Introduction
Successful people are reflective practitioners
Studies of successful and unsuccessful practitioners in many fields show that reflecting on achievements (and things that don’t go so well) is essential. We call this reflective practiceStanding back from your work and considering what is going well, what not, how you might do things better, or do different things, and what you can learn from experiences. Much of what we think about reflective practice comes from the philosopher Donald Schön's research into successful practitioner... More. Often after achieving a goal, or just completing a project without being sure of success, people understandably want to have a break, or move quickly on to the next thing without spending time describing, analysing, and critically evaluating what has already happened. So many opportunities are lost in that way: opportunities to learn, improve, try something different, innovate. Lost! This need not be the case. If we follow these simple methods we can ensure that we get the most out of what we do – just as successful practitioners do all the time.
In this article we detail an approach to reflective practiceStanding back from your work and considering what is going well, what not, how you might do things better, or do different things, and what you can learn from experiences. Much of what we think about reflective practice comes from the philosopher Donald Schön's research into successful practitioner... More based on studying how successful practitioners work, learn to be effective at what they do, and keep adapting to new circumstances as they come along (or better still, before they happen). This approach, learning from successful practitioners, was established by the philosopher Donald Schön in his books The Reflective Practitioner (1995) and Educating the Reflective Practitioner (1987).
Reflect with people, get a mentor, become a mentor
You can do this on your own, but we also know that reflecting together with a trusted friend, in a group, or with a mentor makes it easier and more effective. To be a successful reflective practitioner you should cultivate friendships (personal and professional) with people with whom you are comfortable reflecting. It’s good to have a range of people, so that you don’t take up too much of one person’s time, but also to get a range of perspectives. And provide the same “service” in return. This is “mentoring” – a valuable skill in demand across all kinds of business and social organisation. Having been a mentor is a valuable addition to your CV.
If you can’t find someone to reflect with, or want to do it on your own, you can use a technique in which you alternate between asking a question, answering it, leaving your answer for a while, then coming back to it in the role of the interviewer to try to make sense of what you said and where necessary ask follow up questions. The trick is to give yourself time between answering the question as interviewee and switching to responding to your answer as interviewer. That way you can get a bit of objectivity in how you respond to your own observations.
Ask effective questions, listen, and respond helpfully
In the method described below you will find many example questions that you can ask yourself and the people you are reflecting with. The trick is to ask the right question at the right time. This takes practice. It helps to think of the shape of the conversation as it dives down into detail, comes back up and builds the big picture, identifying themes and making connections, and suggesting further topics to explore. A mind mapInformation or ideas organised into a tree like structure or "spider diagram", with a central topic and branches of sub topics. Mindomo is a sophisticated but easy to use tool for mind maps and concept maps. More structure is good for this.
The four stage method
This method has four main stages: describe, analyse, critically evaluate, creatively respond. In reality this is often not a linear process. For example, as you work on later stages you might return to earlier stages to flesh out the details more precisely. You might also jump to a creative response, jotting down ideas for what you might do differently or for completely new projects. That’s fine. The very first part of the first stage, describing intentions, should be done early on in a project. Although that doesn’t mean it can’t be revised later – well informed change is a good sign, it shows that learning and adaptation are taking place. You might want to keep a journal as you work on a project, recording actions, interactions, and impacts to use in the Describe stage. You could use the whole 4 stage structure as you work on projects, to reflect in action and help to direct your project more responsively. Many good practitioners just do that all the time, with the stages embedded into their habits. Choose the way that is appropriate for you and your project.
Reflect on your reflection (meta reflection)
Don’t forget to spend a little time thinking about how you are reflecting, and seeking to get a better balance. Be careful to leave time for the latter stages. Often people get bogged down in description, and miss out the analysis. You might want to do an initial fast and shallow description, do some analysis, and then flesh-out the descriptive detail to aid further analysis.
1. Describe
Intentions
To begin with you need to be clear about what YOU hoped to achieve, in terms of tangible transformations in a situation or set of situations. It is best to do this before your undertake the activity you are now reflecting on, but you can also revise your ambitions in response to events. If you are reflecting on an activity created or led by someone else (for example a class led by a teacher), they may have defined what they see as the intended outcomes. Your own intentions will overlap with that, but will not necessarily be the same. And where they are the same your emphasis may be different. What really matters to you?
Be aware that you don’t always need to have very definite answers to that question. You might engage in an activity just to get a sense of what it is like, to get a flavour of something, maybe to find a new direction in what you are doing. That’s fine, so long as you consciously identify that as your goal. Personally, I like to spend a portion of my time deliberately doing this more playful and speculative kind of activity. You might have also a mix of reasons. Or you might be aiming for something very specific. You might also change your goals in response to what happens in an activity. That’s also fine. Whatever is right for you at the time. Being reflective just means being aware of what you are aiming for so that your actions can be more intentional.
There are many different aspects of reality that we aim to transform: physical objects and places; behaviours; habits; language; attitudes; declarative knowledge (the ability to state facts about the world); procedural knowledge (knowing how to do things) – and much more. If people are to be transformed, who? Yourself? Others? Specific people? Groups of people?
In education often the impact of what we do is self-development. That’s fine as a focus. Although many students today want to do things that have a more lasting and wider impact in the world. So we have projects that combine self-development with that bigger impact. That’s also fine. The same methods apply for describing both kinds of project.
Describing the world as it is and as it could be is an important foundational ability. Good storytelling skills and a familiarity with the details of things are key to this.
One aspect of this is, surprisingly, often understated: ethics. How should we be acting towards each other and the world? What do you think good and bad behaviour is? In everything you do in the project, as well as what you want to achieve, you need to have clear standards that are right for you.
Often we bundle up multiple intentions like this into one project, transforming many different aspects of the world. The best way to capture this complexity is to decribe salient features of concrete situations as they are before we act, and then how we want them to be as a consequence of our actions. What will success look/sound/smell/taste/feel like? Give yourself a rich picture of this. Be imaginative. Ellen Lupton’s book Design is Storytelling (2017) is a useful source of methods for visualising future possibilities and creating narratives.
For longer-term and more substantial projects, the Cone of Plausibility strategic planning tool helps with this.
It is good practice to do this before you take action, but also to reflect in action and adjust your intentions as you proceed.
Actions and Interactions
Describe the salient features of what happened. Think back to the preparations you made. How did they help? Then think through the actions that occurred in the activity. What was the starting point? What did you do? What did other people do? How did these actions elicit reactions? How did you think, feel, and act? How did other people think, feel, and act? What changes occurred as a result? What happened differently to what you expected? What didn’t happen? How did you respond to the unexpected? Include things you did to design, manage and implement your actions. You might be able to do this as a simple narrative. Or in more complicated cases, use a concept mapA diagram that maps out information and relationships. Information is added to topic nodes, usually as simple titles, with more complete notes, images, links, video, audio etc. attached. Lines connect topics to show relationships. Lines can have arrows to indicate direction (e.g. X topic leads to Y)... More with relationship lines mapping out what happened and how events inter-connect. Be wary of oversimplifying. Sometimes case and effect isn’t straightforward. Small conditions (such as weather and mood) can add up over time to influence the direction of travel or tip a situation over the edge into transformation. There are techniques we can use to create good conditions for change (food, environmental variables). Don’t overlook these factors.
Sustained impacts
When you reach a point at which you can say that something of your intentions have been achieved (or perhaps there are welcome unexpected consequences), what are these concrete sustained impacts? What of your intended transformation has actually become reality? For an impact to be “sustained” means that it will continue after the lifespan of the project, once you have stopped focus on making changes. Be honest. Sometimes people see glimmers of change, but overstate the likelihood of those changes sticking in place for a reasonable time, or spreading to more people and situations. If what you have implemented requires continual support, make that clear, and be explicit about how that will happen to sustain the change.
2. Analyse
Considering what you achieved, which of the actions and interactions contributed to success? And what didn’t work so well, what might have caused that? Did something malfunction? Not work as expected? Not fit well with your or other people’s expectations, needs or capabilities? Was it simply too much effort? – it’s important to be honest about that, so we can seek more efficient solutions. What might you do differently to increase the chances of success? What lessons could be learned from this for future developments or for different projects? These questions will lead into stage 4, the creative response. But first, we need to stand back and reflect more deeply.
3. Critically Evaluate
Practitioners often talk about “taking a step back from the action” to think about the bigger picture. In the description stage you should have articulated your ethical standards and a sense of what you believe to be right. Now stand back and consider all that you have done: is it doing the right things for the right reasons and in the right ways? If you’ve put a lot of work into a project it can be hard to be critical. You might need to leave it for a while, or get a mentor (someone more objective) to help you. But before you dive back into the fray and plan further work, just make sure you are sure.
4. Creatively Respond
In the analysis stage you should have come up with some specific points about how your actions could be refined. We call these incremental operational improvements. You need to find ways to implement and sustain these improvements.
Analysis and critical evaluation might also lead to realising that bigger changes are needed. You might realise that you need to go about things in a very different way. Or maybe your values and your goals need to change. It can take more effort, more sustained work (for example as a project in itself), more imagination and creativity to achieve these bigger changes. Having stepped back from the project with some critical distance, or perhaps looked at other different situations to which we can apply what we have learned, now is the time to start dreaming up new possibilities, start playfultyping your ideas into reality.
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