Thing 5: being reflective

Apologies for the late running of this blog post- I was rudely distracted by bank holidays and annual leave!

I have to admit that I’m really struggling with this thing. In my head I’ve decided that ‘reflective practice’ is a bit like when I was studying ‘knowledge management’ at university. Basically it’s common sense but written down. Or am I missing a major part?!

Reading the cpd blog and recommended reading, there seem to be a number of potential processes for doing reflective practice. The basic gist seems to be

1)      Think about something you’ve done

2)      Decide what you’ve learned/ experienced from this activity (positive and negative)

3)      Decide how this will impact on your future.

Isn’t this something that happens to people automatically as they are learning or experiencing life? Maybe everyone has been to more riveting training sessions but usually I’m thinking along these lines as I’m learning. I spend the time thinking “wow, I’ll be able to use that for....” “hmmm... interesting, in .........situation that could be useful” or even “what nonsense. Cretins.” Does anyone really not consider the impact on themselves until asked to do so as a reflective practice exercise?!

This blog is a form of reflective practice as it will explain what I’ve looked at/ learned, whether I think it could be useful to me or my work and if I’ve been able to apply it to myself/ my work. However, I don’t think a blog like this could really work if it didn’t automatically include this process- it would just be a list of links with no evaluation.

One of my (many) failings is that I’m quick to come to some sort of judgement about things – you might be able to spot this pattern in this blog. I find that thinking on a topic further doesn’t change my mind- the only thing that does is discovering more information. Hopefully now I’ve written this negative post about reflective practice, you’ll all be able to give me more information on the topic and show me the error of my ways!

The photo for this post was taken outside Cromer Library. It shows me holding a (library) copy of ‘Never Let Me Go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro.  I am looking very excited because while reading the book on the train to Cromer, the characters within it had also gone on a day trip to Cromer, a fact more amazing to me because I’d not even heard of the town until the day before!