Enhancing Professional Growth: Reflective Learning Perspectives

1. Employee Learning & Development The Reflective Practitioner

2. Assignment 2- assessment criterion Critically analyse the value of reflective and reflexive practice as a process for embedding continuing professional development [CPD]

3. ? Self-reflection is an important part of an individuals growth and development. Do you agree and if so why? Discuss!

4. Learning from Experience • Kolb and Fry (1975) learning cycle • Highlights four elements/key processes needed to make sense and learn from our experiences • highlights the abilities required to enable effective learning to take place

5. CIPD and Reflective Practice • "By planning and reflecting on your learning experiences you'll accelerate your development and advance your career" • "Reflecting on your learning enables you to link your professional development to practical outcomes and widens the definition of what counts as useful activity"

6. CIPD (2011) and Why Reflect on Your Learning? • "To accept responsibility for your own personal growth. • To help you see a clear link between the effort you put into your development activities and the benefit you get out of it. • To help you see more value in each learning experience.... • To help you "learn how to learn" and add new skills overtime."

7. How Often Should You Reflect? "Reflection should become a routine part of working life that is more or less instinctive. If you see learning as an intrinsic part of your job, you don't have to interrupt your work to do it. People who routinely plan, record and reflect on their learning tend to see more opportunities for personal development. It's a matter of capturing the moment. The fact is, the world becomes a richer, more stimulating place when you embrace reflective learning because you switch on a kind of intuitive radar that's tuned to pick up useful opportunities". CIPD (2011) We have the Online Journal to help with this process!

8. Adopting Reflective Practice • Organisations are often disappointed with the real impact of their investment in learning and development – lack of knowledge transfer and behavioural change • Adoption of reflective practice approaches can help individuals, teams and organisations maximise learning opportunities • At an individual level it develops key skills through: • Encouraging a journey of not only professional (what I do) but personal (who I am) development. • Enabling individuals to take responsibility for their own development, giving people the skills and tools to “learn how to learn” and grow from any experience in life

9. Hartog (2002): • "Reflective practice extends our understanding of the role of the learning cycle in CPD by turning the focus of attention from the outer experience and activity inward to the subjective processes of perception, construction, judgement and action, enabling practitioners to modify their thinking and act with greater integrity" • Ethical practice requires internal enquiry, not just reflection of external activity (reflection and reflexivity)

10. Reflective Practice (Bolton 2005) “Einstein (1929) was successful partly because he doggedly and constantly asked questions for which everyone thought they knew the answers. Childlike he asked why? How? What? Rather than accepting given or taken-for-granteds”. “It is creative, illuminative, dynamic, self affirming, but not a thornless rose bed”. • It can be emotionally demanding • It can disturb the status quo

11. Learning and Reflection Reflection involves taking the unprocessed, raw material of experience and engaging with it as a way to make sense of what has occurred. It involves exploring often messy and confused events and focusing on the thoughts and emotions that accompany them. Within a course, reflection may focus on special activities (for example, workshop activities), events of the past (for example, what learners bring to the course from prior experience), or concurrent activities in the learners’ workplace and community that act as a stimulus for learning. This working with events is intended as a way to make sense of the experiences that result, recognize the learning that results, and build a foundation for new experiences that will provoke new learning

12. Looking Through the Looking Glass (Bolton 2005) “Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the looking glass room….Then she began looking around and noticed that what could be seen from the old room was quite common and uninteresting, but that all the rest was as different as possible”. (Carroll (1865) 1954, p.122 cited in Bolton 2005) “The term reflective practice is not a terribly useful one. The metaphor it embodies is limited: a mirror reflection is merely the image of an object directly in front of it – faithfully reproduced back to front”. Reflective practice is “a creative adventure right through the glass to the other side of the silvering. Such reflective practice can take us out of our narrow range of experience and help us to perceive experiences from a range of viewpoints and potential scenarios”. Reflective practice is very different from “merely “being reflective” which might consist of mulling over events of the day”. (Trelfa 2005)

13. Reflection and Reflexivity 'Reflection' means something quite specific - the process of thinking about an experience and making sense of it in order to identify how to improve things in the future. Without reflection we might not repeat what is effective or avoid what is ineffective. It helps you build confidence and learn from mistakes. It is essential to learning. "Whereas reflective practice is concerned with looking back and learning through experience and practice, reflexive practice is concerned with knowing in action and with my understanding of my thinking processes as a result of this internal process of inquiry, enabling me to change my thinking and action to improve my practice” Hartog (2002)

14. “Reflective practice is learning and doing through examining what we think happened on any occasion, and how we think others perceived the event and us, opening our practice to scrutiny by others and studying texts from the wider sphere. Reflexivity is finding strategies for looking at our own thought processes, values prejudices and habitual actions, as if we were onlookers. It is a focusing closer and closer” (Bolton 2005)

15. Foundations For A Reflexive Reflective Process (Bolton 2005) • Certain uncertainty An uncomfortable reality for many until the person becomes excited about the potential of discovery • Serious playfulness Willingness to experiment • Unquestioning questioning Asking why? Why? Why?

16. The Value of Self-Reflection | James Schmidt | TEDxUniversityofGlasgow Published on 10 Apr 2015 James is a young man with wisdom beyond his years. When he isn't looking at the broader picture, he is concerned with the day to day doings and habits of each one of us. In his thought-provoking speech he will talk about the value of self-reflection and how to break our auto-pilot governed lives for a deeper understanding of life.

17. The Reflective Practitioner (Argyris and Schon 1974) Theories-in-use = guide our actions/how to behave in situations Espoused Theories = what we suggest/espouse we would do in a given situation. Reflection offered as the tool to reveal theories-in-use and the nature of their fit to ones espoused theories.

18. Theories of Action, Double-Loop Learning & Organisational Learning(Argyris & Schõn 1978) Single-loop learningseems to be present when goals, values, frameworks and, to a significant extent, strategies are taken for granted. The emphasis is on ‘techniques and making techniques more efficient’ (Usher and Bryant: 1989: 87) Any reflection is directed toward making the strategy more effective. Double-loop learning, in contrast, involves questioning the role of the framing and learning systems which underlie actual goals and strategies

19. In deepening reflection, there are shifts – from description to reflective account; • from no questions to questions to responding to questions; • emotional influence is recognised, and then handled increasingly effectively • there is a ‘standing back from the event’ • there is a shift from self questioning, challenge to own ideas • from recognition of relevance of prior experience • in the taking into account of others’ views • towards meta-cognition - review of own reflective processes Moon (2006)

20. When Should We Reflect? Although reflection is conventionally thought of as taking place after something has happened, such a view depicts learners as passive respondents to events. To counteract this idea, it is useful to consider three occasions of reflection • Reflection in Anticipation of Events/reflection for the future • Reflection in the Midst of Action. • Reflection After Events.

21. Key Themes from my Research into Reflective Practice • Link between formality and depth of reflection • Learning is lost if you delay your reflections • The more you practice the better you are at it • Seen as a practical reality...adopted after M level study • Learning log is the key tool adopted • Most people highly value involving others to help them with reflections • Over-analysis is the most frequent drawback quoted (Woodcock, 2011)

22. References • BOLTON, G (2010) Reflective Practice. 3rd ed., Sage Publications ltd. • BOLTON, G (2005). Reflective Practice. 2nd ed., Sage Publications Ltd. • BOUD, D (2001). Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 90, 9-17 • BROOKFIELD, S. D (1987) Developing Critical Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Thinking and Acting. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. • CIPD (2011) What is reflective learning? [online] Last accessed 15/10/11 at http://www.cipd.co.uk/cpd/aboutcpd/reflectlearn.htm. • COX, E. (2005). Adult learners learning from experience: using a reflective practice model to support work-based learning. Reflective Practice, [e-journal]6 (4), 459-472. Available through: Ingenta Connect [Accessed 11.08.09] • DAUDELIN, M, W (1996). Learning from Experience through Reflection, Organization Dynamics, 24 (3), 36-48 • HARTOG, M (2002).Becoming a reflective practitioner: a continuing professional development strategy through humanistic action research. Blackwell Publishers Ltd • MOON, J, A (2006).Learning Journals: A Handbook for Reflective Practice and Professional Development. 2nd ed., Routledge • MUMFORD, A, and GOLD, J (2004). Management Development: Strategies for Action. 4th ed., CIPD • SLOMAN, M (2005).Change Agenda: Training to Learning. [online]. Last accessed 10.07.09 at http://www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/52AF1484-AA29-4325-8964-0A7A1AEE0B8B/0/train2lrn0405.pdf • SMITH, M, K (2001(a)). Chris Argyris: theories of action, double-loop learning and organizational learning, the encyclopedia of informal education [online] last accessed 10.01.09 at http://www.infed.org/thinkers/argyris.htm. Last update: 28th December 2007 • TRELFA, J (2005). Faith in reflective practice. Reflective Practice, 6 (2), 205-212 • WILSON, J. P. (2008).Reflecting-on-the-future: a chronological consideration of reflective practice. Reflective Practice, [e-journal] 9 (2), 177-184. Available through: Ingenta Connect [Accessed 11.08.09]