Considering Internal Factors in Johns Model
Considering the cue: internal factors
Framework for “what internal factors were influencing me?”
| Domain | Examples |
|---|---|
| Expectations from self | Obligation, duty, conscience, beliefs, values, normal practice, fear of sanction |
| Negative attitude | Toward the student or family; influencing actions |
| Expectations from others | Loyalty conflicts, anxiety about ensuing conflict, fear of sanction |
| Time and priorities | Pressure of competing demands |
Why considering this cue matters
External focus draws attention naturally. Internal influences are easier to miss. Naming them balances the reflection and avoids pure description of circumstances.
A note on difficulty
Looking in is harder than looking out. Supervised looking in tends to go further than solo looking in.
A specific cue in Johns’s model is “what internal factors were influencing me?” This cue gets a framework of its own because internal factors are easy to under-explore. A teacher reflecting on a difficult class will usually start with what students did and what colleagues said. The teacher’s own internal contribution often gets less attention than it deserves. The framework that follows breaks internal factors into domains so each one can be examined directly.
Why internal factors get under-explored
The reflective practitioner tends to look outward by default. The external situation has visible parts: students, schedules, content, room layout. These attract attention because they are concrete.
Internal factors do not have the same pull. Expectations the teacher holds of themselves are felt rather than seen. Attitudes toward particular students operate quietly. Pressure from time and priorities looks like a feature of the day rather than a force shaping decisions.
A framework that names the internal factors and gives them domains is the way to bring them into the reflection. Without the framework, they stay invisible.
The framework for internal factors
The framework breaks internal factors into four domains.
Expectations from self
What does the teacher expect of themselves? Several pieces sit here.
Obligation and duty. A sense of what the teacher feels they have to do. This sense is sometimes accurate and sometimes inflated.
Conscience. What feels right or wrong to the teacher in this kind of situation.
Beliefs and values. The deeper convictions about what teaching is for and how students should be treated.
Normal practice. A felt obligation to conform to what the teacher usually does or what is usually expected.
Fear of sanction. Anxiety about consequences if the expectations are not met.
A teacher reflecting through these expectations of self may discover that some are productive and some are corrosive. A sense of duty can carry the work; a fear of sanction can distort it.
Negative attitude
The framework also asks about negative attitude toward the student or family. What factors influenced the teacher’s actions that came from a negative reading of the people they were working with?
This is a hard question to answer honestly. A teacher who acknowledges that they had a negative attitude toward a particular student is doing real reflective work. A teacher who insists they had no such attitude when the actions suggest otherwise is not.
Expectations from others
What did the teacher think others expected of them? Several specifics sit here.
Loyalty conflicts. Loyalty to staff versus loyalty to a student or family. These can pull in different directions.
Anxiety about ensuing conflict. Worry that addressing something will produce conflict with colleagues, parents, or administrators.
Fear of sanction. Anxiety about consequences from those whose expectations the teacher might disappoint.
These external expectations live inside the teacher as internal pressures. They are real even when nobody articulates them out loud.
Time and priorities
Teachers are extremely busy. Internal reflection sometimes surfaces that an action was shaped less by deliberate choice than by time pressure and competing priorities.
Naming this is useful. It points to the structural conditions that need to change as much as to the teacher’s choices.
Why considering this cue matters
Considering the cue “what is the internal influence on teaching?” helps the reflective practitioner give equal weight to the internal perspective of reflection as much as to the external focus.
This balance matters because the external focus tends to draw the teacher’s attention more easily than the internal focus. A teacher reflecting on a difficult class will naturally start with what students did, what colleagues said, what the schedule produced. The teacher’s own internal contribution gets less attention.
Adding reflexivity, the conscious internal focus, means the reflection avoids becoming purely a contemplation of external circumstances. It is more than navel-gazing because it is paired with looking out and with the analytical questions of the wider model. The combination gives the practitioner an opportunity to acquire a deep level of learning from their experience.
This is where the real value of the staged model becomes apparent. A teacher who can move between looking in and looking out, between the patterns of knowing and the internal influences, has a richer understanding than any one of these moves alone could produce.
Expectations from self, negative attitude, expectations from others, time and priorities
Expectations from self include obligation, duty, conscience, beliefs and values, normal practice, and fear of sanction. Negative attitude examines feelings toward students or families. Expectations from others covers loyalty conflicts and anxiety about ensuing conflict. Time and priorities names the pressure of competing demands.
A note on the difficulty of looking in
Looking in is harder than looking out. Looking out describes situations and other people, which the teacher does naturally. Looking in describes the teacher’s own thoughts, feelings, expectations, and attitudes, which requires honesty about oneself.
A teacher who has not built the practice of looking in will find the inward-facing parts of Johns’s model thin. The cues will produce vague answers or defensive ones.
The fix is patience and practice. The first attempts at looking in often produce surface answers. With time, deeper material surfaces. A teacher who has practised looking in for a year produces inward observations the same teacher could not have produced in their first month of reflection.
This is partly why Johns recommends working with a supervisor. The supervisor can ask “is that really what you were feeling, or is there something else?” without the question becoming intrusive. Solo looking in tends to stop at the first plausible answer. Supervised looking in goes further.