Reflective Literature Review

Reflective practice is the process of thinking about and critically analysing your actions with the goal of changing and improving occupational practice.

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.

Kim & Loretta (2003), stated that Atkinson & Murphy (1993) identified the key skills needed for reflection as ‘self awareness, the ability to recollect and describe accurately key aspect of the situation, critical analysis of the situation and synthesis of new knowledge gained with the previous knowledge, in order to develop a new perspective’. I will discuss,

Reflection means if when you are teaching and you notice something wrong you change it straight away, or for the next time. Practitioners should always be self critical of past lessons and picking out on not only the good parts, but also parts of a lesson that didn’t go so well. For example in order for the practitioners to improve in their practice they could prepare a reflective journal, this would help them by reflecting back on what they did in the perivious lesson and if an activity didn’t go so well the practitioner could think of different strategies of improving the activity or planning a different activity, but on the similar topic and also providing different recourses in order to improve the activity. Also practitioners and staff members should not assume that their work place will automatically inform them about new developments, changes and updates which affect their work, practitioners must be prepared to be active in maintaining their own knowledge base and to ensure that their practice is in line with current thinking and new theories. Practitioners could this by incorporating an awareness of the needs to update their knowledge constantly into all of their work and activities by using resources such as the internet, journals, and libraries or other professional development, e.g. training, and to check their awareness of new developments in their work and to work with other professionals e.g. there

“Reflective learning involves assessment and re-assessment of assumptions and critical reflective occurs whenever underlying premises are being questioned”.(Williams 2001) P.29.

I will structure this essay using Gibbs Model of Reflection (Gibbs 1988). Reflective learning helps practitioners analyse their experiences and how they think and feel about them before

Reflection is an important tool for all health care practitioners. It can improve our skills and help us understand the choices we make while in practice. Williams (2001) states that “Reflective learning involves assessment and re-assessment of assumptions and critical reflection occurs whenever

Reflection is described as a way of reviewing experiences from practice so that it can be described and analysed and used to change future practice (Bulman and Schutz, 2004).

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"

It means that you stop and think about your practice; the process of reflecting on something you have done or a task you have undertaken. You may look at them from different points of view, you think about what went well, what went not so well and how you can improve it in the future.

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

The term “reflection” directly refers to one’s own ability for serious thought or consideration regarding events, which have occurred in the past. Professional bodies and organisations utilise reflective practice within continuous professional development as an effective tool to evoke critical thoughts regarding their own actions. This analysis of one’s own

The Role of Reflective Practice 03 Time for Reflection 05 Pre-requisites for Effective Reflection and Supervision 09 The Process of a Supervision Session 11 Adopting a Mentoring Approach 12 Tensions and Anxieties in Practice Placement

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.

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.