Beginning to reflect

Recently I had a question from a student asking, when we are new to the field, how do we reflect on our practice? A great question.

My advice to the student was to think about reflection as digging into our own motives, passions, limitations and opportunities. Being new to the sector does not mean that we cannot reflect: reflection is our tool to understand our practice, so it is essential that we undertake reflection from the very beginning. We consider what we do not know. We build a plan to fill those gaps. And we continue to do this throughout our lives. This is a living, breathing practice; with the aim of becoming as automatic as that breathing.

We have borrowed reflective practice from our education and nursing compadrés, where - despite the context being different - the process of reflection itself is largely similar. We explore our fears; explore our shame where we have been over-confident - or our horror at having just skirted disaster; we explore where our lack of knowledge has tripped us up; we explore any potential holes as honestly as we can (Luft, 1963). We then thoughtfully build strategies to develop, to strengthen our weaknesses as we notice them.

We get really practical in our strategies; by using George Doran's SMART goals (1981), for example. That allows us to create a specific plan which we are far more likely to action. 

Some resources which may help us do that are as follows: 

• To get a feel for what reflective writing should look like, review the image accompanying this post, which uses the Borton/Driscoll (1970/1994) three step method of reflection: what, so what, now what. While this is not a really expert application of SMART goals (Doran, 1981), it is reasonable; and
• Get a copy of the Driscoll nursing paper (1994; reference below) and chapter two of his edited book, if you can (Driscoll, 2007; reference below); and
• Understand that reflection aims to push back the unknown areas of the JoHari window theory (Luft & Ingham, 1955, as cited by Luft, 1963). Read more here; and
• Read about George Doran's (1981) SMART system here; and
• I have written some blog posts on reflection, which you can view here.

I hope all this helps!

Sam

References:

Doran, G. T. (1981). There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write managements' goals and objectives. Management Review, 70(11), 35-36.

Driscoll, J. (1994). Reflective Practice for Practise. Senior Nurse, 14(1), 47-50.

Driscoll, J. (2007). Chapter 2: Supported reflective learning: the essence of clinical supervision? In J. Driscoll (Ed.), Practising Clinical Supervision: A Reflective Approach for Healthcare Professionals (2nd ed., pp. 27-50). Baillière Tindall.

Luft, J. (1963). Chapter 3: The Johari Window: A Graphic Model of Awareness for Interpersonal Relations. In Group processes: An introduction to group dynamics (pp. 10-16). National Press..