hello this is graham wilson in this video we're going to look at definitions of reflective practice and introduce some of its key concepts with a quick review of its history let's begin with a couple of definitions according to donald shern reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one's actions so as to engage in a process of continuous learning gilly bolton who's researched and written extensively on reflective practice through writing more recently says that reflective practice involves paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions by examining practice reflectively and reflexively this leads to developmental insight this highlights the difference between two terms often misused in the literature a reflective thinker will analyze what has happened however a reflexive thinker will automatically self-assess and react to the circumstances as they are happening they know themselves well and they will look inwardly as well as outwardly the fundamental principle in all of this is that experience alone does not necessarily lead to learning deliberate reflection on experience is essential barry mcbrien writing for the nursing community explains that reflective practice is key to practice-based professional learning settings where people largely learn from their own professional experiences rather than from formal learning or knowledge transfer this is the most frequent and most important source of personal professional development and improvement and its strength lies in bringing theory and practice together some people confuse critical thinking and critiquing with being critical they are different things a person who reflects throughout his or her practice is not just looking back on past actions and events but is taking a conscious look at their emotions experiences actions and responses and they're using that information to add to their existing knowledge and reach a higher level of understanding so let's look at the way in which reflective practice has emerged in recent years marcus aurelius who was emperor of the roman empire from 161 to 180 kept a personal reflective journal subsequently published as the meditations or marcus's musings to himself many of these were written while he was on campaign between 170 and 180 as a source of for his own guidance and self-improvement aurelius was one of the early stoic philosophers known rather strangely as the philosopher king statics believe that the path to happiness for humans is found in accepting the moment as it presents itself by not allowing yourself to be controlled by the desire for pleasure or the fear of pain and by using one's mind to understand the world and do it your bit for the world around you by working together and treating others fairly and justly they say happiness will ensue some academics have claimed to find precursors of reflective practice in the ancient texts such as buddhist teachings and in particular around the practice of praxis a form of mindful reflection on one's life but our modern story begins with john dewey one of the main influencers of carl rogers the founder of person-centered therapy dewey was the first to write about reflective practice and the interaction between experience and reflection on it here we have kurt lewin and jean piaget both early psychologists who were differentiating the field of psychology at the time developing theories of human learning and development since the late 1960s and then the 1970s there was and continues to be a growing literature and focus around experiential learning and the development and application of reflective practice central to the development of reflective theory was interest in the integration of theory and practice the cyclic pattern of experience and the conscious application of lessons learnt from experience as adult education professor david boude and his colleagues explained reflection is an important human activity in which people recapture their experience think about it mull it over and evaluate it it is this working with experience that is important in learning when a person is experiencing something he or she may be implicitly learning however it can be difficult to put emotions events and thoughts into a coherent sequence of events when a person rethinks or retells events it's possible to categorize them along with emotions and ideas and to compare the intended purpose of past action with the results of it stepping back from the action permits critical reflection on a sequence of events one of the first to promote reflective practice in therapy was terry borton a gestalt therapist who used three questions what so what and now what terry borton's book reach touch and teach was probably one of the most important turning points in the understanding of reflective practice and experiential learning back in 1970 virtually anyone who has been on a teacher training course in the last 50 years will have encountered colb and fry's model known very often as the colb's experiential learning cycle a way of looking retrospectively at the learning from experience it takes a cyclical approach and it begins with the event involves a process of understanding the feelings observing it and thinking about it before having some kind of plan for a different way of doing things the next time the opportunity arrives in other words it's a form of active experimentation chris argyrus and donald chern in 1978 published a book which introduced some very important concepts particularly when we apply reflective practice to organizations and organization development but also applicable to single practitioners single loop learning is when somebody even after a mistake has happened continues to rely on the current strategies or techniques or policies when they next do that particular action so the most obvious example would be somebody who follows a recipe to bake a cake the cake is a disaster but they then go back and try and use the same recipe a second time without considering what might have gone wrong this is known as single loop learning double loop learning involves modifying the objectives or the strategies or the policies or our cake recipe so that when a similar situation comes up the next time around a new way of doing things is used this highlights two types of reflective practice which are jairus and chern described as reflection on action and reflection in action reflection on action involves reflecting on an experience that you've already had or an action that you've already taken and then considering what could have been done differently as well as looking at the positives from that interaction reflection in action or reflecting on your actions as you are doing them and considering issues like best practice throughout the process this is reflection in action reflection in action was particularly popular in the 1960s and 70s with the development of very sophisticated surgical techniques and this is one of the reasons why reflective practice became so popular within the medical community if you can imagine performing unique surgery the first time you've done a heart surgery or liver transplant or something like that you don't have the scope for many experiments and so it's important that you are reflecting in action rather than waiting until after the event i include donald chern separately here because in 1983 he wrote a book the reflective practitioner which was probably responsible for popularizing the concept of reflective practice across a wide variety of disciplines for chern professional growth really begins when a person starts to view things with a critical lens by doubting his or her actions doubt brings about a way of thinking that questions and frame situations as problems by having doubt while we do something we're able to improvise small adjustments to hopefully do it better much of my clinical work has been at the interface of therapy and coaching my clients have included a number of individuals who might be seen by some as having narcissistic tendencies for a long time this was seen as a positive trait for success in entrepreneurship to a narcissist though doubt does not come easily so much of my work in helping them to exceed their personal expectations has involved helping them develop a sense of doubt safely graeme gibbs writing in 1988 expanded on the colb learning cycle by adding a form of structured debriefing this is really the basis of the way in which many clinical supervisors still work by default today debriefing is often used with practitioners working in environments that are particularly emotionally challenging and critical incident debriefing is a fairly common tool used as a preventative measure for ptsd christopher johns is a professor of nursing he's tried to break free from the debriefing approach by designing a structured guided reflection carried out with a colleague or mentor which allows the experience to become learnt knowledge faster reflection occurs by looking in on one's thoughts and emotions and looking out at the situation that's been experienced five patterns of knowing are incorporated into the guided reflection the aesthetic the personal the ethical empirical and reflexive aspects of the situation much of the work on reflective practice stems from education one way of seeing coaching and therapy is as a way of helping people to develop this puts these three fields in the same space brookfield suggests that there are four lenses through which teachers and other developers of people can see our work the first lens is our autobiography as a learner our autobiography is an important source of insight into practice by analyzing the way in which we have experienced learning we can begin to draw insight and meanings for our practice on a very deep and visceral emotional level the second lens is our learners eyes by seeing ourselves through our learners eyes we're often surprised by the diversity of meanings that people read into our words and actions by seeing our practice through their eyes we can teach more responsibly the third lens is our colleagues experiences our colleagues serve as critical mirrors reflecting back to us images of our own actions by talking to our colleagues about problems and gaining their perspective we can increase our chance of finding some information that could help our situation the fourth lens is that of theoretical literature theory can show us that what we think are our unique experiences are actually common to many practitioners i began with the definition from the author and researcher julie bolton her book reflective practice writing and professional development originally published in 2001 and now in its fifth edition highlights the importance of using writing as a means of recording and stimulating our reflection the value of journaling has long been appreciated after all this is what aurelius did nearly 2 000 years ago and yet as a professional practice it is far less common than we might expect so to summarize reflective practice is probably the most important form of professional development because it ensures that we learn from our experience while it's been a popular approach in the modern day since it emerged amongst the humanistic psychology movement it has its roots in ancient philosophies including that of the stoics whereas single loop learners tend to make the same mistakes time and time again double loop learners make changes to the processes that they're following in the hope that this improves the outcome similarly while reflective practitioners look back on an event in the past and appraise it critically reflexive practitioners are able to do so as they perform their work and so can make small adjustments as they go reflexive practice is closely related to experiential learning experiential learning models tend to be presented in a cyclical or iterative manner in order to be prepared to critique one's own work you need to be prepared to doubt it and so many coaches and therapists will endeavor to support their clients as they come to terms with an associated sense of personal failing or imperfection reflective practice is often performed through a kind of debriefing this is particularly common among supervisors in coaching and psychotherapy but debriefing is also used as a popular way of attempting to prevent the onset of ptsd with people who've experienced trauma including the victims of crime and emergency services workers more recently efforts have been made to try to move away from this very structured cognitive approach to debriefing by introducing more creative forms drawing on mindfulness techniques art and play i hope that you found this short presentation useful if you have any feedback i'm always interested in receiving it thank you