How Well Do You Use Reflective Practice?

What Does Reflective Practice Mean?

Basically, reflective practice means reflecting on or thinking about what you do. In a way, the concept of learning from experience has a close relationship to reflective practice because it involves thinking about your actions and deciding to act in a different way next time.

It is part of humans in general, to think about previous events. However, casual thinking and ‘reflective practice’ are not the same, conscious effort goes into thinking about occurrences and drawing lessons from them when it has to do with ‘reflective practice’. Once reflective practice becomes a part of you, you will benefit from it both at home and at work.

Reflective Practice as a Skill

Over the years, a lot of scholars have examined the concept of experiential learning and reflective practice. Chris Argyris, one of such scholars, propounded the term ‘double-loop learning’ which he used to explain the idea that when you reflect, you are able to move out of the ‘single loop’ of ‘Experience, Reflect, Conceptualize and Apply’ into another loop where you then form a new paradigm and redevelop your ideas so that you can do things in a different way.

The good news for almost everyone is that they all seem to share a similar belief that reflective practice is a skill that you can learn and develop.

Also, scholars agree that reflective practice makes it easier to move from theory to practice—that is, it aids us in delving into theories and applying them to our life experiences in a way that is more organized.  Whether it be ideas that you formed yourself or formal theories associated with academic research. It also motivates us to examine the beliefs and assumptions we have and to see a way of solving our problems.

Developing and Making Use of Reflective Practice

What are the steps we can take to develop the critical, formative and constructive thinking that’s a prerequisite for reflective practice?

Neil Thompson suggested these six steps in his book, People Skills:

–Read up those things that relate to the topics you are interested in learning about and developing.

–Ask people about their way of doing things and their reasons.

–Watch the happenings around you

–Give attention to your feelings and emotions, how do they come about and how do you handle the negative ones.

–Talk-let others in your organization know about your views and experiences.

–Think – make it a habit to see the worth in the time you spend thinking about the work you do.

What this means is that the thinking is not the only thing that’s important; an understanding of the theory, the way in which other people practice it and their ideas are all equally important.

Reflective practice is an activity that you can do together with others, you don’t have to do it alone. Some social psychologists even suggest that expressing our thoughts by either writing it down or saying it out loud is the only way that we can learn. Relating this to those times when we are alone and feel the need to think out loud suddenly makes that act sensible. However, what this implies for reflective practice is that thoughts which remain undeclared, may fade away.

Since instances of shared reflective practice in our busy workplace like reviews of particular events or appraisal interviews do not occur everyday, finding an opportunity for shared reflective practice can be somewhat difficult. Therefore, you have to look for other means that would enable you articulate your insights.

Keeping a journal of learning experiences does help even if it feels somewhat phony. Writing down the events and activities that you involved yourself in everyday and reflecting on each of them to consider the lessons they taught you and what you should or could have done differently aids your reflective practice. Besides the aspect of changing, a learning journal coupled with reflective practice can let you know times in which you did the right thing.

You might want to follow this simple process shown below in writing your learning journal. This is just to help you have a good start, you can start mixing up the steps when you get more experienced.

The Process of Reflective Learning

Pinpoint one event that occurred in your personal life or your work place that you feel you could have handled in a better way.

Describe the experience

What took place? Where and at what time did the issue occur? Is there any other thing you think about the issue?

Reflection

What was your attitude? What were your thoughts? How did you feel about it? Did any other factor contribute to the issue? What did the experience teach you?

Theorizing

was there a relationship between your preconceived ideas and the experience, as in, did you expect the results you got or not? Does it match any formal theories you know? Is there any behavior you think could have changed the results you got?

Experimentation

Do you think there’s something you could say, or do now that would change the results? To avoid having similar outcomes in future, what actions can you take? What behaviors can you experiment with?

The Gains of Reflective Practice

Engaging in reflective practice increases self-awareness—a key aspect of emotional intelligence that helps you understand others in a better way.  Also, if you wish to hone your creative thinking skills and be more active when you engage in activities, reflective practice would help you achieve that.

When you keep a learning journal and use reflective practice regularly, it will promote relevant discussions about your personal development and career development. Also, it could provide you with a handful of examples during interview situations that are based on competency.

Warning

It’s very easy to succumb to pressure and dump reflective practice; however, under those circumstances, it’s one thing that you should hold very dear. Spending time on reflective practice means that you’re concentrating on the most important things—things important to both your family or your employer.