Guided Reflection

A blank page is not the friend of a tired teacher. Sit down at the end of a long day with the prompt “reflect on your week” and the result is usually either a list of complaints or a few vague positives. Guided reflection fixes this by replacing the blank page with a set of questions chosen in advance to push past surface thinking.

Where guided reflection comes from

Johns (1994) developed the concept of guided reflection in the nursing field, and it spread quickly into teaching. The idea is simple. Reflection on its own can drift. A short set of well-chosen questions keeps it on track and makes the reflection comparable from one entry to the next.

The questions can be designed by the teacher themselves, or supplied by someone else: a mentor, a principal, a school directorate, or a model in a textbook. Both versions work. A teacher who designs their own questions tends to get sharper, more personally relevant prompts. A teacher who uses someone else’s set gets the benefit of an outside view that catches blind spots.

A common format is the two-column reflective diary. One side of the page holds the descriptive material (what happened, who said what). The other side holds the reflection (why, what theory explains it, what comes next). Keeping the two columns separate stops description from swallowing the reflection.

Example questions: Maughan and Webb

Maughan and Webb (2014) suggested a short set of questions that suit most classroom incidents.

1. What is most important, interesting, useful, or relevant about the object, event, or idea?
2. How can it be explained, for example with theory?
3. How is it similar to and different from other issues or events?
4. What does this mean for my future teaching?

The first question forces a choice. A lesson contains many small events, and only some are worth reflecting on. Naming the most important one is itself an act of reflection.

The second question pulls in theory. Without it, reflection stays anecdotal.

The third question asks for comparison. Comparison surfaces patterns that single incidents hide.

The fourth question turns reflection into action. Without it, the work has no exit point.

Example questions: Biggs and Tang

Biggs and Tang (2007) framed their questions around problems specifically.

1. What was the problem? What went wrong?
2. What is the evidence for the problem?
3. How did you deal with the problem at the time?
4. How did your solution to the problem relate to your theory of teaching and learning?

The fourth question is the one that distinguishes guided reflection from venting. It forces the teacher to connect the in-the-moment decision back to a working theory. Over time, this connection sharpens both the theory and the practice.

Guided reflection and Bloom’s taxonomy

Questions for guided reflection can be structured to parallel Bloom’s taxonomy. The lower levels surface what happened. The higher levels examine, evaluate, and rebuild.

Remembering

What did I do? What was the lesson? Did it cover the planned content? Did it finish on time? How did students score on the assessment?

These questions are descriptive. They are necessary but not sufficient.

Understanding

What was important about what I did? Did I meet my goals? Can I explain the major components of the lesson? How does this lesson connect with the previous and next lesson? Where does it fit in the curriculum?

The understanding questions ask the teacher to make sense of the lesson as part of a bigger plan, not as a standalone event.

Applying

Where else could I use this approach? Which other topics might suit the same method? What would change if I used it with a different group?

Analysing

Why did this work? What pattern is showing up across multiple lessons? Which step in the lesson did most of the work? Which step was filler?

Evaluating

Was this the best use of the time available? What were the trade-offs? If I had to choose one thing to change, what would it be?

Creating

What new approach could I try, given what I have noticed? How would I redesign the lesson if I started from scratch? What hypothesis am I willing to test next time?

Flashcard

What is the value of structuring guided reflection questions along Bloom's taxonomy?

Tap to reveal

Answer

It moves reflection from description to redesign

Lower-level questions (remembering, understanding) capture what happened. Higher-level questions (analysing, evaluating, creating) push the teacher to examine patterns, weigh trade-offs, and design new approaches. A guided set that climbs the levels produces deeper reflection than one that stays at description.

Designing your own question set

A useful question set is short, fits the kind of problem the teacher faces most often, and includes at least one question at a higher Bloom level. A starter set:

1. What happened? (description)
2. Why did it happen, in theory? (analysis)
3. How does this connect to my working idea of teaching? (evaluation)
4. What will I try next, and how will I know if it worked? (creation)

Four questions are easier to answer week after week than a set of twelve. The point is consistency, not coverage.