Reflective practice – A tool for learning
Introduction/Rationale
When something goes wrong or something unexpected happens during a lesson or activity, we ask ourselves questions such as, could I have done something to avoid it? These experiences usually make us grow and we learn from experience, and we will be better prepared to face the situation if it happened again. This introspection is generally called “reflection”, and all professionals have adopted it in order to improve their practice, but for educators reflection involves “critical thinking” about past experiences or current experiences that occur or are occurring in classroom settings and looking at them in a positive light on how to make improvements for their teaching
…show more content…
The literature review will include models of reflective practice and theorists who have had a major input for developing theory for reflective practice.
When we speak of 'reflective practitioners' we usually refer to adult learners who are engaged in some kind of activity (often professional) which they can use to reflect on their strengths, weaknesses and areas for development. However, reflective thinking is not an innovation in teaching. It has its roots in the work of a number of educational theorists. The concept has been around for over 50 years. Some theorists define reflective teaching/thinking as; "A set of abilities and skills, to indicate the taking of a critical stance, an orientation to problem solving or state of mind" This encapsulates the wide range of activities associated with thinking about your learning. (Moon, 1999)
‘Reflective teaching is seen as a process through which the capacity to make professional judgments can be developed and maintained’ (Pollard, 2002)
Schon (1983) speaks of reflective practitioners who are not just skilful or competent but "thoughtful, wise and contemplative", whose work involves "intuition, insight and artistry".
Today, reflective practice is best understood as an approach which promotes autonomous learning that aims to develop practitioners understanding and critical thinking skills. It refers to an activity or process, in which an experience is recalled,
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
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).
Experience is sometimes regarded as the best teacher. Many things can be learned in a classroom and by formal academic study, but many cannot. Reflective practice is a form approach to learning through experience. Reflective practice is a lifelong learning process to promote continual development of the nurse. Reflective writing practice helps the nurse to gain knowledge and to challenge their own ideas and concepts. The idea of reflective practice is not only to see what happened, but to see the situation through new eyes, eyes that can help in personal growth and to develop ways to respond differently in the future.
Ans. Reflective practice is a way of learning from own experience to improve the way we work.
Reflective practice is the process that enables individuals to achieve better understanding of themselves, their understanding, their skills, competencies and their workplace practices in general.
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 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.
Reflective practice is an essential means of developing basic skills and knowledge into expert skills and knowledge.
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.
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
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
Reflective practice is the process of thinking about and critically analysing your actions with the goal of changing and improving occupational practice.
The GTCNI have argued that, “Professional knowledge, by its very nature, is organic and, to an extent, evolutionary, reflecting a synthesis of research, experiences gained and expertise shared” (GTCNI, 2007:10). The GTNCI further reinforces this statement when it states that, “Teaching can never be reduced to a set of discrete skills to be mastered in some mechanical process of assimilation” (GTCNI, 2007:5). Teaching today has moved beyond the outdated view that the most important thing for a teacher was solely to have professional knowledge. Professional knowledge encompasses a range of different forms of knowledge such as knowledge on the curriculum and children and pedagogical knowledge e.g. how to manage a classroom amongst many other forms. Whilst this is still of great importance professional knowledge is of no use if you are not able to adapt this knowledge to meet the ever-changing dynamic situations that you will encounter in the classroom. This essay will examine how reflective practice can be unlisted by teachers to ensure that they are meeting the needs of their pupils as well as
Reflective practice engages practitioners in a continuous cycle of self-observation and self-evaluation in order to understand their own actions and the reactions they prompt in themselves and in learners (Brookfield, 1995; Thiel, 1999). Reflective practice is considered as an evolving concept which views learning as “an active process of reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse, evaluate and so inform learning about practice.” (Reid, B 1993 cited in Garfat, T. 2005).
Reflection on practice has different meanings, in my view it means constructive criticism: being honest with myself, becoming aware of and understanding my own strengths, and being able to review activities and constantly test assumptions related to our work. These have been my approach to critical reflection throughout the year. This is supported by Brookfield, he says that "Critically reflective teaching happens when we identify and scrutinise the assumptions that undergird how we work” (Brookfield, 1995, pg. 11-13). This is further supported by Ghaye, T & Ghaye, k (Ghaye, 1998); he argued that many teachers have benefited from learning through reflection. Their teaching and understanding of what is possible and less possible, impacts of activities on children’s learning and its boundaries have risen as a result of reflection.