Employing reflective practice to inform adjunct-faculty onboarding

ABSTRACT

Reflective practice has long been considered an important part of professional development for educators; however, accounts of utilizing reflective practice with groups of experienced teachers remain scarce. We consider reflective practice to be an important means of fostering professional discourse among experienced teachers regarding their pedagogical beliefs and practices. To that end, this paper describes a reflective practice innovation introduced in an undergraduate English composition program in a Japanese university. In what follows we, as experienced teachers, detail how a reflective-practice routine (RPR) was established and used to evaluate the efficacy of existing curricular materials to inform adjunct-faculty onboarding and professional development. In closing, we make several recommendations related to scheduling, maintaining focused and constructive interactions when implementing an RPR, and we provide examples of how the results of the RPR were applied to improve our onboarding process, teaching practices, and course materials.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaborative reflection
• curriculum review
• professional development
• rhetoric and composition

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chris Harwood

Chris Harwood is an associate professor of rhetoric and composition in the Faculty of Liberal Arts, at Sophia University, Japan. He has taught in a wide variety of contexts in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East. Chris has published journal articles and book chapters on a number of subjects, including L2 writing teacher training, online pedagogy, and language policy and planning.

Dennis Koyama

Dennis Koyama is an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University, Japan. He is an educational researcher and statistician whose research interests include educational psychology, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and professional development.