The Critical Incident Technique and a personal experience

The Critical Incident Technique (CIT), as a tool of reflection and professional development

            The Critical Incident Technique (CIT)  has been used in the educational field as a tool for reflection. However, this methodology is not only restricted to the educational field. It can be implemented in any situation, in which the main purpose is to analyze human behaviour (Flanagan, 1954). “The critical incident technique is essentially a procedure for gathering certain important facts concerning behaviour in defined situations” (Flanagan, 1954, p.8) . In other words, this method implies the observation of human behaviour in a particular situation.

            Many authors have used this procedure for different purposes ( Fernandez Gonzalez, Elortegui Escartin, Medina Perez, 2003; Angelides, 2006). Fernandez et.al (2003) presents this technique as a teacher education strategy, a formative strategy, to promote the teaching learning process. The main purpose of using this strategy is to help students and teachers to develop critical thinking and analysis in a teaching- learning situation. In other words, the critical incident technique is presented as a professional and pedagogical tool to analyze specific learning situations.

            Additionally, Angelides (2003) proposes to use the CIT as a tool for collecting data for research in the classroom. The author explains “this technique could be useful to researchers and those within schools who are interested in identifying the details of practice ( …)” ( Angelides, 2003, p.1). Teachers as researcher might need to think, reflect and conceptualize about their daily practice and it can be said that this method might provide them with the necessary tools to perform that actions.

            Regarding my personal teaching practice, it is possible to say that this technique can served as a medium for understanding certain students’ behaviours. For example, when a student makes the same mistake repeatedly, it is useful to register different situation under which the student makes the mistakes. This can be profitable for further analysis; that is to say, by analyzing the mistake, the context under which is made, and analyzing the necessary language theories of error analysis, it is possible to find an explanation for that behaviour.

            It is worth mentioning that the critical incident technique is not a rigid procedure, rather it is a flexible procedure which can be adapted in the light of the situation under analysis (Flanagan, 1954).It is possible to say that this technique has proved to be a useful tool for self reflection and analysis. To sum up, the classroom is an environment in which unexpected incidents may appear, for that reason teachers need to be prepared to confront and analyze them. The CIT may not only provide them with a powerful tool for analysis and reflection, but also it may imply a life- long learning process.

References

Angelides, P. (2006). Supporting the continued professional development of teachers through the use of vignettes. Teacher Education Quarterly. Fall, 2006. Retrieved August, 2011 from www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3960/is_200610/ai_n17197617/print

Fernandez Gonzalez, J., ELortegui Escartin, N. & Medina Perez, M. (2003). Los incidentes críticos en la formación y perfeccionamiento del profesorado de secundaria de ciencias de la naturaleza. Revista universitaria de Formacion de Profesorado, 17-001. Zaragoza, España: Universidad de Zaragoza. Retrieved August 2011, from www.redalyc.uaemex.mx/redalyc/src/inicio/ArtPdfRed.jsp?iCve=27417107

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

Discovering a new world

            During last year a new challenge appeared in my teaching practice. Since 2005, I have been teaching at a catholic private school, in which students come from middle class families. I have always taught fourth, fifth and sixth grade of  primary school. In general, I have never had any problem as regards delivering a class. However, last year a fourth grade of the primary school presented some aspects to be taken into account.

            After delivering some classes, I realized that my students could not fully understand me or the activities. They did not enjoy the classes nor do they produce anything in English. For that reason, I did some research in order to find the cause of that misunderstanding. First, I analyzed my classes and activities, on the basis of the Communicative Teaching approach. This theory proposed that meaning is the goal to be attained. Moreover, learning the language with a real context will help students to communicate, working in groups or with a partner (Brown, 2007).

 Then, I analyzed the course book and also changed some aspects and I also added some activities which were not included in the book. In spite of this, the situation did not change and my students were not still able to fully understand the class.Since every action was taken and no positive results arose, I decided to implement a new ‘method’.

I started to prepare my class based on tales or fairy tales. They were about known stories and they dealt with the contents for that particular course. On the basis of those tales, I prepared new activities, games, role play activities, some projects and also test. Not only did the students were able to understand the English classes but they also enjoyed it. It was quite difficult at the beginning, but everything is possible with effort, dedication and patience.

References

Brown, H. D. (3^rd 2007). Teaching by Principles. An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. New York. Pearson Longman.