Product Description

"Reflective Teaching" is the definitive textbook for reflective classroom professionalism. It offers exceptional support for trainee teachers, mentors, newly qualified teachers and for those engaged continuing professional development and performance review.Andrew Pollard's "Reflective Teaching" has been established for over twenty years. Each edition builds on that foundation and offers something new. This edition is enhanced by:

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14340 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 590 pages

From the Author
Reflective activity is of vital importance to the teaching profession. It underpins evidence-informed professional judgement and its use for worthwhile educational purposes. It provides a vehicle for learning and professional renewal – and thus for promoting the independence and integrity of teachers.

This book is a collective product, reflecting the cumulative professional experience of several generations of classroom practitioners, researchers and educationalists. I have simply worked with colleagues, Janet Collins, Neil Simco, Sue Swaffield, Jo Warin and Paul Warwick, to present in an accessible and useful form the very best of what we think we know about high quality teaching.

As you seek success and personal fulfilment as a teacher, we hope that you will find Reflective Teaching and its associated materials helpful.

About the Author
Reflective Teaching and its associate website, Rtweb, are produced by an Editorial Team, chaired by Andrew Pollard. The team meet once each term and to review and update, as necessary, one third of the content of RTweb. A brief biography for each of the team is offered below.

Andrew Pollard is professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Before this, he taught in Yorkshire primary schools for many years and then worked in teacher education and research programmes at Oxford Polytechnic, Bristol Polytechnic, University of the West of England and University of Bristol. He has written a number books on primary education, including Readings for Reflective Teaching, Changing English Primary Schools?, What Pupils Say and The Social World of Children’s Learning. Most of these are based on research projects or other activities with professional colleagues. Children and their Primary Schools and Children and their Curriculum are attempts to promote interest in pupil perspectives. Currently, Andrew Pollard is director of a £26m ESRC research programme on teaching and learning across the life-course.

Janet Collins is one of the leading lights behind the Open University’s courses for practising primary teachers. She is particularly interested in the role of language and relationships in classroom life. With Joe Harkin and Melanie Nind, she recently published the Manifesto for Learning (Continuum).

Neil Simco is Dean of Education at St Martin’s College, the largest UK provider of primary initial teacher education and training. He has a strong commitment to the importance of professional judgement, and has been editor of Education 3-13, the journal of the Association for the Study of Primary Education.

Sue Swaffield is our expert on assessment and school improvement issues. Experienced in schools and LEAs, she is a former President of the Association of Assessment Inspectors and Advisers (AAIA). Now lecturing at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education she is, with John MacBeath, a key figure in ‘Leadership for Learning, the Cambridge network’.

Jo Warin, sometime teacher of Drama and Theatre-in-Education in secondary schools, now teaches socio-cultural psychology at the University of Lancaster. Her particular interest concerns how aspects of identity, such as gender, affect learning processes through-out a person’s life.

Paul Warwick, an experienced primary teacher and advisor, has been active in developing RTweb whilst continuing with his work in initial teacher training at Cambridge. He has a particular interest in research into science education and spearheads our provison on the primary curriculum. He is currently engaged in researching schools as learning communities.

Excerpted from Reflective Teaching by Andrew Pollard. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Note: This excerpt is from the introduction to Chapter 7, ‘Learning: How can we understand children’s development’.

Learning can be considered as the process by which knowledge, concepts, skills and attitudes are acquired, understood, applied and extended. Children also discover their feelings towards themselves, towards each other and towards learning itself. Learning is thus partly a cognitive process, and partly social and affective. A reflective professional has two major concerns – there is a short-term focus on pupil performance in relation to curriculum tasks, but there is also a longer-term responsibility to foster each child’s personal confidence as a learner.

At the level of the curriculum task, there must be both engagement with the child's existing understanding and support for its extension, hence the importance of formative, diagnostic assessment (see Chapter 14) and of each teacher's subject knowledge (see Chapter 8). Pupil learning should thus not be confused, as it so often is, with mere task-completion. Indeed, in routinised work children may finish a task 'correctly' but have learned nothing new. They may also learn things which the teacher did not intend and which could cause them problems later, e.g. incorrect spellings or letter-formation skills, or inefficient subtraction procedures. As we shall see, high quality instruction is thus very important in effective, progressive enhancement of performance.

A more enduring professional responsibility arises as children’s immediate classroom experiences accumulate into longer term feelings and beliefs. For instance, whilst successful learning may result in confidence, pleasure and a sense of achievement, persistent failure may lead to low self esteem, apathy, avoidence or aggression. Here we are dealing with the cumulative formation of the person as a learner, with each child’s sense of themselves and of their capacities – their ‘learning identity’. Facilitating such holistic development is an extremely rewarding aspect of teaching in primary schools, but it is no indulgence. Indeed, the complex, fast-moving nature of modern economies and societies demands that future citizens are adaptable, confident ‘lifelong learners’. In their teaching in the present, primary school teachers thus contribute to the foundations of our collective future - as well as to the personal well-being of their pupils.

The two themes of task-focused learning and cumulative personal learning interact throughout this chapter.

We begin by reviewing three key theories of learning processes (behaviourism, constructivism and social constructivism) and consider how they have influenced classroom practice. The second part of the chapter moves the focus directly to children as learners. Here we consider the influence of factors such as health and physical development, the brain, 'intelligence', culture, personality, motivation and thinking skills before providing an integrative review of key factors in learning. The chapter concludes with a challenge to face the difficulties of applying school learning in authentic, ‘real-world’ situations.

The issues raised in this chapter are taken up again in Chapter 9 in relation to planning a curriculum that matches cognitive and motivational aspects of school tasks to pupils' learning needs. It is relevant to almost every other chapter too – classroom relationships, behaviour, communication, teaching, assessment, social differences, etc.

Customer Reviews

Really good general resource for trainee teachers
I have found 'Reflective Teaching' a very helpful and well presented overview of key issues in learning and teaching. The book's language is straightforward, yet not simplistic, and the topics covered are both important and current.

The book is a really useful resource when it comes to writing essays for, e.g., a PGCE course. Each chapter serves as a really good introduction to the key points which need to be considered, and there are useful suggestions for further reading (both in the book itself, and on the Web site: RTWeb).

'Reflective Teaching' also strikes a good balance between the abstract and the specific. It isn't as up-in-the-air as many education books are, and it does consider genuine classroom issues, but equally it doesn't get bogged down in the minutiae of the classroom.

I would really recommend this book to anybody on an initial teacher training course, as a very helpful overview of important issues and a good starting point for further, more detailed research.

One criticism? The green cover design makes the book look deeply boring - which is unfortunate! Something to change for the new edition, I feel!

Reflection at its Best
Reflective Teaching is an excellent book. The updated version is a significant enhancement on the previous edition. I use the book with my students as a recommended text and the feedback I get is highly positive.
The easy to follow sections and clear down-to-earth language and content makes it very easy for pre-service teachers to follow. The link to the 'reflection site' provides updated, on-site interactive experiences which renders the book really amazing.

Essential reading for any teaching student
This book is essential reading for any teaching student especially those studying for a PGCE. It can be dipped into for inspiration and the all important quotes for those gruelling essays.