Reflecting on Student Learning in Chemistry

Chris Binge and the Impact team are leading the way to introduce reflective skills-based education at Markham College. Under the guidance of newly appointed Head of Science Dave Meur the Science department is introducing skills reflection into lessons.

Vygotski’s educational paradigm includes the ‘Proximal development’ model which is useful for students to frame their learning experiences. The poster below is a resource that has been developed in the Chemistry department. It provides a concrete frame for students to understand their learning experience.

Setting the level of challenge

There are obvious challenges when planning lessons to meet the needs of mixed ability groups. The idea is to pitch lessons where students are in their ‘zone of proximal development’. Being in the ‘’comfort zone’’ where students have the hard ‘chemistry skills’ to meet lesson challenges, is good for the ego, but does little to drive their learning forwards. On the other hand being on the wrong side of the students ‘development zone’......Vygotski’s zone of proximal development is detrimental to students is not a productive area for students to find themselves. Reflection is a great strategy through which students can understand where they are in their learning, common unsuccessful strategies that are adopted and how to choose ‘skills based’ strategies to move their learning forward.

Reflecting on recent class activities

Regular reflection is used as a strategy to deal with this. The poster includes examples of common student responses to being confronted with difficult educational challenges. There are also prompts (in blue) of the skill areas they can use to address these problems and progress in their learning. Students are asked to reflect on challenges they confronted, how they felt, to identify any negative behaviours that they adopted and the skills they found useful to become engaged in the lesson.

When is the best time to reflect?

Any time is a good time to reflect. For example, time can be set aside at the end of an activity, which could be part way through a lesson, at the end or even at the end of the week. On the other hand, it can be useful to ask students to reflect on the poster at the start of a lesson and ask them to identify behaviours and successful ‘skills strategies’ that they have previously adopted.

What is the best way to reflect?

Use as many reflection strategies as possible

Science Reflection Diary: All students at Markham studying Science at Markham College keep a ‘skills reflection diary’. They do this on a regular (at least weekly is the aim) basis, in their ‘Student Portfolio’ developed last year by Chris Binge and the ICT department.

Small group discussion: Intentional dialogue can be encouraged, by asking students to identify the challenges that an activity presented and the strategies (skills) that they employed to achieve success.

Individual ‘micro’ interventions: Where a student regularly adopts non-productive behavioural strategies, it is tempting to adopt a number of traditional tools from the teachers' toolkit, including, nagging, telling off and any number of punitive measures.

‘Skills reflection’ provides an alternative approach. Challenging the student to reflect how and why of their behaviour and to identify alternative strategies is the first step towards empowering a student to take charge of their own learning.