Achieving Best Practice

A reflective practitioner is not aiming for “good lessons”. They are aiming for best practice in the sense of practice that prepares children for a future the teacher cannot fully predict. The 21st century classroom faces children who will need creativity, problem-solving, lifelong learning, and a strong work ethic. Reflective practice is one of the most reliable routes to teaching in a way that builds those qualities.

What best practice looks like

In a classroom where reflective practice is working, certain things become visible.

1. Students are engaged and focused on their own work, not waiting to be told what to think.
2. The teacher uses collaborative and authentic tasks that put students at the centre of learning.
3. There is a feeling of purposeful movement and industrious thinking, not silence enforced by control.
4. The atmosphere is alive but not chaotic.

These are not slogans. They are observable features of classrooms run by reflective teachers who have done the slow work of reading their students and adjusting.

Core best practices

A reflective teacher tends to work in seven specific ways.

1. Educates the whole child. Subject content is one part of teaching, not the whole job.
2. Teaches based on knowledge of how children develop and learn. Decisions are informed by what is known about cognitive, social, and emotional development.
3. Prepares children for success in school and for life. The horizon is broader than the next exam.
4. Provides an enriched environment. The classroom has resources, variety, and purpose.
5. Creates active participants rather than passive observers. Students do work; they do not only watch.
6. Provides challenge. Tasks stretch students, not just keep them busy.
7. Employs rigorous assessment of learning. What is being learned is checked properly, not assumed.

Core worst practices

The worst-practice list is honest about what teaching looks like when reflection is missing.

1. Plans and teaches in isolation. No conversation with peers, no shared planning.
2. Teaches to the test. Whatever does not appear in the exam disappears from the classroom.
3. One size fits all. Same lesson, same pace, regardless of who is in the room.
4. Teaches without assessing student needs. Decisions about content come from the syllabus, not the students.
5. Teaches the text. The textbook becomes the curriculum.
6. Stays within a comfort zone. The teacher repeats what they know and avoids new methods.
7. Applies student-centred or activity-based approaches in name only. The label is on the lesson plan; the lesson itself is still teacher-centred.

A teacher who reads this list honestly will recognise some of these in their own practice. That recognition is the start of change.

Operationalising best practice

What does it mean in daily life to be a skilled reflective practitioner? Five working features show up.

1. Care about the consequences of education, not only technical proficiency. A teacher whose students leave able to pass exams but unable to think for themselves has not done the job.
2. Be prepared to experiment with the unfamiliar. Try methods you have not used before. Learn from the experiments, especially the ones that fail.
3. Commit to professional dialogue with colleagues in school and beyond. The conversation sharpens the practice.
4. Work in a pattern of action, evaluation, and revision. This is the action research loop in everyday clothes.
5. Take responsibility for ongoing professional development as a lifelong learner. No single training course or degree closes the question.

A teacher who builds these into their working week is operating as a reflective practitioner. A teacher who treats them as an aspirational list will keep treating them as aspirational.

Implications for achieving best practice

Reflection alone does not produce best practice. Several supporting conditions matter.

Reflect in practice and on practice

Both Schon’s reflection in action and reflection on action are needed. Studies suggest that the best outcomes for children come from teachers who do both, not only one.

Reflect on your own values

Reflection on technique without reflection on values is shallow. The relationship between teacher and child shapes learning outcomes. To change the relationship, teachers need to deepen their understanding of their own and others’ values. That requires structured guidance.

Use structured tools

Without recording formats, guided questions, or examples of others’ reflections that show how reflection led to change, commitment to reflective practice tends to fade. Teachers who try to reflect with no tools usually stop within a term.

A useful starter set: a one-page weekly reflective sheet, a list of three or four guiding questions, and one or two case examples of reflections that produced visible change.

Embed it in daily practice

Reflection that is treated as an extra activity loses out to the daily demands of teaching. Reflection that is built into normal routines (a five-minute end-of-day note, a Friday-afternoon staff conversation) survives.

Collaborate

Evidence suggests that reflection is more effective when it involves other professionals. A peer brings a different perspective, encourages the teacher to articulate what they value, and supports the work of asking why. Solo reflection works for some questions; for harder questions, dialogue is needed.

Build regular learning networks

When teachers reflect regularly together, the school develops what some authors call reflective teaching hubs. These hubs focus on policy development, learning, pedagogy, sharing best practice, and challenging taken-for-granted practices. They produce more than the sum of individual reflections.

Protect time and space

Without leadership commitment to reflective practice and time set aside for staff to reflect, meet, or attend learning networks, reflection is seen as a time-consuming exercise that nobody really does. Effective reflection is regular and protected, not crammed into the gaps.

Move beyond one-off training

The traditional “in-service training day” does not produce sustained change. Single workshops are absorbed and forgotten. Strategic, collaborative, longer-term professional development programmes produce more change than isolated events.

Flashcard

What conditions support reflective practice that actually changes teaching?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Structured tools, collaboration, daily embedding, protected time, sustained programmes

Without recording formats and guiding questions, reflection drifts. Without a colleague or critical friend, it confirms what you already believed. Without daily routines, it loses to other demands. Without protected time and leadership support, it is treated as overhead. And without sustained programmes, single workshops fade within weeks.

The traditional model of teacher learning

The traditional model assumes that teachers receive shared, public knowledge through training and that this knowledge will lead to behaviour change. Theory, understood and applied, leads to good practice.

Reflective practice tells a different story. Receiving information does not automatically change practice. The change happens when the teacher works the new ideas through their own classroom, with their own students, in dialogue with peers, over time.

This is why the working assumptions behind reflective practice matter. Reflection is contextualised, action-linked, and dialogic. The traditional training model is none of these. Schools that want real change have to invest in the conditions that make reflection work, not only in the events that introduce new ideas.