Filled with illustrative examples from a wide variety of classroom settings, the volume explores in detail what critical reflection is and why it is so vital for becoming a skillful teacher. Brookfield shows how educators can reframe teaching by viewing it through four distinctive and complementary lenses: through their students' eyes, colleagues' perceptions, relevant theory and research, and personal experience. This is the second Brookfield book that I have read, after starting with his revised edition of The Skillful Teacher (2015). Teaching Well is a profoundly engaging volume that explores courageously many dimensions at the heart of emancipatory education. Reflective of the knowledge, brilliance, and wisdom gleaned from extensive interviews with Stephen Brookfield on his critical insights on democratizing classrooms, pedagogy, and teachers as leaders, the book makes a radically hopeful contribution to the scholarship in the field. This is most significant in the midst of the difficult conditions that teachers and students are facing today.”

As a teacher, I benefit from the reflections of others on how to do it better. Along with Parker Palmer, Stephen Brookfield offers much helpful guidance in this book. Not only does identifying and scrutinizing our own assumptions help us to teach better by inviting students to see the powerful influence of assumptions, but it helps us in our own research and growth as teachers. As a long time student, many professors I've had are brilliant and know a lot of information, but few are pedagogically aware and most are unable to submit their own assumptions to critical analysis. Brookfield invites us to do so and guides us on how to do so. Teaching Reflectively in Theological Contexts: Promises and Contradictions, co-edited with Mary E. Hess (2008)

The greatest value of reflection comes when we repeat the reflective process, creating a habit and strengthening our ability to be critically reflective and improve (Jasper, 2013). When we become reflective about teaching and learning practice, we strengthen our capacity to learn. We build those all-important metacognitive skills and start to examine the gap between what we know and what we need to learn – the basic principle of how we improve. Sch ö n (1983) took reflective practice a little further and defined two processes: reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action . Though the second edition of Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher has been reformatted, with new chapters added, Brookfield points out that the thesis is the same: “critically reflective teaching happens when we identify and scrutinize the assumptions that shape our practice” (viii). Brookfield posits that we come to understand these assumptions by viewing our practice through four distinct lenses: students’ eyes, colleagues’ perceptions, theory, and personal experience. Brookfield is an educator and scholar whose work has informed the practice of teaching and contributed to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). He writes Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher in a personal tone and uses his own narrative as a white, British man to illustrate his points throughout the text. Reading Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher would help advisors develop the conceptual core competency (NACADA, 2017a). Though not without faults, if situated in the context of ‘advising as teaching’ this book would help advisors develop new advising approaches and strategies that promote inclusivity and contribute to the scholarship of advising. Ilya Winham (2017) Letter to the Editor: Is Advising a Political Activity?. NACADA Journal: 2017, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 7-8. Teaching is a continual process of planning, reflecting and adapting , where you learn from your own teaching experience to refine and develop your practice. Dewey (1938) argued that reflective practice promotes a consideration for why things are as they are and how we might direct our actions and behaviour through careful planning. When we underpin this planning with experience and theory, we become much more impactful. To simplify the point, we do not learn from experience, but from reflecting on experience, and it is these lessons we take forward.

Using critical reflection to inform the practice of academic advising is an one way advisors can live the NACADA core value of Inclusivity (NACADA, 2017b). Advising scholars are already using critical theories to suggest practices that meet the needs of diverse student populations (Lee, 2018; Puroway, 2016). A core aim of critical theory is to understand the underlying causes of social problems and support emancipatory action (Bronner, 2011; Martinez-Aleman et al., 2015). But how do we know that our practices are meeting our social justice goals? In Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher Stephen Brookfield offers critical reflection as a practice that educators can engage in to ensure we are meeting our goals. No. It’s about growth and adaptation. Identify your strengths and examine how that good practice can be used in other areas of practice. It’s also about experimentation. Not everything will go right. It’s an opportunity to see the practice of others and see if those approaches can be incorporated into your own.NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising. (2017a). NACADA academic advising core competencies model. Retrieved from https://www.nacada.ksu.edu/Resources/Pillars/CoreCompetencies.aspx Heiser, C. A., Prince, K., & Levy, J. D. (2017). Examining critical theory as a framework to advance equity through student affairs assessment. The Journal of Student Affairs Inquiry, 2(1), 1-17. It’s easy to ignore reflection because we quite often think it takes a long time. And let’s be honest, if you sit down to with the sole intention to reflect, then yes – it might take a bit of time. But keep in mind all of the opportunities you have to undertake some reflection-in-action. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2020-03-05 05:02:12 Boxid IA1789823 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Col_number COL-609 Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier