Methods and Levels of Reflection
Two types of reflection (Schon)
| Type | When it happens | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Reflection-on-action | After the lesson | “Why did the group activity stall?” |
| Reflection-in-action | While teaching | Noticing students lost during a demonstration and switching examples mid-lesson |
Five levels (Zeichner and Liston, 1996)
- Rapid reflection: immediate, automatic adjustment
- Repair: changes in response to student cues during a lesson
- Review: thinking, talking, or writing about teaching after the fact
- Research: sustained inquiry, data, reading
- Re-theorising and reformulating: examining your own theories against academic ones
Three reflective postures (Grushka, Hinde-McLeod, Reynolds)
- Reflection FOR action (planning ahead)
- Reflection IN action (during)
- Reflection ON action (after)
Reflection has more than one shape. It can happen quickly, as a teacher adjusts a sentence mid-lesson because two students in the back look lost. It can also happen slowly, as the same teacher sits down on Friday evening and writes about why the week’s group work kept stalling. Donald Schon described the two as different forms of the same skill, and later writers added more granular levels.
Schon’s two types: in-action and on-action
Donald Schon’s 1983 book The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action split professional reflection into two kinds.
Reflection-on-action
Reflection-on-action is after-the-event thinking. The teacher consciously reviews, describes, analyses, and evaluates past practice with a view to improving future lessons. Most journal writing, mentor meetings, and post-observation debriefs sit here.
The strength of reflection-on-action is that there is time to slow down, look at evidence, and consult theory. The limit is that memory smooths out the messy details, so the reflection works on a tidied-up version of what happened.
Reflection-in-action
Reflection-in-action is thinking while doing. The teacher examines their experiences and responses as they occur. A demonstration falters; the teacher notices and shifts to a different example before the next student disengages. This is the kind of reflection that separates a teacher running on autopilot from one who is genuinely paying attention.
For Schon, reflection-in-action was the core of professional artistry. He contrasted it with what he called “technical rationality”, the positivist idea that practitioners simply apply prepackaged knowledge to a problem. Real teaching, in Schon’s view, is messier than that. Teachers face the dilemma of rigour versus relevance, and they have to do more than follow set procedures. They draw on practical experience and theory together, often improvising on their feet.
In both kinds of reflection, teachers aim to connect with their feelings, attend to relevant theory, and build new understandings that shape future action.
Three postures: for, in, and on
Grushka, Hinde-McLeod, and Reynolds (2005) added a third posture to Schon’s two, and tied each to a kind of question.
- Reflection for action. Planning ahead. Technical questions (“How long will this take? Are the resources ready?”), practical questions (“Will this method work for the range of students in the room?”), and critical questions (“Why am I teaching this in this particular way?”).
- Reflection in action. Mid-lesson adjustment.
- Reflection on action. After-the-event review.
The same lesson can be reflected on from all three angles. Each angle catches a different kind of issue. Skipping the “for action” stage tends to produce lessons that work on paper but fail with a particular group of students.
Five levels: Zeichner and Liston
Zeichner and Liston (1996) described five different levels at which reflection can happen during teaching. Their list is more granular than Schon’s two-part split, and useful for noticing when reflection is shallow.
| Level | What happens |
|---|---|
| Rapid reflection | Immediate, on-going, automatic adjustment by the teacher |
| Repair | A thoughtful teacher alters behaviour in response to student cues |
| Review | The teacher thinks, talks, or writes about an element of teaching |
| Research | More systematic and sustained thinking over time, often with data or reading |
| Re-theorising and reformulating | Critically examining one’s own practice and theories against academic theories |
Rapid reflection
The fastest kind. A teacher senses energy dropping in the room and changes tone without consciously deciding to. This is the kind of reflection that becomes invisible with experience.
Repair
A step slower. The teacher notices a student looking puzzled and decides to rephrase the question. The decision is conscious but quick.
Review
The deliberate after-class kind. Writing in a journal, talking with a colleague, replaying a lesson on the drive home.
Research
Slower again. The teacher decides to track participation over four weeks, reads two articles on questioning, and makes a change based on the combined evidence.
Re-theorising and reformulating
The deepest level. The teacher examines their own working theory of teaching and tests it against the academic literature. Sometimes the academic theory wins; sometimes the working theory turns out to be sharper. Either way, the teacher’s own thinking shifts.
Rapid reflection, repair, review, research, re-theorising
The first two happen during the lesson. Review happens shortly after. Research takes weeks. Re-theorising can take a year or more and changes the teacher’s working model of practice itself.
Why the levels matter
A teacher who reflects only at the rapid and repair levels can teach for years and stay roughly where they started. The bigger shifts come from review, research, and re-theorising. None of the levels is wasted, but a healthy practice runs at more than one of them.
A simple self-check at the end of a term: at which levels did I actually reflect? If the only honest answer is “the first two”, the next term has room for deeper work.