A Study on Reflective Teaching of Mathematics in the Pakistani Context
This study explores the idea that in order to improve the way we teach mathematics to children, teachers need to continuously be supported in engaging in reflective practice prior to, during, and after teaching. The study set out to understand reflective teaching practices in a private school in Pakistan. The aim was to explore and ascertain if reflective teaching is practised in Pakistan: how and why?
Two teachers of mathematics participated in the study and shared their experiences and perspectives of reflective teaching in their school. Qualitative data was collected by using in-depth interviews, classroom lesson observations and reflective discussions between the teachers and the researcher, before carrying out a deep cross data analysis. The main findings showed that teachers' notion of reflective teaching seems to be influenced by their personal biography, their curriculum knowledge base, the beliefs and the context in which they work. The teachers in the study considered reflective teaching as a strategy for improving their classroom teaching. It was also found from the study that reflective teaching does not seem to occur in a vacuum; however, engaging teachers in reflective teaching meaningfully requires an on-going professional support from the school management. There was a significant relationship between reflective practice and quality teaching of mathematics. The study revealed that reflective teaching tends to create an enabling learning environment that leads to developing students' better conceptual understanding of mathematics.
The study also revealed some important contextual concerns, which seem to inhibit the teachers' use of reflective teaching as a strategy and, therefore, recommended a need to encourage the notion of 'critical mass' at school level, in order to develop human capacity in the whole process of engaging teachers in a reflective teaching framework that merges together the social and teaching contexts. Changing practice is a gradual and often painful process, but reflective practice in teaching can provide a means of assisting practising teachers to improve their teaching practices and hence the students' learning of mathematics.