Swot Analysis in Pedagogy

Teachers generally plan and execute lessons with great care. Even the most carefully planned and executed lessons may turn ineffective and end in failure. Being busy, most of the teachers simply ignore those challenging or unsuccessful situations. Next time, or in the following year, these uncomfortable experiences and displeasing emotions will fade out from their memory. They naturally go on preparing lessons exactly in the same way with the same approach and follow the same path and regrettably experience failure once again.

Instead of falling prey to this vicious circle, we have already adopted reflective teaching and methods analysis in our classrooms. Another effective method that we can follow is the SWOT Analysis, (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), for a critical evaluation of our classroom experience. Such an analysis, based on the lessons taught, will help us in identifying the specific elements of the lesson that are misunderstood, ignored, or appreciated by the students.

SWOT Analysis is one of the formative tools that provide a lot of flexibility for use. This can be used as a tool for pre-assessment, real-time on-going assessment, or post-instruction assessment. It can also be used as an efficient tool for connecting new knowledge with prior knowledge. This will enable you to monitor your students’ progress in each particular class and analyse what you know about their learning level and assist them in improving in their weak areas or particular subjects.

In order to identify the strengths, you can check the areas where a particular student is doing well. Weaknesses are the things that students need improvement. By identifying the weaknesses you can realize the points that need more focus. Opportunities are the trend that your students can take advantage of. For example, a student who is weak in math can be helped to build more confidence by providing him with more practice to take part in an upcoming math Olympiad. Threats can be anything that might cause obstacles for your students, like lack of self-confidence, personal problems, distractions, etc.

SWOT analysis can be used as a tool for personal analysis by both students and teachers. They can ask certain questions to themselves:  Where am I good at and the areas where others say that I am good at? What do I enjoy doing in the classroom? What are the subjects or areas that I think I am weak in? How can I use my strengths to overcome my weaknesses and what strategies can I employ to compensate for the weaknesses? Do I feel uncomfortable in class? What are the issues that hinder me or stop me from real motivation?

SWOT analysis has been widely used as a problem-solving and project/lesson-planning tool. It can help you to focus more on the key issues of relevance in the teaching and learning process. When used in a personal context, it can help you to take full advantage of both your and the students’ talent and abilities. It can help you to uncover new learning opportunities and eliminate possible threats in the teaching-learning environment.