Formal and Informal Reflection

A teacher reflects in two registers without always noticing. Driving home, replaying the lesson in their head, that is informal reflection. Sitting with a Gibbs cycle template after class, working through six stages on paper, that is formal reflection. Both kinds are useful. Both have weaknesses. A teacher who knows the difference can choose the right tool for the moment.

Informal reflection

Informal reflection is the kind that happens almost on its own. It involves self-questioning. It develops awareness of the teacher’s own assumptions. It does not need a model or a worksheet.

A few characteristics show up consistently.

1. Often unplanned. It happens while driving, eating, walking. The teacher does not set aside time for it.
2. Usually conscious. The teacher knows they are thinking about a lesson, even if no one else does.
3. A by-product. The reflection rides on the back of another activity, like commute or sleep.
4. Tacit and embedded. The conclusions sit inside the teacher’s existing beliefs without being made explicit.

Informal reflection has real strengths. It is sustainable. It costs nothing in extra time. It catches things that the teacher would not write down because they feel too small.

It also has real weaknesses. The list is honest.

1. Often dysfunctional, usually incomplete. The teacher reaches partial conclusions and stops.
2. Reliant on present experience. The teacher tests new ideas only against what they already know, which limits the range of what they can see.
3. Manipulated to fit existing beliefs. The teacher shapes the reflection so it does not contradict what they already think.
4. Selective. The teacher remembers what fits the story and forgets what does not.

In short, informal reflection is biased. The bias is not a moral failing. It is how human memory works. The teacher reflecting on the way home is the same teacher who taught the lesson, with the same blind spots.

Where formal reflection enters

Formal reflection requires a model or framework that gives the thinking a specific structure. The model is what makes the reflection systematic. It guards against the bias of memory by asking the teacher to follow a path through the experience that they would not naturally choose.

Formal models share four common parameters. Every model worth using touches on all four.

Visible behaviour

What did the teacher actually do, observable to others? Body language, tone, board work, questioning sequence, how time was managed. The function: capturing the surface of teaching, including the parts of professional relationships that show up to students.

Reasoning and judgment

What student-oriented understanding sat behind the choices? Why was this method chosen, why this example, why this group structure? The function: problem solving with a clear chain of reasoning rather than instinct.

Professional thinking

A critical appraisal of literature and the teacher’s own practice together. The function: optimising teaching based on accumulated experience and outside evidence, not on the latest impulse.

Personal reflection

Awareness of self, exploration of own emotions and reactions. The function: balance. Without personal reflection, the practice can become technical and lose contact with why the teacher does the work.

A formal model that covers all four parameters produces deeper reflection than informal thinking can. It also takes more time, which is part of the trade-off.

Mindfulness in this context

Some authors use the word mindfulness in a specific sense for reflective practice. In this technical use, mindfulness means becoming aware of your conscious learning in a non-routine situation. It is the moment when the tacit assumptions that drive routine decisions are pulled into the open and named.

This is not the meditation usage of the word, even though they share roots. In reflective practice, mindfulness is the act of catching yourself believing something you had never made explicit. A teacher who notices, mid-reflection, that they had assumed all good students were quiet has just been mindful in this technical sense.

Formal reflection helps mindfulness because the model asks questions the teacher would not have asked. The questions surface the assumptions.

When to use which

The two kinds of reflection are not in competition. They are tools for different jobs.

1. Daily and weekly. Informal reflection is usually enough. The teacher is processing a normal flow of small events.
2. After an unusual event. A formal model gives more depth. A worked-through Gibbs cycle, a Brookfield’s lenses analysis, or a Johns model run is worth the extra time.
3. At the end of a term. Formal reflection helps catch patterns that informal reflection missed.
4. When stuck. If the same kind of lesson keeps going wrong and informal thinking has not helped, a formal model often surfaces what was hiding.

A teacher who only does informal reflection drifts. A teacher who only does formal reflection burns out from the volume. The balance is daily informal, occasional formal.

Flashcard

What are the four parameters every formal reflection model touches?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Visible behaviour, reasoning and judgment, professional thinking, personal reflection

Visible behaviour is what others see in your teaching. Reasoning and judgment is the chain of thought behind your choices. Professional thinking links your practice to outside literature and evidence. Personal reflection keeps the teacher’s own self in view, so practice does not become a technical exercise.

Why both matter

A teacher who does only informal reflection ends up confirming what they already believed. A teacher who only does formal reflection cannot keep up with daily teaching and stops doing it.

The combination keeps reflection sustainable and honest. The informal layer catches the small, frequent things. The formal layer breaks the pattern when the small layer is missing something. Over a year, the two together produce more change than either one alone.