Stephen Brookfield Vigilant Critical Analysis

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Arts Teaching & Learning Network Faculty of Arts Brookfield's Four Lenses: Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher Is your teaching worthy? Stephen Brookfield suggests that the path to discovering the worth of your teaching is through a process of critical reflection. In fact, critically reflective teachers, for Brookfield, are excellent teachers who continually hone their personalised "authentic voice", a "pedagogic rectitude" that reveals the "value and dignity" of the teacher's work "because now we know what its worth" (46-7). Vigilant critical reflection delivers several boons: inspirational self-assuredness, the regular achievement of teaching goals, and motivated, critically reflective students. The goal of the critically reflective teacher, for Brookfield, is to garner an increased…show more content…
These lenses correlate to processes of self-reflection, student feedback, peer assessment, and engagements with scholarly literature. Cogitating upon these processes provides the foundation for good teaching and the means to become an excellent teacher. The autobiographical lens, or self-reflection, is the foundation of critical reflection. Teachers may focus on their previous experiences as a learner, or on their experiences as a teacher in order to "become aware of the paradigmatic assumptions and instinctive reasonings that frame how we work" (30). By interrogating, for example, teaching journals, evaluations, student/peer feedback, personal goals/outcomes, and/or role model profiles, teachers can reveal aspects of their pedagogy that may need adjustment or strengthening. Self-reflection is the foundation for reflective teaching. Going further than self reflection to understand student experiences is, for Brookfield, "of utmost importance" to good teaching (35). Teachers can reflect upon, for example, student evaluations, assessment
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