Reflection On and In the Workplace for Students

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. What is Reflection?
3. Types of Reflection
4. Definitions of Reflection
5. Becoming a Reflective Practitioner/Worker
6. Kolb's Learning Cycle
7. Time for Reflection
8. Keeping a Reflective Diary
9. What is the Purpose of Reflection?
10. Where do you Put the Reflections in Your Portfolio?
11. What Makes Good Evidence?
12. Learning from Significant Events
13. Tools for Reflection
14. Individual Reflection
15. 2: Roles For Reviewing In Pairs
16. Reviewing for Two: Walking And Talking
17. Reviewing for Two: Changing Partners
18. Summary
19. References

Reviewing for Two: Changing Partners

Another style of paired review is where people have a series of brief meetings with different partners. The speed of this process means that people do not get stuck in partnerships that are not working. There may not be very deep reflection during brief meetings, but a quick succession of paired reflective conversations can quickly add up to a lot of reflection from various angles in a short space of time. Your choice of methods will partly depend on how important it is that everyone meets everyone else.

1. Milling about: (for one to one feedback): Find a partner, give each other one positive statement about their contribution to the team exercise, find a new partner and repeat, etc.
2. Brief Encounters: (questions and partners keep changing): Each person starts with a unique question on a card and finds a partner. Each person answers their partner's question. They swap cards and each finds a new partner.
3. Surveys: (small groups specialise in one question): Subgroups scatter throughout the whole group conducting brief one to one interviews on the topic in which they are specialising. Subgroups meet together again to collate the answers and report back their findings to the whole group.
4. Mad Hatter's Tea Party: Two lines face each other. People talk with the person standing opposite. At a given signal, everyone moves one to the left and starts talking with their new partner. The facilitator announces a fresh question at each move. If the group is too big to complete a full cycle, set up a suitable number of smaller groups.
5. Concentric Circles: This is much the same idea as the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, but is a little easier to set up and manage. This structure does not allow participants to have conversations with people in their own circle, but it does provide an effective way of meeting and learning one-to-one with everyone in another group
6. Matrix Meetings: Each individual has a list of everyone's names. They place a mark beside the name of anyone they work with on a paired reviewing exercise of (say) five minutes or more. From time to time they also enter this information on a single group matrix that builds up a picture of who has worked with whom. A number or letter code can be used to give basic information about who took which role during the exercise(e.g. L=learner, F=facilitator, S= shared). If the target is to complete the matrix, remember to provide enough opportunities for paired reviewing for this to be achievable.

Not all pairings work well - one person can dominate, trust may be low, pairs may decide to take easy options, or just go through the motions or may even opt out. Group facilitators may try to avoid the risks of paired reviews not working well by keeping everyone together under their own watchful eye for whole group reflection. But whole group reflection has its own risks and disadvantages (such as lack of personal space, less personal attention and less airtime for each individual). The challenge is to find the right mix (and sequence) of different group sizes (including reflective time alone) so that there is a good balance between these different 'social settings' for reflection.