Learning to teach and continuing to improve require regular analysis of instruction and its effectiveness. Teachers study their own teaching and that of their colleagues in order to improve their practice. Analyzing instruction may take place individually or with colleagues and involves identifying patterns, opportunities, and specific moves, and making hypotheses for how to improve. Teachers pay close attention to and study their students’ contributions, work, and engagement, and challenge themselves to see and understand more, and to consider how their own actions are supporting or impeding their students to flourish. They systematically interrogate their underlying assumptions and seek to develop new instructional habits and strategies that support students to thrive.
Teachers make numerous moves and in-the-moment decisions every day. Their moves and decisions are often shaped by deeply held assumptions and dominant notions about students, the content, and teaching. By analyzing instruction, teachers attend to subtle patterns and biases and learn about how they might impact children. Analyzing instruction also provides opportunities to study students’ work, which can support teachers to see students’ strengths, deepen their own content knowledge, and develop new strategies and approaches that can intervene on patterns that reproduce inequity. Reflective teachers ask themselves continuously how they might be contributing to the perpetuation of racism and oppression through specific actions or failures to act and seek out resources to support these reflections, including colleagues with similar goals.