Becoming reflective
How is reflective practice applied in academic life?
Reflective writing
Reflective writing for assessment
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‘The best thing any education can bequeath is the habit of
reflection and questioning.’ (AC Grayling, The Guardian: 22/07/00)
What is reflection?
When we reflect, we consider deeply something which we might
not otherwise have given much thought to. This helps us to learn.
Reflection is concerned with consciously looking at and thinking
about our experiences, actions, feelings and responses and then
interpreting or analysing them in order to learn from them (Boud
et al., 1994; Atkins and Murphy, 1994). Typically we do this by
asking ourselves questions about what we did, how we did it and
what we learnt from doing it.
Schön (1991) distinguishes between reflection-on-action and
reflection-in-action in the following way:
Reflection-in-action is concerned with practicing critically. So, a
physiotherapy student working with a client on an exercise
programme is making decisions about the suitability of particular
exercises, which exercise to do next and judging the success of
each exercise at the same time as they are conducting the
activity.
Reflection-on-action on the other hand, occurs after the activity
has taken place when you are thinking about what you (and
others) did, judging how successful you were and whether any
changes to what you did could have resulted in different
outcomes. This is usually the type of reflection which you are
asked to write about as part of your studies.
Here is an example of reflection-on-action in the discipline of
Social Work:
You are a social work student reflecting on a role-play which you participated in earlier in
the day. The role-play involved various professionals, including social workers and their
clients. Reflection leads you to...