An interest of mine has been the role of reflection on professional growth and development. During my time as a faculty fellow at ETS this summer, I hope to trouble the role of reflection in learning, particularly when it comes to collaborative interactions around artifacts that are grounded in professional practice (e.g., lesson plans, video of teaching). It is my sense that the potential of reflective practice is not realized when the focus remains on the individual and reflection is interpreted as generic and non-analytic.
Blogs as e-portfolio seem particularly well-suited as a platform for making public not only practice-based artifacts, but also one's thinking about those artifacts. Features of blogs, such as comments and trackbacks, can then be used to support meaningful interactions among developing professionals who are attempting to tackle similar problems of practice. While it is not merely the tools, but rather the affordances they provide that matter, blogs as e-portfolio create interesting opportunities to support more collaborative and practice-based forms of reflection.
How might this influence learning and development among beginning teachers? That's one of the issues I hope to explore.
Blogs as e-portfolio seem particularly well-suited as a platform for making public not only practice-based artifacts, but also one's thinking about those artifacts. Features of blogs, such as comments and trackbacks, can then be used to support meaningful interactions among developing professionals who are attempting to tackle similar problems of practice. While it is not merely the tools, but rather the affordances they provide that matter, blogs as e-portfolio create interesting opportunities to support more collaborative and practice-based forms of reflection.
How might this influence learning and development among beginning teachers? That's one of the issues I hope to explore.