Principles of Personal Development and Reflective Practice

It also means reflecting on your own values, beliefs and experiences, sharing thoughts and ideas, taking responsibility for providing an equal, non-bias and overall practice to all (Hughes 2008) Personal beliefs and values may be explored by thinking back over a situation or action, then developing a different plan of action to gain insight into a new way of learning. Reflection is a process of lifelong learning and professional development which involves being more self – aware and critically analyzing in practical surroundings (Boud 1985, Boyd and Fales, 1983, Jarvis, 1992). Reflective practice is important to everyone for multiple reasons it provides a valuable tool for improving skills & experiences, it identifies areas of practice which are successful and which are poor. Only when good and poor practice is identified can a precise evaluation be carried out, this ensures best patient care (Nursing Midwifery Council,2002)

Reflective practice allows us to reflect on our actions and experiences so that we can learn from them and adapt our behaviour accordingly. Reflective practice can be uncomfortable as it challenges our own assumptions about ourselves however it is vital for improving the quality of the service we provide.

The way things are done may not always be the only way to do them... Reflecting to see this helps identify gaps and areas that can be improved.

Effective reflection helps the practitioner to see the situation from an outsider's perspective, so that they can develop a better way to respond to a similar scenario in the future. Reflection is meant to achieve a change in practice, rather than simply repeating the same mistakes (Schon, 1983). Many different models exist for structuring the reflective process. Regardless of the framework used, the reflection models are meant to accomplish three things. They are supposed to promote reflecting on events, self-evaluation and analysis, and a plan to change actions in the future. This Reflective essay will utilize Driscoll's 'The What?' model as its structure (Driscoll, 1994). This model has three components"

Reflective practice is an essential means of developing basic skills and knowledge into expert skills and knowledge.

Reflective practice is a self-analysis tool, by which practitioners can develop a greater level of self-awareness about the nature and impact of their performance, an awareness that creates opportunities for professional growth and development (Kottkamp & Osterman, 1993). Reflective practice allows professionals to assess their performance, make sense of what happened and learn from mistakes and experiences in order to develop, improve and adapt. (Cropley, et al., 2012).

The ability to become reflective in practice has become a necessary skill for health professionals. This is to ensure that health professionals are continuing with their daily learning and improving their practice. Reflective practice plays a big part in healthcare today and is becoming increasingly noticed.

Reflective practice in nursing is considered an important aspect to nursing. Durgahee ( 1997) defines reflective practice as a process of learning and teaching professional maturity through the critical analysis of experience, whilst John ( 2009) up to date explanation of reflection is learning through our everyday experience towards realising one vision of desirable practice as a lived reality.

Reflection is an everyday process and is very personal matter. Jasper (2003) suggests that reflection is one of the key ways in which we can learn from our experiences. Reflective practice can be defined as process of making sense of events, situations and actions that occur in the workplace (Oelofsen, 2012).

Reflection is thought by linking recent experience with early experience to promote more complex and interrelated mental models or patterns. The thinking involves looking for commonalities, differences, and interrelations beyond their superficial elements. The goal is to develop higher order thinking skills.

A load of research has been done on learning and reflective practice and its effectiveness on the practitioners and one of the first people to research reflective Practice was Donald Schon in his book “The Reflective Practitioner” in 1983. Schon was an influential writer on reflection and had two main ways of identifying reflection and they were reflection in action and reflection on action.

ffer and Rubenfeld (2000) define reflection as “ contemplation upon a subject, especially one’s assumptions and thinking for the purposes of deeper understanding and self-evaluation.”

According to Howston-Jones (2013) reflection is not something that is out of the ordinary for everyone to do in their everyday lives. Reflection is the act of looking back on a situation, event or incident critically and making sense of it to learn from it and alter our actions to gain better outcomes should the same incident arise again (Capelhow, Crouch, Fisher & Walsh, 2013). As new experiences happen to everyone, everyday; it would be right to consider reflection as an ongoing process within everyone’s life, a process that is repeated, honed and a skill to be developed (McKenna, 1998).

Within different disciplines, what is understood by reflective practice varies considerably (Fook et al, 2006). Despite this, some agreement has been achieved. In general, reflective practice is understood as the process of learning through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self and/or practice (Boud et al 1985;

Kolb (1984) suggested that reflection plays a key role in transforming experience into knowledge. It has been suggested that reflection is a fundamental process for learning as a development; rather than merely the ability to retain information (Reynolds, 1998). Schon (1983) suggested critical reflection as a strategy for developing from practice to solve complicated or difficult situations, that require problem solving and a degree of “artistry” Schon (1983). Schon (1983) was one of the first theorists to look at reflection in terms of reflective practice. Moon (1999) defines reflective practice as "a set of abilities and skills, to indicate the taking of a critical stance, an orientation to problem solving or state of mind." Essentially, this is a readiness to continuously analysis and review practice.