Critical Incidents. A strategy that helps teachers improve and reflect

Even though the words “critical” and “incident are connected to unusual, uncomfortable or unpleasant situations according to Cambridge Dictionaries Online, one may wonder how a critical incident can help teachers reflect upon their practices and their professional development. However in the field of education, a critical incident is used as a positive tool for analysis and learning as well.

Critical Incidents (CI) allow teachers to share their own every day experiences in the classroom as well as to analyse and evaluate different ways of facing the problem or the undesirable situation.  It is important that not only teacher but also “students at the teaching training college deal with them” (Fernández González, Elórtegui Escartín and Medina Pérez, 2003, p. 104) since this technique will help them face difficult and spontaneous circumstances as well as to be prepared to make any convenient decision.

According to Rahilly and Saroyan (1997), the psychologist Flanagan was the first to design the Critical Incident Technique in 1954 and to distinguish five steps:

• Determining general aim of study
• Planning and identifying how facts will be collected
• Collecting data
• Analysing data
• Interpreting and reporting requirements of activity being studied.

Working with Critical Incidents in a teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) collage permits “to place the students in the difficult situation and to make them propose different alternatives as solution” (Fernández González et al., 2003, p. 106). This will allow a positive group work in which each of them will have the opportunity to share their ideas and suggestions as well as to expose orally their reflection. According to Fernández González, Elórtegui Escartín and Medina Pérez (2003), the final evaluation will also enrich students since they will be able to propose alternatives to similar situations.

By and large, Critical Incidents are a tool teachers should take into account in order to share and reflect upon their difficult experiences or uninspected situations. They will  also allow student teachers deep analysis and the exchange of different proposals as solutions.

                                                                                                  

References

Cambridge Diccionaries  On-line. Available at http://www.dictionary.cambridge.org/

Fernández González, J., Elórtegui Escartín, N. & Medina Pérez, M. (2003). Los incidentes críticos en la formación y perfeccionamiento del profesorado de secundaria de ciencias de la naturaleza. Revista Interuniversitaria de Formación de Profesorado, año/vol. 17, número 001

Flanagan, J. (1954). The critical incident technique. Psychological bulletin, 51-4. Retrieved October 2011, from http://www.apa.org/psycinfo/special/cit-article.pdf

Rahilly, T. J, & Saroyan, A. (1997). Characterizing poor and exemplary teaching in higher education: Implications for faculty development. Montreal, Quebec: McGill University

A difficult afternoon, a difficult experience

I was teaching in a run-state school of El Jagüel three months ago before winter holidays. I had lessons on Wednesdays from 3 to 5.20 in the afternoon. It was 3^rd year secondary school and students were a bit excited because they had had an exam during the previous period. In general terms, they did not have serious discipline problems.

We had finished the unit on comparatives and superlatives. My teaching goal was to make students aware that there are two ways of comparing people, objects, animals and places. And the descriptions could be done not only written but also orally. My learning goal was to teach comparative and superlative form of short and long adjectives not only to describe but also to carry out a survey in the classroom.

As it was almost the end of the term, I decided to test them orally before winter holidays. While I was evaluating them, the rest of the students were working with a consolidation task except for two of them, a boy and a girl, who were arguing and insulting at each other. I had to interrupt the oral test many times, but they continued misbehaving. Suddenly, another student told me that the girl had a cutter in the pocket of her jeans. Immediately after that, I checked this information and it was really true. I asked the girl to come to my desk and to give the cutter to me. Fortunately, and after arguing for some minutes, the girl did not hesitate and put her cutter on the desk.

Meanwhile, I asked another student to go to the staff room and to call one of the prefects to come to my classroom. When she arrived, I told her the situation and both boy and girl were sent to the Headmistress office. They were suspended for two days.

All in all, as Rahilly and Saroyan (1997) state “meaningful experiences allow to collect qualitative and quantitative data about classroom teaching and teaching thinking” (p.4). This will be very important not only for analysis but also for learning.

That was the most difficult experience in my career because I did not know how these students would react towards me. I decided not to be involved in the argument but to talk to them in a very cold way as well as to resort on the prefect to help me. Fortunately, everything was solved in a peaceful way.

References

Rahilly, T. J, & Saroyan, A. (1997). Characterizing poor and exemplary teaching in

higher education: Implications for faculty development. Montreal, Quebec: McGill

University

Discourse Community and its requirements

Knowledge community, speech community, social mechanism, people with certain values, aims and expectations, transmition of information and feedback are some characteristics that theorists as well as researchers use to describe a Discourse community. Herzberg (1996) defines a discourse community as “a means of maintaining and extending a group´s knowledge and of initiating new members into the group” (as cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2010, p. 13).

 Swales (1990) establishes some basis criteria to recognize as well as to check whether a particular group of people belongs to an academic discourse community or not (as cited in Pintos and Crimi, 2010, p.13)

• Common goals
• Participatory mechanisms
• Information exchange
• Community-specific genres
• Highly specialized terminology
• High general level of expertise

The following paper offers an analysis of different sources that evidence and support Swales´ (1990) theory on discourse community.

Discourse Community implies an activity system similar to Engestrom´s (1999) which integrates reflection and action. This activity system “incorporates the productive and communicative aspects of people conduct” (Engestrom et al.,1999 as cited in Hoffman-Kipp, Altiles & Lopez Torres, 2003, p. 4).

In addition to that “consciousness alone in teachers´ reflection is not efficient. It must coexist with meaningful praxis, that is union of reflection and action.” (Hoffman-Kipp et al.,p.1). This implies teachers´ integration in different activities which are oriented to a particular goal. This interaction implies not only communication but also an exchange of ideas, materials, theory and pedagogy in a collaborative environment. “Power of universal scholars focuses on sharing their knowledge, findings and interpretations.” (Kelly-Klesse 2001,p. 3). The members must “keep them up to date so as to maintain vitality in a community” (Kelly-Kleese 2004, p.3). Communicative competence is important, that is the knowledge in order to use the language appropriately in a particular discourse. For that reason, such members tend to “minimize or exclude the participation of some people” (Kelly-Kleese 2004, p.3) who do not have the purpose or language within the higher education community.

All in all, Discourse Communities cannot exist in isolation and their members need to have an integration as well as communication of their knowledge and ideas in order to fulfil goal-oriented activities in a collaborative environment where risk-taking is supported. (McLaughlin & Talbert, 1993 as cited in Winzlaff & Wieseman, 2004, p. 9)

                                                                           References   

Engestrom,Y.,Miettinen, R.,& Punamaki, R. (Eds.). Perspectives on activity theory: Learning in doing social, cognitive and computational perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press


Hoffman-Kipp, P., Artiles, A.J. & Lopez Torres, L (2003). Beyond reflection: teacher learning as praxis. Theory into Practice. Retrieved September 2011, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles /mi_m0NQM/is_3_42/ai_108442653


 Kelly-Kleese, C. (2001). Editor’s Choice: An Open Memo to Community College Faculty and Administrators. Community College Review. Retrieved September 2011, from http://findarticles.com/p/acticles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_29/ai_77481463


Kelly-Kleese, C. (2004). UCLA community college review: community college scholarship and discourse. Community College Review. Retrieve September 2011, from http://findarticles.com/p/acticles/mi_m0HCZ/is_1_32/ai_n636154


McLaughlin, M. &Talbert, J. E. (1993). Contexts that matter for teaching and learning: Strategic opportunities for meeting the nation´s educational goals. Stanford, CA: Center for Research on the Context of Secondary School Teaching, Stanford University.


Pintos, V. & Crimi, Y. (2010). Building up a community of teachers and prospective researchers. Universidad CAECE

Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.



Wenzlaff, T. L., & Wieseman, K. C. (2004). Teachers Need Teachers To Grow. Teacher Education Quarterly. Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3960/is_200404/ai_n9349405