Looking back: reviewing your beliefs log
1.6.2.1
The purpose of the review
1.6.2.2 Teaching principles revisited
1.6.2.3 Noticing change
1.6.2.1
The purpose of the review
At the end of the instructions for your beliefs log entries for each activity
cycle, you'll have noticed that you are asked to review all the entries
to date, and add to, or comment on these as your beliefs and attitudes
evolve. This section asks you to undertake a similar review exercise in
a rather more formal way, in order to identify any patterns in your responses
and / or any areas which stand out as problematic or interesting, and
which you would like to focus on in future developmental work.
1.6.2.2
Teaching principles revisited
In section 1.5.2.5 you were asked to identify
any clusters of beliefs about teaching and learning that together seemed
to point to a more fundamental teaching principle.
- Prepare a number of slips of paper on which you can write brief notes - eg cut a couple of A4 sheets into 12 strips each to create 24 strips of paper.
- Read back through your beliefs log. Copy down each recorded belief onto a slip of paper. If at the end of this review exercise, you have fewer than 24 slips completed, find some recent lesson plans, or repeat the 'Why, why, why?' activity in section 1.5.2.4, and use these to reflect on how you teach and why, until you have about 24 slips.
- Spread all your completed slips out on a table and arrange them into what seem to you to be logical sets (sets can be any size). If some slips seem to belong to more than one set, make extra copies of those statements.
- Once you are satisfied with your sets, write a single statement for each set that seems to you to sum up the underlying principle that relates all the items in a set.
- If you are working with a colleague, it would be interesting to jumble up all your slips, and then make sets and suggest principles for each other. This may help you to see things which you hadn't noticed when doing the activity on your own. Alternatively, see if you can rearrange any of the slips yourself to make some new sets that reveal additional principles.
- Review the list of principles which have emerged. Do they feel 'right' as a statement of your fundamental view of language teaching and learning? Revise the list of principles until you are happy with it.
- Write down your list of principles in your beliefs log.
1.6.2.3
Noticing change
As you were reviewing your beliefs log for the previous activity, did
you notice any entries (especially early ones) that:
- showed evidence of you having become explicitly aware of previously tacit beliefs?
- showed evidence of one or more of your beliefs having been challenged, either directly by something you have read in this module or by your own thinking as you reflected critically on the belief?
- showed evidence of one or
more of your beliefs having been changed?
- Make a 'beliefs log' entry identifying three aspects of your belief system that you have noticed (ie become consciously aware of), that have been challenged, and / or that have changed since you started this module.
- If you have trouble identifying items for all three categories at this stage, revisit this activity as you complete other DELPHI modules, as you will probably find many of them present you with new ideas about language, learning and teaching that will at least challenge, if not change the way you think.
