Learning communities: structure, benefits, and implementation

¶ … personal reflection giving past experiences used in selecting an assessment method to evaluate learning. It further outlines how assessment can be used for both individual learner mastery and continuous quality improvement of the instruction. Moreover the paper discusses how critical reflection is essential in the assessment process not only for the educator, but for learners as well. Besides, it presents a profile of own current professional educator role as a reflective practitioner.

Assessment and Critical Reflection

In my degree program, I have preferred the use of Personal Communication assessment method in evaluation of' learning progress. This method entails gathering information about what students have learned in the course of interacting with them. This assessment method, involves listening to students' views during classes; responding to their comments, as well as interviewing them (Brodie & Irving, 2007). The information gathered during such interactions provides descriptive feedback helpful in instructional planning, and self-reflection.

The assessment is used for both individual learner mastery and continuous quality improvement of the instruction. The learners use their assessment information to understand their academic and areas requiring improvement and work on them (Copland & Knapp, 2006). This assessment method provides concrete evidence on the students' current state as well as in tailoring an appropriate improvement plan for weak students. In addition, the assessment method provides the learners with a vocabulary of terms to use during learning, and guidance to the instructor on how to assemble assessment data into documentation of learners' competencies (Ash & Clayton, 2004).

Critical reflection is essential in the assessment process not only for the educator, but for learners as well. It helps deconstruct learners' prior assumptions regarding beliefs, value systems, and attitudes in a rational way (Ash & Clayton, 2004). Additionally, it is useful for both educators and learners since it helps in identifying faulty arguments, assumptions lacking evidence as well as obscure concepts. Nonetheless, critical reflection is crucial in alerting instructors in how and why my assumptions constrain perception, understanding and feelings about the world. This provides both the instructor and the learner with a more inclusive and integrating perspectives to choose or act upon.

Reflective Practitioner

Donald Schon provides a framework that illuminates the practice of reflectivity among teachers. According to Schon's principles, educators translate theory to action via reflection. Whenever an educator reflects-in-action a situation they find unique, paying attention to it and finding an intuitive understanding of the situation, their experimenting is thus exploratory, move testing, and hypothesis testing. From this perspective, situations do not present themselves as givens, but are constructed from events that are puzzling, troubling, and uncertain (Schon, 1983).

According to Schon's principles, I allow myself to experience surprise or confusion in a situation which I find uncertain or unique. This calls for reflection on the phenomenon before me and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in my behavior. In such a situation, I carry out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation.