Critical Incident Reflection:

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Critical Incident Reflection

• Engaging the Souls of Pre-Service Teachers

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Reflective Teachers

• Are open-minded
• Are Responsible
• Approach teaching with wholehearted enthusiasm
• Are active learners who are able to make good
  choices and decisions about and within their
  practice.
• Are able to learn from what they do as they do
  it.
• Are open to growth and introspection
• Are life long learners

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Pre-Service Teachers

• Are newly evolving professionals without a large
  base of practical experience.
• Rely on their own assumptions, conceptions,
  beliefs, dispositions and capabilities which they
  bring to the teaching experience (Zeichner and
  Gore (1990)
• Are focused on responding to supervisors
  emphasis on acquisition of new technical skills
• Are learning to survive in the classroom
• Are confronted by the reality of challenging
  student behaviors that test self concept and
  confidence
• Come to teaching with narrow perspectives bounded
  by their own educational experience and cultural
  ecology. Gould (2000)

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Why Use Critical Incident Reflection?

• Provides an opportunity for teachers to clarify
  or reframe some misguided or preconceived ideas
  about students, learning and the teaching
  process.
• Provides an opportunity to use examples from
  their own practice to become aware of their
  values and beliefs
• Provides a deeper and more profound level of
  reflection because it goes beyond a detailed
  description on an event to analysis and
  reflection on meaning
• Allows teachers to identify underlying
  assumptions that directed their actions
• Helps teachers connect theory to practice through
  use of authentic settings
• Small group and online dialogue helps students
  share their points of view in a manner that
  enriches and expands internal conversations
• Helps students better understand and participate
  in the social rubric of the school.

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What is a Critical Incident?

• An interpretation of the significance of an
  event. To explore a teaching event as a critical
  incident is a value judgment, and the basis of
  that judgment is the significance attached to the
  meaning of the incident. Critical incidents are
  created or produced by the way we look at a
  situation. Tripp (1993)

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• Critical incidents are often not dramatic or
  obvious they are mostly straight forward
  accounts of very commonplace events that occur in
  routine professional practice which are critical
  in the rather different sense that they are
  indicative of underlying trends, motives, and
  structures. These incidents may appear to be
  typical rather than critical at first sight,
  but are rendered critical through analysis
  Tripp (1993)

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Critical Incidents Defined

• Critical incidents do not need to be monumental
  or turning point events. They can re relatively
  minor incidents---everyday events that happen in
  every school and in every classroom. Ainscow
  (2000)
• Events attain criticality via the
  justification, the significance, and the meaning
  given to them by participants. Roach and
  Kratochwill (2004)

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The Definition We Used

• A critical incident can come from your
  observation in the classroom, school lunch room,
  the teachers lounge or the hallways of your
  student teaching placement. I t may involve a
  major behavioral issue with a student or between
  students, yourself and or your supervising
  teacher. It could just as easily be an everyday
  event or occurrence. Events attain
  criticality via the justification, the
  significance, and the meaning given to them by
  participants Roach(2004). When something occurs
  in the classroom or the student teaching
  experience that intrigues the observer, it should
  be recorded as a critical incident.

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Experiential Learning Cycle (Kolb)
Concrete Experience
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Kolbs Four Step Model

• Concrete Experience, is purely descriptive words
  (who, hat, where, when, how many, etc), describe
  the significant event that occurred. This part
  should read like the opening paragraph of a news
  article.

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Step 2 and 3, 4

• Reflective Observation, Write about the feelings
  and emotions you (and others) experienced about
  this event. This part deals with the affective
  component of the event.
• Abstract Conceptualization, In this part, state
  what conclusions you have drawn from what you
  described in the first and second step. State
  what you learned about yourself and/or others in
  this part.
• Active Experimentation How will your experience
  in this incident influence or impact your future
  actions.

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Three levels of Reflection

• Technical reflection, relates to the effective
  application of skills and technical knowledge in
  the classroom setting (pre-service and new
  teachers)
• Contextual, concerns reflection about the
  assumptions underlying specific classroom
  practices and consequences of practice
• Dialectical, involves the asking of questions
  about moral, ethical or socio-political issues.
  LaBoskey (1993)

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Our Assignment, Part 1

• Students fill out a form with these questions,
  then share their incidents in small groups. They
  also turn in a copy to the instructor for
  comments. They are encouraged to write
  observations and remarks on the form in response
  to questions and comments from group members.
  Small group decides on one of the critical
  incidents to be used in part 2 of the assignment.
• What happened?
• How do/did I feel about what happened?
• What were my actions/approaches?
• How did my knowledge/skill influence what
  happened?
• What else would I like to learn?
• How would that inform my future decisions and
  actions?
• What did I learn about myself?

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Assignment, Part 2

• Students post critical incident chosen by small
  group to large group discussion board. Student
  posting the incident answers the following
  questions when posting incident. In addition,
  members of class are required to post a
  meaningful response to at least three of the
  postings.
• 1. A brief description of the critical incident
• 2. Whose interests were served or denied by the
  actions of this critical incident?
• What power relationships between principal,
  teachers, and students were expressed in this
  incident?
• What did you learn that would affect he outcome
  of a similar incident in the future?
• What questions do you have?

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Assignment, Part 3

• Critical Incident Reflection Analysis (to by
  administered during the last session of class
  when students review all of the incidents they
  have submitted)
• 1. Can you identify a common theme running
  through your Critical Incident reports, if you
  addressed multiple issues list discuss those.
• Did you notice patterns of your teaching behavior
  that you want to keep? What are those behaviors?
  Did you notice teaching patterns that your would
  prefer to change? Which behaviors?
• Examine you Critical Incidents across the ten
  weeks, reflect on your development as a teacher
  over this period of time.
• As you review your teaching practices, to what
  extent were you able to translate what you
  learned in your coursework into practice?
• What changes would you make in the Critical
  Incident assignment to increase the meaning and
  value it had for you.

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Examples of Experiences

• My supervising teacher takes over every time I
  establish a relationship with a student.
• I needed to physically manage a student
• My student had a contagious disease and the
  principal refused to send him home
• A students father hit the principal during a
  manifestation determination hearing.
• I made a breakthrough.
• Student wont work, calls me names
• Two students started a fight.
• Student, threw soda, then bit me.
• I held a class meeting and it went very well.
• I had to take over the lesson

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Feelings About What Happened

• Frustrated because I couldnt get him to comply
  before the behavior escalated
• Disappointed because I couldnt follow through
  with the time-out because of the physical part.
• I was dumb struck. I cant believe the school
  doesnt have some sort of policy on this.
• I was afraid that I would not be able to get to
  him in the locked bathroom.
• puts me in a position of not knowing what to do
  because either way I feel I fail
• I was very unsure about the situation.
• I was shocked.
• I was unsure of what to do in class
• I feel really good about helping this student.
• I was stunned. I wasnt sure of the correct
  procedure on how to handle the situation. I felt
  helpless, uninformed and unprepared to handle a
  situation like that.
• My CPI training went out the window, instead of
  leaning in to get him to let go, I just took the
  pain.

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Some Conclusions

• Pre-service teachers were diligent about
  recording and reflecting on critical incidents
• Many were not able to see the in depth
  ramifications and implications of the incident,
  but relied on surface explanations. Didnt seem
  able to take it to the next step.
• Pre-service teachers often described their
  feelings via student feelings.. I felt sad for
  him, I felt frustrated for her because she
  didnt remember the words.
• Students often reported what they observed or
  were part of, in situations where they had little
  influence or control.
• Pre-teachers found it difficult to connect
  information and strategies in class with actual
  events.
• Pre-service teachers did a good job of reviewing
  their critical incidents to determine which
  teaching behaviors they wanted to keep or
  improve.
• Instructors discovered more about the job of
  surviving a pre-service teacher field assignment
  resulting in some changes in seminar curriculum.