Becoming a Reflective Practitioner/Worker
According to the educator Boud et al. (1985), effective learning will not occur unless you reflect. To do this, you must think of a particular moment in time, ponder over it, go back through it and only then will you gain new insights into different aspects of that situation. According to Kolb (1984) reflecting is an essential element of learning. This is shown through an experiential learning cycle illustrated below.
McClure (2005) suggests that if you follow this cycle in a clockwise direction with your student, you will see that after having had an experience the student has to reflect on what he/she saw or did, by reviewing the whole situation in his/her mind. This may be assisted by: looking at it on film, discussing it with others, thinking abstractly about the event for a while, or seeking advice or further information.
Eventually the student will probably come up with ideas for approaching the situation differently next time. He/she will then try out their ideas to see if they are effective. He/she will thus complete the learning cycle and start over again with a view to refining his/her actions. This is an ongoing process, so we will never achieve perfection. We will always find other ways of doing things based on our learning from previous experiences.
Building up experience is a gradual process. The student will develop reflective abilities during the course of their learning on placement. Reflection should initially develop in safe environments where mistakes are tolerated. He/she can then reflect and discuss the decisions that were made during their supervision sessions with their work-based supervisor. Reflection should become integral to these sessions.
When reflecting-on-action, the first step in the process is the description of the incident and it is advisable that student health care practitioners keep a reflective diary, as memory cannot be relied upon for the detail of events, in which they record details of incidents that either troubled or pleased them, recording details as soon after the event as possible.
Much attention has been given to the value of recording events and experiences in written form, particularly through the use of reflective diaries and journals (Zubbrizarreta 1999 and Tryssenaar 1995). The exercise of diary writing promotes both the qualities required for reflection, i.e. open-mindedness and motivation, and also the skills i.e. self-awareness; description and observation; critical analysis and problem-solving; and synthesis and evaluation (Richardson & Maltby 1995).
