Time outs

During a training activity, such as a role play, it can be useful to give participants the option of calling a reflective 'time out' before resuming the activity. Sometimes it is even possible to call time outs during non-training (real world) experiences.

This might be to allow participants to use more conscious, deliberative reflection-on-action rather than having to rely on reflection-in-action which tends to use more non-conscious processing, or it might just allow more time for non-conscious incubation (pausing to digest the experience).

Participants may use the time out to review the experience so far in order to become more aware of:

• what they noticed, what they paid attention to and what they might have overlooked

• what they prioritised as important and what they might have undervalued or misclassified

• what explanations and predictions they have already made and what alternatives there might have been

Time outs can take different forms:

• Individual reflection — the participant just pauses to reflect on their own before resuming, possibly using a structure such as the bullets above

• Guided pair or group reflection — this could take the form of a mini-action learning set in which other participants prompt the timed out participant with questions to aid reflection

When  the time out has finished the participant can resume the activity either by picking up from the point they stopped or rewinding and replaying some of the previous action.