Sunday 17 July 2011

Thing 5: reflective practice

Image courtesy of Bahman Farzad 
Reflection is one of the main reasons why I hope blogging will be useful to me. I first came across reflective practice as a concept when I started my current job as it comes up a lot in what the students do as part of their courses, particularly in subjects like teaching and health. I was struck by how much importance was placed on it, but really it makes total sense because without some evaluation it's easy to career from one thing to the next without ever reflecting on what we've learned and how that can improve what we do next. Blogging is one way of formalising that process a little and making you consider what you've done. I like the Borton model in wigglesweet's post as it's nice and circular - what? so what? now what?

I think objectivity might prove to be one of the hardest aspects of reflective practice because when you're thinking about your own experiences it can be hard to look at them objectively (although hopefully easier for professional issues than personal ones - I kept diaries as a teenager and there was very little objective reflection in those!). Talking to other people might be useful too. I find myself thinking about what I've done a lot, but putting it into action is obviously key. Looking forward to attempting to apply all of this to the rest of the things!

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