Reflection Core Skills

Life Long Learning Project for Health Care Scientist and Allied

Health Professionals

Reflection Core Skills

Life Long Learning Project for Health Care Scientist and Allied

Health Professionals

Confused About Reflective Practice?

• What do we mean by reflection?• What should we reflect about?• What is the purpose of reflection?• When will we know that we are being

authentically and sufficiently reflective?

Questions for consideration

What do we mean by Reflection?

• The action of throwing back light

• Mirror Image

• Deep or serious consideration, recollection or remembrance

• The way in which the mind has knowledge of itself.

What is Reflective Practice?

“A process of reviewing an experience in order to describe, analyse and evaluate and so inform learning from practice” (Reid, 1993)

• A way of learning from our experiences in order to understand and develop practice;

Three main elements:• Things that happen to a person; • The reflective processes that enable you to

learn from these experiences;• The action that results when new perspectives

are taken.

What is Reflective Practice?

Aims of reflective practice

• To become a balanced learner;• To learn from your every day experiences; • To link thinking and doing;

• To develop weaker learning styles and widen our CPD experiences.

Reflection Skills Needed

Self Awareness

Questioning

EvaluationDescription

Synthesis

Experience

Experience

• An experience is something that has happened to you;

• The accumulation of knowledge and skills over time;

• The processes that you go through when you do something.

Description

• State characteristics without expressing a judgement;

• Recollect the important events and features of your practice;

• Reconstruct the situation to review it;

• Relies upon observation and expression.

How do we describe something?

To describe something whether it be an incident, person or object without expressing a judgement. Includes:

• Where and when did it happen?

• What happened?

• What were your thoughts/ feelings at the time?

How do we describe something? (Cont)

• What did you do at the time of the situation?

• How did you cope with the situation?

• Why did I choose that course of action?

• What was I trying to achieve?

Self Awareness

• Knowing ourselves;• To be conscious of our character, including

beliefs, values, qualities, strengths and limitations;

• Linked to reflection it allows us to see ourselves in a situation and honestly observe how we have impacted on it and how the situation has impacted upon us.

Self Awareness and Reflection• Reflection is about

reviewing and evaluating your thoughts, theories beliefs, values and assumptions and includes:

• Inner self (how you think and feel)

• Outer self (what others see)

Critical Analysis

• To analyse something is to separate it into its parts and ask questions about them;

• To be critical includes judgements about the strengths and weaknesses of the parts and the whole.

How do we critically analyse something?

• Involves a detailed examination of a situation;• Thinking about the knowledge that enables you

to understand the situation;

• Is there any new/alternative knowledge that would have been relevant to the situation?

Evaluation

• Evaluation is the ability to make judgements about the value of something or to make a comparison;

• Looking back at the situation and thinking about the future.

How do you evaluate something?

• This includes: identifying learning needs, developing action plans and goal setting.

• Ask questions, of self and others; • Review.

Synthesis

• The process of building up separate elements into a connected or coherent whole;

• When linked with reflection synthesis is the ability to integrate new knowledge, feelings attitudes with previous knowledge feelings and attitudes.

Synthesis and Reflection

• This is necessary in order to develop a fresh insight or a new perspective on a situation and therefore learn from it;

• This is about thinking about what you have learnt and what you intend to do differently.