Hi,
I am currently studying my CACHE Level 3 Early Years Educator course.
I'm on my last assignment and I am required to post my findings on an online forum and receive some feedback/have a discussion. Any comments would be really appreciated!
Which theory do you think would work best for you?
Summarise theoretical perspectives on reflection in relation to professional development
Reflection is an important element of working in early years, ensuring that we are carrying out best practice. Our aim as practitioners is to provide the best possible care for the children that are in our setting. Thinking about our own individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of the setting as a whole can help us to review the way are are working. Analysing our findings can provide us the opportunity to think of what we could be doing better, and implement these new ideas. It is our responsibility as early years practitioners to be constantly improving the quality of our practice.
An effective way to view reflective practice is, rather than a one off review, to think of it more as a continuous cycle. We first must reflect on our own practice, then make those changes we have found we may need, then review how these changes have impacted our practice. Many of the theorists on reflection have their theories based around this type of cycle, an ongoing reflection.
David Kolb
Kolb is an American educational theorists. He believed ‘Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience’. He is most well known for developing the Experimental Learning Model. This model involved having the base knowledge of different concepts, and being able to interpret them to fit a range of different situations. Kolb represented this method of learning style through a four stage cycle. He believed that learning was what occurred when you passed through all four stages of the cycle. These stages are:
Concrete experience - an experience that you have had and are able to think back to what happened.
Reflective observation - reflecting on this experience. Are there inconsistencies between experience and your understanding? What did you notice?
Abstract conceptualisation - learning from this experience. How would you change it?
Active Experimentation - trying what you have learnt after reflecting on this previous experience.
Donald Schon
Schon was an American philosopher and professor who developed the concept of reflective practice. He also developed an idea on the way that we learn which he called the ‘single and double loop learning’ theory. The single loop of learning goes between the ‘How’ we do something e.g the technique and strategy, and the result that is produced. School believed that this way of learning was not the most effective as it means that we do not look at the ‘Why’ we are doing something. He felt that for practice to be reflective we must also analyse our underlying assumptions, our beliefs.
Christopher Johns
Johns is a professor of Nursing and is most well known for placing an emphasis on the importance of reflective practice in the field of nursing. Although this theory was originally developed with nursing in mind, it could be applied to many other types of work. Simply put this method of reflective practice is based around five questions which, when answering these, allows you to break down your own experiences and reflect on the process and outcomes.
These questions are:
Describe - What are the significant factors of the experience?
Reflect - what was I aiming to achieve? What are the consequences?
Influencing factors - what influences my decision making? Internal/external/knowledge factors.
Improve - What could you have done better? What were the other choices?
Learn - what will I change because of this experience? How do I feel about this?
I feel that all of these theories have their merits and have clearly impacted the way we think about reflective practice. I personally think that Johns method seems most clear and easy to understand. I think it also already written out in a very practical format that you could use straight away without adapting. I think this method of reflection could be useful after leading an activity or dealing with an incident such as behaviour.