Understanding Reflective Practice

Reflection

is the process of thinking about what you do

and why you do it.

It's a way of analyzing the things that

you do and challenging your existing beliefs or assumptions

in order to learn from a situation.

Do you ever find yourself replaying the events of the day in your head,

whether it's going through a conversation that happened,

thinking about a sequence of events that led to a certain conclusion,

or thinking about how you felt or reacted at a point in time?

At this level, we are quite used to the idea of reflecting on our own actions.

However, there is a difference between reflective thinking

and reflective practice

and that reflective practice is a deliberate way of

thinking about experiences in order to learn from them.

Reflective practice is a way of continuously learning new knowledge,

skills and behaviors whilst testing them out during our everyday actions.

In this way, it's closely linked to the concept of learning from experience

by thinking about what you did,

what happened and deciding what you would do differently next time.

Lots of different people have written about reflective practice over the years,

which has led to a variety of different models and theories.

You may have come across some of these.

One of the first people to write about reflective practice was John Dewey,

who defined reflective practice as

the active,

persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge

in the light of the grounds that support it

in practice.

This means having a questioning approach considering why things are as

they are and thinking about how they could be different.

Some key features of reflection include,

it helps us to be conscious of our potential for bias and discrimination.

It encourages us to look at issues from different perspectives

which help us to scrutinize our own values and assumptions.

It helps us to avoid past mistakes and challenges. In order to improve our practice,

it maximizes our opportunities for learning.

It's an active process of learning which

involves more than thinking or thoughtful action.

Reflection helps us to prevent our skills from becoming out of date.

And it's a cyclical process where reflection leads to the development of new

ideas which are then used to plan the next stages of learning.

You will all have different levels of experience

in using reflective practice within your role.

Some of you may be teaching reflective practice

to learners as part of their apprenticeship programs.

Whilst for others, the term may be relatively new.

It doesn't matter what your starting point is,

everyone will have a unique experience of using reflective practice,

all of which are important and will form a good

basis for building on as you complete this module.

A key aim of the module is to provide

you with the opportunity to learn from experience,

how valuable reflective practice can be

in supporting you in your role and your career moving forward.