on scores and this will be broken up to show the choices made by students. If the majority of students select B and then this demonstrates the need to go back to a lesson on the meaning of the pH scale.

  This example shows reflection in action by students with teacher scaffolding and then reflection on action by the teacher and its all made more powerful because of the digital tools. Nicol (2007) lends strong support to the use of 'E-assessment by design' and makes reference to an approach to learning based on the use of electronic voting systems (EVS) which in modern terminology refers to learning games like Kahoot. Here a poll of student responses is used as an opportunity for peer-peer interaction as facilitators allow students to convince their peers about the validity of a particular choice and if the questions are well constructed then deep reflection would follow.

Next Steps
In light of the current  shift to online learning tools like these are of even greater significance. I am currently making a 15 question multiple choice quiz on moodle to use next week with my students as an online assessment and as I construct the questions I am using my knowledge of common student misconceptions to create meaningful feedback. This is a very tedious process and it must be seen as a work in progress because there will be more room for reflection and corrective action on the part of the teacher once the results are analyzed.

                                                                REFERENCES

Cambridge International Examinations (2016) https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/programmes-
              and-qualifications/cambridge-igcse-chemistry-0620/past-papers/

David Nicol (2007) E‐assessment by design: using multiple‐choice tests to good effect, Journal of 
              Further and Higher Education, 31:1, 53-64, DOI: 10.1080/03098770601167922