Reflection: The Balance Between Teaching And Learning

At first, the teacher needs to get the stimulus from the enironment, for example, the student’t disurptive conduct during the class. This causes the teacher to respond accordingly to the stimulus, which results in a certain behavior of the teacher during the classes, for example, penalize the student with a low grade. Next, the teacher understands that such a response will not lead to a productive outcome, or even can aggravate the situation. Therefore, the teacher tries to develop competencies, or, alternative approaches of how the student can be motivated or encouraged to work hard during the lesson, and thus consults with the mentor. This step leads to the next level of reflection, which is constructing the beliefs, or workable solutions, which the teacher tries to incorporate into the everyday teaching routine. These everyday teaching reflective habits soon can lead to the formation of a teacher’s professional identity, when the teacher has his or her own formed reality, which he or she acts upon. Providing that teachers continue to reflect on their experience and on acquired knowledge and keep asking themselves “why” they are doing their job, they can transcend to the core reflection level, which is mission. At

(2004) warn, in order to fill the gap between the practice and theory it is needed to maintain the “balance between learning from experience and learning by reflection” (p. 635). Drawing from the ideas outlined, we can infer that successful mentorship is closely connected to the continuing reflection process and discussions of both mentors and mentees. Therefore, learning to reflect on one’s experience can take the whole life for an individual, however, trying to teach the novice teachers to reflect on their experience in the practicum setting, even for a limited period of time, is an imperative for every experienced mentors, as it can lay a foundation for mentees’ further professional development as teachers and learners