Similarities and Differences of Reflective and Effective Teaching 

Back to: Learning and Teaching – Unit 4

Reflective teaching is a process where teachers look back at their teaching practices and find ways how their teaching methods can be improved or changed for the better learning of students. A teacher reflects on their teaching process to learn about their practice and think if it’s working for the students’ learning process.

Effective teaching includes the behavior of the teacher with the students during the class lessons and how much knowledge he/she has about the subject. Effective teaching looks in the best interest of the students to improve student achievement.

Similarities of Reflective and Effective Teaching

The similarities between reflective and effective teaching are:

1. Both reflective and effective teaching focuses on the best interest of the students.
2. In both types of teaching, the teacher works on improving their teaching methods to provide a satisfactory learning experience to the students.
3. Coming up with new and innovative teaching techniques and strategies.
4. Building good relationships with the students to connect effectively with them.
5. Willingness to acknowledge what’s being done wrong in the teaching process to improve it.
6. Open to receiving others’ opinions such as from colleagues to know what can be improved in the teaching process.
7. Focusing on self-improvement for better teaching practices as well as for professional growth.
8. Open-mindedness towards one’s teaching practices and willingness to improve for providing an effective learning experience to the students.

Differences of Reflective and Effective Teaching

The differences between reflective and effective teaching are:

1. In effective teaching, the teacher is already prepared with the teaching lessons beforehand whereas that is not the case with reflective teaching where the teacher reflects on the class lessons after it’s done to improve the lectures.
2. In effective teaching, the teacher has an optimistic attitude towards his/her teaching whereas in reflective teaching the teacher thinks critically about their teaching and looks for ways to make teaching effective.
3. In effective teaching, the teacher has a passion for the subject being taught and has huge knowledge about the subject while that may or may not be the case for reflective teaching.

Reflective teaching leads to effective teaching. Both reflective and effective teaching can help the teachers largely in the way he/she functions in the classroom. Reflective and effective teaching focuses on the best interest of the students and is helpful in both the teaching and learning process. Such a teacher is on the way to a successful path as well as leads his/her students to success.