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-action
Reflecting-on-action
Reflective conversation
Frame-experiments
Artistry and repertoire
Over-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
Q ui ck Ti m e ™ an d a T I FF ( U nc om p r es se d) de co m pr e ss or ar e n ee de d t o se e t hi s pi ct u re .
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)
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-inpractice, 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-action
Reflecting-on-action
Reflective conversation
Frame-experiments
Artistry and repertoire
Over-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 choice
2. Meet in our groups of five to share ideas from diaries
3. Share reflective emails after each face to face Thursday.