What is Reflection and Reflective Practice? 

Within education, reflection is not just a theoretical concept but a practical tool that is crucial for the effective provision of teaching, assessment, and student support. It is a process that allows educators to learn from their experiences, develop their teaching methods, and improve student outcomes. Despite the diverse opinions on its structure, purpose, and approach, there are some shared features and characteristics that most would agree on when attempting to define reflection. These are;

• An individual is reflecting when they look back on an experience, attempt to make sense of it, and identify its meaning or significance.
• An individual is reflecting when they are looking at something in detail and questioning why it is as it is.
• An individual is reflecting when they are thinking intentionally and purposefully and, in doing so, seeking to answer questions and find solutions.
• An individual is reflecting when they are actively challenging themselves through the use of searching questions about their experience, thoughts, ideas, attitudes, values and theories.
• An individual is reflecting when they are actively seeking truth, acknowledging difficult realities, and taking everything into account.

The combination of these shared features and characteristics provides a clearer understanding of what reflection represents. Reflection and reflective practice can be summarised as follows: “Reflection is the act and process of looking back on experiences, thoughts, ideas, attitudes, values, and theories in order to learn from them and, in doing so, construct knowledge that enables development.”

As mentioned, a range of similar and competing definitions and descriptions of reflection and reflective practice exist. For example, Dewey describes reflection as a process that enables learning from related and connected experiences, which, when joined together over time, allows meaning, insight, and understanding to be gained (Ramsdem, 1992). Dewey’s description of reflective practice joins together ‘looking back’, actively seeking meaning and understanding past experiences, but differs from the shared features and characteristics due to his focus on a need for shared and continued experiences being required for the reflective process to be effective. However, with that suggested, Dewey (1933) went on to further posit that in order for an individual to be reflective, they must be active and persistent in seeking meaning and understanding from past experiences. He goes further and suggests that consideration of any beliefs or supposed forms of knowledge currently held is necessary for an individual to become truly reflective and gain real and actionable insight from the experiences being reflected upon.

Another perspective and as such definition of reflection has been put forward by Johns (2009), who states that reflection and reflective practice is when an individual thinks, meditates and ponders upon experiences and considers other possible actions that could have shaped the outcome in a different manner. An interesting deviation between Johns’s (2009) approach and view of reflection and that of other reflective theorists is that he focuses more on how individuals gain knowledge through experience and reflection than the knowledge that is gained.

A broader view of reflection comes from Kirkham (1997), who put forward their view as one in which a reflection is a tool that supports and enables life-long learning of skills, knowledge and abilities by cultivating insight into an individual’s own learning practice. Kirkham (1997) posits that reflection and reflective practice are just another tool that an individual can use to gain understanding and increase self-awareness of how they learn, and they can employ the most effective approach to gain new knowledge, skills, and understanding.

Altogether, each of these views of reflection, from the shared features and characteristics to the individual theoretical views, highlights that reflection simply provides a structure in which to evaluate learning. As mentioned and shown, the manner of this structure may change depending on an individual view of reflection. However, the outcome remains the same across all forms and views, allowing theories and concepts to become adopted into active practice and a conscious process of challenge, enabling innovation (Heyer, 2015). As such, reflection is a process that goes beyond ordinary thinking and obvious answers and instead requires intentional and purposeful thinking with a critical focus on evaluating experience, action and knowledge.

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References

Dewey, J,. 1933. How We Think: A Restatement of Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Education Process. Boston: Health and Co.

Heyer, R,. 2015. Learning Through Reflection: The Critical Role of Reflection in Work-Based Learning. Journal of Work-Applied Management. 7 (1). 11-27. 

Johns, C,. 2009. Model of Structured Reflection. In: Becoming a Reflective Practitioner (3rd edn). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. 

Kirkham, M,. 1997. Reflection in Midwifery: Professional Narcissism or Seeing with Women? British Journal of Midwifery. 5 (5). 259-62. 

Ramsdem, P,. 1992. Learning to Teach in Higher Education. London: Routledge.