What is meant by the term reflective practices and why it is important when providing experiences to support childrens play and learning?

Reflective Practice as a Skill

Various academics have touched on reflective practice and experiential learning to a greater or lesser extent over the years, including Chris Argyris (the person who coined the term ‘double-loop learning’ to explain the idea that reflection allows you to step outside the ‘single loop’ of ‘Experience, Reflect, Conceptualise, Apply’ into a second loop to recognise a new paradigm and re-frame your ideas in order to change what you do).

They all seem to agree that reflective practice is a skill which can be learned and honed, which is good news for most of us.

Reflective practice is an active, dynamic action-based and ethical set of skills, placed in real time and dealing with real, complex and difficult situations.

Moon, J. (1999), Reflection in Learning and Professional Development: Theory and Practice, Kogan Page, London.

Academics also tend to agree that reflective practice bridges the gap between the ‘high ground’ of theory and the ‘swampy lowlands’ of practice. In other words, it helps us to explore theories and to apply them to our experiences in a more structured way. These can either be formal theories from academic research, or your own personal ideas. It also encourages us to explore our own beliefs and assumptions and to find solutions to problems.

Developing and Using Reflective Practice

What can be done to help develop the critical, constructive and creative thinking that is necessary for reflective practice?

Neil Thompson, in his book People Skills, suggests that there are six steps:

Read - around the topics you are learning about or want to learn about and develop
Ask - others about the way they do things and why
Watch - what is going on around you
Feel - pay attention to your emotions, what prompts them, and how you deal with negative ones
Talk - share your views and experiences with others in your organisation
Think - learn to value time spent thinking about your work

In other words, it’s not just the thinking that’s important. You also have to develop an understanding of the theory and others’ practice too, and explore ideas with others.

Reflective practice can be a shared activity: it doesn’t have to be done alone. Indeed, some social psychologists have suggested that learning only occurs when thought is put into language, either written or spoken. This may explain why we are motivated to announce a particular insight out loud, even when by ourselves! However, it also has implications for reflective practice, and means that thoughts not clearly articulated may not endure.

It can be difficult to find opportunities for shared reflective practice in a busy workplace. Of course there are some obvious ones, such as appraisal interviews, or reviews of particular events, but they don’t happen every day. So you need to find other ways of putting insights into words.

Although it can feel a bit contrived, it can be helpful, especially at first, to keep a journal of learning experiences. This is not about documenting formal courses, but about taking everyday activities and events, and writing down what happened, then reflecting on them to consider what you have learned from them, and what you could or should have done differently. It’s not just about changing: a learning journal and reflective practice can also highlight when you’ve done something well.

Take a look at our page What is Learning? to find out more about the cycle of learning (PACT) and the role that reflection (or ‘Considering’) plays in it.

In your learning journal, it may be helpful to work through a simple process, as below. Once you get more experienced, you will probably find that you want to combine steps, or move them around, but this is likely to be a good starting point.

Identify a situation you encountered in your work or personal life that you believe could have been dealt with more effectively.

Describe the experience

What happened? When and where did the situation occur? Any other thoughts you have about the situation?

Reflection

How did you behave? What thoughts did you have? How did it make you feel? Were there other factors that influenced the situation? What have you learned from the experience?

Theorizing

How did the experience match with your preconceived ideas, i.e. was the outcome expected or unexpected? How does it relate to any formal theories that you know? What behaviours do you think might have changed the outcome?

Experimentation

Is there anything you could do or say now to change the outcome? What action(s) can you take to change similar reactions in the future? What behaviours might you try out?

The Benefits of Reflective Practice

Reflective practice has huge benefits in increasing self-awareness, which is a key component of emotional intelligence, and in developing a better understanding of others. Reflective practice can also help you to develop creative thinking skills, and encourages active engagement in work processes.

In work situations, keeping a learning journal, and regularly using reflective practice, will support more meaningful discussions about career development, and your personal development, including at personal appraisal time. It will also help to provide you with examples to use in competency-based interview situations.

See our pages on Organising Skills and Strategic Thinking to find out more about how taking time to think and plan is essential for effective working and good time management, and for keeping your strategy on track. This is an example of the use of reflective practice, with the focus on what you’re going to do and why.

Warning

Reflective practice is one of the easiest things to drop when the pressure is on, yet it’s one of the things that you can least afford to drop, especially under those circumstances. Time spent on reflective practice will ensure that you are focusing on the things that really matter, both to you and to your employer or family.

To Conclude

Reflective practice is a tool for improving your learning both as a student and in relation to your work and life experiences. Although it will take time to adopt the technique of reflective practice, it will ultimately save you time and energy.

What is Reflective Practice?

Reflective practice supports you in making sense of a situation. It enables childcare professionals and teachers to grow and develop their own working theories, philosophy and pedagogy. For any educator, your reflections, both individual and team, provide valuable data and evidence of your developing pedagogy and professional growth.

As a teacher, manager, mentor and early childhood education facilitator, I believe we often use reflective practice throughout our working day. These daily reflections include anticipation of, during and after events. Reflections, or more importantly recording regular reflections is often an action that is overlooked due to the many demands placed on busy early childhood professionals.

Getting to the crux of true reflective practice – it’s more than just looking back! It’s about taking the time to think about values, assumptions and beliefs. It’s all very well to reflect by saying: “Well, we tried … and it didn’t work!”. What I have observed to be good reflective practice, is for early childhood educators to make time to work through these questions:

- What role have you played in this?
- What you did and why?
- How does this reflect the principles, and goals of our curriculum and our philosophy?
- What would you do differently to support a better outcome?
- What does this say about your teaching strategies and our role as educators?

Some educators may need support to strengthen their skills for deep reflective practice. This will allow them to truly unpack the inconsistencies between espoused beliefs and practices (what we think we do) versus actions in practice (what we really do). Reflective practice in early childhood education can support a greater understanding of who we are as teachers and how our own values and beliefs impact what we do and why.

Reflective Practice in Storypark

Using a reflection plan with goals within the Storypark planning area is ideal for assisting teachers in clarifying their ideas, musings, and evidence and can support deeper reflection. Sharing these reflections with fellow educators, colleagues and/or someone who is removed from the situation can provide external perspectives. It can be helpful as there is little benefit from being too insular and relying on just your own interpretations. The role of a “provocateur” can be a valuable one. A plan can be completely private or you can invite a mentor, manager or colleague from within your early childhood centre.

The evidence we gather in a plan or teacher story can provide a rich source for reflection. Yes, we have the stories we craft and create but we also have the data found within the reports area of your early childhood centre’s Storypark account and within your portfolio area. The learning tags you use provide learning trends that can highlight the learning you have focused on and recorded over any period of time. If you have used the learning tags to highlight the MAIN learning, then you will be able to create a picture of your own pedagogical focus. Also highlighting your lens on learning – what does it illuminate for you?

Reflection Models

Some examples of reflection models to support the creation of your own reflective practices:

LENSES MODEL Brookfields (1995)	SPIRAL MODEL Clements, E. (1999)	3 STAGE LEARNING MODEL Greenaway (1995)
Our autobiographies as learners and teachers: Consider your own experience as a learner, with reference to your own education and learning. The analysis of your own learning styles will help to uncover your assumptions and beliefs about how people learn. Our students’ eyes: Consider the view of children. You may like to consider looking at the reactions of children to an activity you provided, you can also collect examples of video, and photographic evidence to support this section. Our colleagues’ experiences: An opportunity to get an insight into a particular experience by engaging in dialogue with colleagues through staff meetings, face-to-face conversations, email, skype, online etc. Theoretical literature: Access literature or call on theory supporting your incident, activity, thinking and wonderings.	As the title of this model would suggest, reflective practice using the spiral model is never-ending. Below are the stages that the spiral model offers. Act: Your teaching practice involves action. Select: You select an action that has impacted you during the day. Name: You describe the action. Reflect: You reflect using the aspects of the action, as well as considering values, beliefs, knowledge, assumptions, other influences on the event, theory and the context of the event. Research: You refer to theory to support your reflections. Plan: You develop a plan as a result of the reflection. Act: You implement the plan. Monitor: You return to the beginning of the spiral and the process continues.	Plan: What have I learned? What do I currently do? What other knowledge will help me deepen my understanding? What questions should I ask to get the information I need? Do: Why have I taken this approach? Who or what influences me? How have my understanding and actions changed or remained the same as a result? Review: What conclusions have I reached? What ideas have influenced me and how? What other ways are there to understand and interpret these theories, ideas, and concepts? How have my understanding and actions changed or remained the same as a result of my learning?
SMYTH MODEL Smyth, J (1987)	SO WHAT MODEL Melenyzer, Nettles, & Wyman (2000)	DATA MODEL Campbell, Peters (1991)
Describe: What did I do? The purpose of this question is to describe the action without judgments. Inform: What does this mean? The purpose of this question is to inform yourself about the theories that influence your actions, and includes a search for the framework and patterns of principles underpinning reflective practice. Confront: How did I come to be this way? The purpose of this question is to confront the key assumptions underlying practice and includes an examination of the broad historical, social and cultural context Reconstruct: How might I do things differently? The purpose of this question is to reconstruct or modify reflective practice and includes consideration of alternative views and generation of goals for future action.	What? What happened? Describe the scenario, the moment, the wondering, the thought? So what? What does this mean for me? What has happened to influence my thoughts at this point? i.e. context, culture, conversation, readings etc Now what? What might I do differently? How might I change, enhance or develop this scenario? What further actions might I take?	Describe: Describe the aspect or situation that represents some critical aspects of your work – for example, context, your practice, how you feel etc. Analysis: Consider why this aspect or situation operates as it does. Consider your own values and assumptions that support it. Theorise: Look at alternative ways of approaching your reflective practice by taking the theory you uncovered at the analysis stage, and deriving a new theory from it or attaching it to a new or different theory Act: In the final stage you put the new theory into practise or try out new ways of doing things. Your goal is to make your new practice consistent with the theory you have arrived at through reflection.

Want to know more about using:

Learning Tags: https://intercom.help/storypark/general/learning-tags-and-sets/what-are-learning-tags-and-sets

Learning Trends Reports: https://intercom.help/storypark/for-teachers/reports/what-are-learning-trends

My Portfolio Report: https://intercom.help/storypark/for-teachers/teacher-portfolios/teacher-profile-reports

Planning: https://intercom.help/storypark/for-teachers/planning/create-a-plan

REFERENCES

OʼConnor, A. & Diggins, C. (2002). On reflection: reflective practice for early childhood educators. Lower Hutt: Open Mind Publishing.

Campbell, Melenyzer, Nettles, & Wyman (2000). Portfolio and Performance Assessment in Teacher Education. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Brookfield, S. D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Peters, J. (1991). Strategies for reflective practice. Professional development for Educators of Adults. New directions for Adult and Continuing Education. R. Brockett (ed). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Boud, D. (2001). Using journal writing to enhance reflective practice. In English, L. M. and Gillen, M. A. (Eds.) Promoting Journal Writing in Adult Education. New Directions in Adult and Continuing Education No. 90. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 9-18.

Sharon Carlson, Professional Learning and Development Manager at Storypark