Reflective Practice

Reflective Practice -Aims

To build a shared understanding of what the term ‘reflective practice’ means.

To decide what we might do to help each other become more reflective.

Reflective Practice -Objectives

By the end of the session participants will be able to:

• Write a definition of reflective practice

• List 6 characteristics of a reflective practitioner

• Explain why reflective practice is a powerful idea

• Describe a number of ways and means of supporting reflection in a small group.

Why bother to be reflective?

• reflective teaching requires that public theories are translated into personal ones and vice versa unless teachers are going to allow themselves to be turned into low level operatives, content with carrying out their tasks more and more efficiently, while remaining blind to large issues of the underlying purposes and results of schooling. (Griffiths & Tann 1991:100)

Throwing Light on the Matter

• Reflection is a process that may be applied in puzzling situations to help the learner make better sense of the information at hand, and to enable the teacher to guide and direct learning in appropriate ways. The value of reflection in teaching and learning is that it encourages one to view problems from different perspectives.

• (Loughran, 1996: p.4)

John Dewey on Reflection

• 'To reflect is to look back over what has been done so as to extract the net meanings which are the capital stock for intelligent dealings with further experiences. It is the heart of intellectual organization and of the disciplined mind.' Dewey 1938:110

Schön on Reflection

Six big ideas:Knowing-in-actionReflecting-on-actionReflective conversationFrame-experimentsArtistry and repertoireOver-arching theory

Knowing-in-Action

"Knowing-in-action" refers to "the spontaneous, intuitive performance of the actions of everyday life". (Schön 1983 :49)

"Our knowledge is ordinarily tacit, implicit in our patterns of action and in our feel for the stuff with which we are dealing. It seem right to say that our knowing is in our action." (Schön 1983 :49) "thinking on your feet" (Schön 1983 :54)

Reflecting-on-Action

We may reflect on action, thinking back on what we have done in order to discover how our knowing-in-action may have contributed to an unexpected outcome. We may do so after the fact, in tranquility, or we may pause in the midst of action to make what Hannah Arendt (1971) calls a "stop-and-think.”

(Schön1987 :26)

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Reflective Conversations

The RP ‘re-frames problems’ to create a reflective conversation in which practice ‘talks back’.

“In this reflective conversation, the practitioner’s effort to solve the reframed problem yields new discoveries which call for new reflection-in-action. The process spirals through stages of appreciation, action, and reappreciation. The unique and uncertain situation comes to be understood through the attempt to change it, and changed through the attempt to understand it.” (Schön 1983: 132)

Frame Experiments

"When the phenomenon at hand eludes the ordinary categories of knowledge-in-practice, presenting itself as unique or unstable, the practitioner may surface and criticize his initial understanding of the phenomenon, construct a new description of it, and test the new description by an on-the-spot experiment." (Schön 1983: 63)

Artistry and Repertoire

"The practitioner has built up a repertoire of examples, images, understandings, and actions..... A practitioner's repertoire includes the whole of his experience insofar as it is accessible to him for understanding and action.”

When a practitioner makes sense of a situation he perceives to be unique, he sees it as something already present in his repertoire." (Schön 1983 :138)

"The artistry of a practitioner.....hinges on the range and variety of the repertoire that he brings to unfamiliar situations. Because he is able to see these as elements of his repertoire, he is able to make sense of their uniqueness and need not reduce them to instances of standard categories." (Schön 1983 :140)

Over-arching Theory“An overarching theory does not give a rule that can be applied to predict or control a particular event, but it supplies language from which to construct particular descriptions and themes from which to develop particular interpretations.” (Schön 1983 :.273)

..the practitioner does not consider that he has formed a satisfactory account of phenomona in any practice situation until he has framed it in terms of his overarching theory.

If a practitioner has such a theory, he uses it to guide his reflection-in-action. The nature of the reflective conversation varies, from profession to profession and from practitioner to practitioner, depending on the presence or absence, and on the content, of overarching theory. (Schön 1983 :274)

Recognizing and Becoming

How can we help develop:

Knowing-in-actionReflecting-on-actionReflective conversationFrame-experimentsArtistry and repertoireOver-arching theory

Reflective Practice - Targets

The reflective practitioner:

• Captures ‘thinking in action’ (Reflection-in-Action)

• Revisits R-in-A (Reflection-on-Action)

• Takes account of what others say

• Experiments with practice - tries out the new

• Moves practice forward - gets better at it!

• Develops a personal theory of practice

HOW? David Walker - Journals

• Writing can aid reflection by providing objectivity; clarifying experience; offering distance; facilitates the drawing out of significance; focusing attention; highlighting interpretations; providing a basis for developed reflection; capturing data for later use; allows the naming of feelings; allowing association of ideas; integration of ideas and allowing growth to be seen.

HOW? Form a Community of Practice

The idea of the community of practice adds a more social and shared element to reflective practice. A definition and some notes on Communities of Practice are available for those who are interested. (Look under Questions).

How else?

What PRACTICAL things could we do together to help each other to be more reflective?

We agreed to:

1. Keep an individual diary/journal in a form of our choice2. Meet in our groups of five to share ideas from diaries3. Share reflective emails after each face to face Thursday.