How Reflection Is Used in Practice
Working principles of reflective practice
- Problem-oriented. It poses problems as well as solves them.
- Action research as backbone. A small loop of try, observe, adjust drives change.
- Research-led teaching. Reflection feeds evidence into how you teach.
- Data-driven. The teacher owns the data that comes out of their own classroom.
Three types of reflection (Hatton and Smith, 1995)
| Type | What it focuses on | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Technical rationality | Behaviour and skills | “My questioning technique broke down at step 3” |
| Reflection on action | Description, justification, multiple perspectives | “Looking back, the lesson failed for these three reasons” |
| Reflection in action | Thinking in the moment | “Mid-lesson I noticed the energy drop and switched to pair work” |
How the three combine
Technical rationality builds the skills. Reflection on action processes them after the fact. Reflection in action lets you adjust the lesson while it is still happening.
A teacher who agrees that reflection matters still has to put it to work on a Tuesday morning. Four working principles and three types of reflection turn the idea from a poster on the wall into something a teacher can do in a real classroom.
Reflection is problem-oriented
The first principle: reflective practice both poses and solves problems. The order matters. Many teachers jump straight to solutions. Reflective practice slows down to ask what the problem actually is before reaching for an answer.
In a Pakistani classroom this looks like the difference between “students cannot solve word problems, so I will give more drills” and “students cannot solve word problems; what part of the problem are they stuck on?” The drill response treats a symptom. The reflective question opens a real diagnosis.
A teacher who poses problems well usually solves them faster, because the diagnosis is sharper. A teacher who skips the diagnosis ends up trying solution after solution that misses the mark.
Action research is the engine
The second principle ties reflective practice to action research. Action research is the small loop of try something, watch what happens, change one thing, try again. It is one of the most useful tools available to a working teacher because it does not require a budget, a committee, or special permission.
The action research loop in its plainest form:
- Notice a problem in your classroom.
- Read or think about what might cause it.
- Try one change.
- Watch what happens for a week or two.
- Adjust based on what you saw.
This loop is what Donald Schon meant when he described teachers as practitioners who develop knowledge through practice itself. The deeper exploration of action research comes later in this guide.
Teaching becomes research-led
The third principle says that reflection puts research into teaching, both research that others have done and research the teacher does in their own room. A teacher who reads a paper on cognitive load and tries the recommended sequencing in class is doing research-led teaching. A teacher who never reads anything new and never questions their own methods is not.
The point is not that every teacher must publish papers. The point is that the daily classroom should be informed by evidence: the teacher’s own observations, peer observations, and outside research that the teacher has tested in their own context.
Data-driven, with the teacher owning the data
The fourth principle: reflection runs on data, and the teacher owns the data. The data does not have to be quantitative. It can be lesson notes, student work samples, recordings, peer observation feedback, or short student surveys.
What matters is that the teacher gathers it themselves and looks at it honestly. Data that someone else collects and hands to the teacher rarely changes practice the same way. Data the teacher gathered, sat with, and tried to understand becomes part of how they think about their own work.
In a Pakistani classroom of fifty students, gathering data has to be light. A two-question exit slip on the way out the door, a quick look at three samples of student work each week, or a short reflective note after each Friday lesson are all sustainable. The trap is to design a heavy system that never gets used.
How is the thinking actually done
Once the principles are in place, the question becomes practical: how does reflection happen as a cognitive process? Hatton and Smith (1995) named three specific types that often develop in teachers, each one stronger than the last.
Technical rationality
Technical rationality focuses on behaviour and skills. The teacher reflects on the mechanics: was the explanation clear, was the board work readable, did the timing of activities work, did the questioning move from easy to hard.
This is the most common kind of reflection in early-career teachers. It is also the easiest to do wrong, because it can stay at the surface. “My handwriting on the board was messy” is a technical observation; it becomes reflection only when paired with “and that probably contributed to the confusion in the second activity.”
Reflection on action
This is the reflection most associated with the field. After a lesson, the teacher describes what happened, justifies the choices made, considers different perspectives (their own, the students’, a colleague’s), and looks at the factors that shaped the outcome.
A reflection on action is the kind of writing that ends up in a professional development journal. It is slower than technical rationality and goes deeper. It is also the type most teachers improve at over time.
Reflection in action
Donald Schon’s most-cited contribution. Reflection in action is thinking on your feet, mid-lesson. The teacher notices that something is not working, reads the room, and adjusts on the spot.
A teacher mid-explanation senses that students are lost. They stop, ask a quick question, find that the example they used was unclear, and switch to a different one. That whole cycle, taking maybe forty seconds, is reflection in action.
It is the hardest kind to develop because it cannot be planned. It comes from experience, from comfort with the content, and from the habit of reading the class continuously. A new teacher cannot reflect in action well because they are still managing the basics. A reflective teacher with five years of experience does it dozens of times a lesson without naming it.
Technical rationality, reflection on action, reflection in action
Technical rationality watches the mechanics of teaching: skills, behaviour, timing. Reflection on action processes a lesson after the fact, with description, justification, and multiple perspectives. Reflection in action is the live, mid-lesson adjustment that comes from reading the room while teaching.
How the three types fit together
Technical rationality and reflection on action both happen after the lesson. Reflection in action happens during it. The three are not in competition. A strong teacher uses all three across a single week.
After Monday’s lesson, technical rationality picks up that the timing of the second activity was off. Reflection on action over the weekend works out why, and looks at the lesson from the students’ point of view. By Wednesday, when the same activity is going wrong again, reflection in action steps in and the teacher adjusts mid-lesson.
The principles and the three types together turn reflective practice from a slogan into a daily habit.