What is reflective teaching?

It is a practice and an approach to teaching that allows us to become more professional and better teachers. Essentially it involves collecting data about our teaching, in my case, I keep a journal after class everyday. And then reading those data at a later point. Some teachers choose to tape record their classes and listen to it on their way home, for example. Reviewing the data at later points, and using the information that we get from that process to make critical judgments about our teaching and try to improve, in a nutshell what it’s all about.

Why can’t you improve as you go along? Why do we need to look back afterwards?

You can, to some extent. Its just that teaching is so complex and there is so much going on, particularly in my case, in the language classroom. There is a great deal of interaction with students. It is not just the same as lecturing to students on subject matter. But I find it quite helpful to keep a record of some kind, whether it is tape recording, a video recording, my own journal notes, notes from observers who have visited my class, all of these things allow me to concentrate on improving my teaching when I am not concentrating on my teaching.