The Latest Research Available - At Your Fingertips!

Becoming a Reflective Teacher
Robert J. Marzano

The following tips from this book are designed to assist you in applying the latest research in tangible ways in your classroom, your school or your district. Below each tip, you will find the book excerpt on which the tip is based. Click on the book title above to learn more about this resource.

Focused practice involves repeating a specific strategy with attention to improving detailed aspects of the strategy.

In a classroom, this usually means that a teacher selects a specific strategy for practice, along with a specific aspect of that strategy. There are a number of ways that a teacher might focus his or her practice: focusing on specific steps of a strategy, developing a protocol, developing fluency with a strategy, making adaptations to a strategy, or integrating several strategies to create a macrostrategy.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (p. 49). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.


When fluency has been fully developed, the reflective teacher both executes the strategy or behavior and monitors its effect.

Fluency means a teacher can perform a strategy or execute a behavior with ease. A fluent teacher is skilled enough with a strategy or behavior to employ it without having to think about the steps involved. For example, a teacher who has selected the previewing strategy K-W-L might find that practicing it three times allows her to feel proficient, and then adds another three sessions to overlearn it. At this point, the teacher knows the strategy so well that she can focus her attention on monitoring students’ reactions.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 55–56). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.


Observing and discussing teaching is an important element to the development of teaching expertise.

One way teachers might interact would be to view videos of other teachers. It is useful to determine what was done well by the teacher and what was not. Discussing the effective strategies demonstrated in a video segment, as well as strategies that could have or should have been employed, make almost any video segment a useful vehicle for observing and discussing teaching.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 75–77). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.


Student engagement is one element of a lesson segment enacted on the spot. Reflect on this element by asking, "What do I typically do to notice when students are not engaged?"

Consider strategies such as scanning the room, monitoring levels of attention, and periodically asking students to signal their level of attention.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 28, 142). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

The goal of instructional rounds is for the observing teachers to compare their own practices to the practice of the observed teacher (the focus is not on evaluation).

Instructional rounds include several phases, and during the final phase, the participants should identify the following three elements:

1. Strategies and instructional practices they already use and that they saw others use effectively
2. Strategies and instructional practices they already use but would like to re-examine or modify based on their observations
3. Strategies or instructional practices they don’t use but will try because they saw others use them effectively.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 80–81). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

Feedback is essential to determining the success of focused practice, as it tells teachers if their efforts are actually developing expertise.

There are a number of ways to gather information about continued progress including reflection logs, video data, student survey data, and student achievement data. In a reflection log, the teacher records anecdotal comments about his/her performance with a specific strategy. Over time, the teacher will be able to review this log and determine if they have made progress.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 61–62). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

When engaging in focused practice, a teacher may use one of several approaches. One possible approach is to develop fluency with a particular strategy.

For example, the teacher might want to develop fluency with the corners strategy so that he can interact with students during the activity and gauge its affect on their learning. To develop that sort of expertise, the teacher would plan to use the strategy many times over the course of a quarter, semester or year. Each time the teacher used the strategy, the steps would become a little more fluid, and he could spend more time and mental energy interacting with students and monitoring their responses.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 15). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

Coaching colleagues are pairs or trios of teachers who agree to provide each other with honest feedback regarding their use of instructional strategies.

Research has shown that coaching has a marked impact on a teacher’s skills. There are several ways to establish coaching relationships, and once they have been established, norms should be generated for each small group or pair of colleagues. Norms might include:

  • Observations and feedback are confidential and should stay within the peer coaching group.
  • Peer coaching colleagues should ask clarifying questions and use communication techniques that are honest and supportive.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 77–78). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

Reflective teachers systematically set annual growth goals for themselves.

During a given year, a teacher may decide to work on one element from each of the three broad categories (lesson segments involving routine events, lesson segments addressing content, and lesson segments enacted on the spot) described in chapter 2. Strategic selection of what to work on begins with an audit of a teacher’s strengths and weaknesses.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 37). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

When learning a new strategy, a teacher moves through at least three stages: the cognitive phase, shaping phase, and the autonomous phase.

The first stage, the cognitive phase, occurs when a teacher tries to understand a strategy and gathers information about it. During this stage, the teacher is not actually using the strategy, but becomes aware of it, observes its use, or reads about its proper execution.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 38–39). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

When setting growth goals, the teacher should select two or three elements for each year.

To make a selection, the teacher should select elements for which there was a low self-rating (that is, 1s and 0s), and in which he or she is interested.  For each of these selected elements, the teacher would write specific growth goals for the year.

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 46). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.

Once a reflective teacher identifies growth goals, he or she engages in focused practice of specific strategies and behaviors related to his or her goals.

What we refer to as focused practice goes well beyond the common conception of practice.  Focused practice involves repeating a specific strategy with attention to improving detailed aspects of the strategy. 

Marzano, R. (2012). Becoming a Reflective Teacher (pp. 14, 49). Bloomington, IN: Marzano Research Laboratory.