The inspirational idea for this project comes from the reading of an essay of the University of Leeds, Sustainability Research Institute about Critical and Reflective thinking ( http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/6304/Critical-and-Reflective-Thinking.pdf). This reading lets us think and consider the importance of reflection in every aspect of life. From this starting point, we did some researches about the beneficial effects of reflecting in the process of learning and teaching. Reflection is important for teachers because it makes teachers aware of what they are doing and how they teach. According to Henderson (1996) “reflective thinking has an important place in education system, as a questioning method that features caring others’ feelings and pays attention to constructivism in learning and as a whole of creative problem solving activities” (cited in Poyraz and Usta, 2013). “Reflection is a beneficial practice to support professional development of teacher and their efforts to improve student learning ”(Fendler, 2003; Hoffman, Artiles and Lopez, 2003). Due to these reasons, reflection has become a key strategy in the teaching/learning process in this project. Reflective teaching is a process where teachers think over their teaching practices, and kind of lessons, analyzing how something is taught and how the practice might be improved or changed for better learning outcomes. Some points of consideration in the reflection process might be what is currently being done, why it's being done and how well students are learning ( what/why/how). You can use reflection as a way to simply learn more about your own practice, improve a certain practice ( for example, small groups, peer observation and cooperative learning ) or to focus on a problem students are having. Reflective teaching therefore implies a more systematic process of collecting, recording and analysing our thoughts and observations, as well as those of our students, through the use of ICT tools and then going on to making changes.
We really believe that the project will involve pupils in their learning process and helps them to become more open minded and innovative throught digital methodologies in 4 subjects, 2 humanistic History and English, and 2 scientific, ICT and Science. Teachers and students will collaborate to select different methodologies to apply such as: flip teaching, CLIL, cooperative learning, IT time line, debate, formative assessment, google/moodle classroom, learning by doing, project work, constructivism method, etc.