Reflective Practices as a Means to Improve Teaching

William Arthur Ward wrote, “The mediocre teacher tells, The good teacher explains, The superior teacher demonstrates, and The great teacher inspires”. As a teacher, our secret wish is to inspire because teachers can change lives, both positively, and negatively. It is the former that as teachers, we hope to deliver. Nonetheless, studies show that teachers rarely indulge in professional training to upgrade their teaching skills because of various time-consuming responsibilities. Likewise, there has been little research done to successfully identify that teaching academics strive their best to teach well, despite most universities stating the value of teaching as utmost in their mission and vision. In this paper, I propose that teaching quality can be upgraded through reflective practices. Upon reflection, good teachers will be able to find ways to enhance their teaching quality, whether inself-development, material enhancement, class management, student rapport or achieving the learning outcomes. Reflections allow us to ponder and to understand our actions, and others’ behaviours; reflections also allow us to assess and evaluate prior occurrences and problems, hence, the possibility to formulate solutions. The insights we gain from reflective practices can improve our lives in many ways, and most of all in the work we do as teachers, thereby enhancing our own teaching practices, student quality and nation development.