What and How
What is reflective practice?
Reflective practice is learning from experience in an intentional way.
Reflective practices are strategies that help people - as individuals or in groups - reflect on their experiences and actions. It helps us engage in a process of continuous learning. Reflective practice helps us uncover the assumptions, frameworks and patterns of thought and behaviour that shape our thinking and action. It can help us see what is personal and what is systemic.
Reflective practice can help us understand our intentions, values and visions and support us to work in fields where our ethics and morals may be tested, where power relations may be unequal, and where we may be working in emotionally and physically demanding environments.
Usually reflective practice involves a cycle such as the experiential learning cycle described by David Kolb.
Table of contents
About reflective practice
Personal Reflections
Feedback from others
Learning in networks
This diagram from here.
Many teachers use this cycle to improve their teaching practice. You probably do.
As Paola Stockton says:
For me personally, reflective practice is the beating heart of teaching. Without it, a teacher
stagnates, goes dead. You need to keep on adjusting, thinking, but not just thinking alone.
You have to draw into resources to see what others have said. So for me, research, reading
is important. Not a lot of research, a lot of reading, but reading on key points, even just
watching a small video clip that shows you how to – like once you see an area of improvement
how to improve, but it’s not a simple process. It can be messy, so you're not
going to get the answer or the solution for the issue immediately, it might take several tries,
attempts to get it, hopefully right.
How do we do it?
Some models (from here)
Schön
Schön (1991) distinguishes between reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action.
Reflection-in-action
is reflection during the ‘doing’ stage (that is, reflecting on the incident while it can still benefit the learning). This is carried out during the lesson rather than reflecting on how you would do things differently in the future. This is an extremely efficient method of reflection as it allows you to react and change an event at the time it happens. For example, in the classroom you may be teaching a topic which you can see the students are not understanding. Your reflection-in-action allows you to understand why this has happened and how to respond to overcome this situation.
Reflection-in-action allows you to deal with surprising incidents that may happen in a learning environment. It allows you to be responsible and resourceful, drawing on your own knowledge and allowing you to apply it to new experiences. It also allows for personalised learning as, rather than using preconceived ideas about what you should do in a particular situation, you decide what works best at that time for that unique experience and student.
Reflection-on-action,
on the other hand, involves reflecting on how practice can be developed after the lesson has been taught. Schön recognises the importance of reflecting back ‘in order to discover how our knowing-in-action may have contributed to an unexpected outcome’ (Schön, 1983).
Reflection-on-action means you reflect after the event on how your knowledge of previous teaching may have directed you to the experience you had.
Reflection-on-action should encourage ideas on what you need to change for the future. You carry out reflection-on-action outside the classroom, where you consider the situation again. This requires deeper thought, for example, as to why the students did not understand the topic. It encourages you to consider causes and options, which should be informed by a wider network of understanding from research.
Kolb
Kolb's learning cycle
David Kolb, educational researcher, developed a four-stage reflective model. Kolb’s Learning Cycle (1984) highlights reflective practice as a tool to gain conclusions and ideas from an experience. The aim is to take the learning into new experiences, completing the cycle. Kolb's cycle follows four stages.
Kolb’s model aims to draw on the importance of using both our own everyday experiences and educational research to help us improve. It is not simply enough for you to reflect. This reflection must drive a change which is rooted in educational research.
Concrete Experience
First, practitioners have a concrete experience. This means experiencing something new for the first time in the classroom. The experience should be an active one, used to test out new ideas and teaching methods.
This is followed by…
Reflective Observation
Observation of the concrete experience, then reflecting on the experience. Here practitioners should consider the strengths of the experience and areas of development. Practitioners need to form an understanding of what helped students’ learning and what hindered it.
This should lead to…
Abstract Conceptulaization
The formation of abstract concepts. The practitioner needs to make sense of what has happened. They should do this through making links between what they have done, what they already know and what they need to learn. The practitioner should draw on ideas from research and textbooks to help support development and understanding. They could also draw on support from other colleagues and their previous knowledge. Practitioners should modify their ideas or devise new approaches, based on what they have learnt from their observations and wider research.
The final stage of this cycle is …
Active Experimentation
The practitioner considers how they are going to put what they have learnt into practice. The practitioner’s abstract concepts are made concrete as they use these to test ideas in future situations, resulting in new experiences. The ideas from the observations and conceptualizations are made into active experimentation as they are implemented into future teaching. The cycle is then repeated on this new method.
Gibbs
Gibbs' reflective cycle
The theoretical approach of reflection as a cyclical model was further developed by Gibbs (1998). This model is based on a six-stage approach, leading from a description of the experience through to conclusions and considerations for future events. While most of the core principles are similar to Kolb’s, Gibbs' model is broken down further to encourage the teacher to reflect on their own thoughts and feelings.
Gibbs' model is an effective tool to help you reflect after the experience, and is a useful model if you are new to reflection as it is broken down into clearly defined sections.
In Gibbs' model the first three sections are concerned with what happened. The final three sections relate to making sense of the experience and how you, as the teacher, can improve on the situation.
Description
In this section, the practitioner should clearly outline the experience. This needs to be a factual account of what happened in the classroom. It should not be analytical at this stage.
Feelings
This section encourages the practitioner to explore any thoughts or feelings they had at the time of the event. Here the practitioner should explain feelings and give examples which directly reference the teaching experience. It is important the practitioner is honest with how they feel, even if these feelings might be negative. Only once the feelings have been identified can the practitioner implement strategies to overcome these barriers.
Evaluation
The evaluation section gives the opportunity for the practitioner to discuss what went well and analyse practice. It is also important to consider areas needed for development and things that did not work out as initially planned. This evaluation should consider both the practitioner’s learning and the students’ learning.
Analysis
This section is where the practitioner makes sense of the experience. They consider what might have helped the learning or hindered it. It is in this stage that the practitioner refers to any relevant literature or research to help make sense of the experience. For example, if you felt the instructions you gave were not clear, you could consult educational research on how to communicate effectively.
Conclusion
At this stage, the practitioner draws all the ideas together. They should now understand what they need to improve on and have some ideas on how to do this based on their wider research.
Action plan
During this final stage, the practitioner sums up all previous elements of this cycle. They create a step-by-step plan for the new learning experience. The practitioner identifies what they will keep, what they will develop and what they will do differently. The action plan might also outline the next steps needed to overcome any barriers, for example enrolling on a course or observing another colleague.