Developing Reflective Practice

Daniel.Doherty@bristol.ac.uk8th January 2008

Bristol

Reflective Practice is…

• Process of reflecting on experience/ activity, and capturing that reflection for future reference by individual primarily, but also possibly by others

• Most usually captured in written form, as journal, but can also be captured via video or sound tape; or enacted through some dramatic form.

• Aligns theoretically with Kolb learning cycle ‘reflecting’ phase.

Kolb Learning Cycle

Why the need for skills in reflective practice?

• Increasing pressure to complete reflective journals for academic and professional qualification

• Key to degrees such as our ‘Management Learning and Change’ MSc, where reflection is assessed

• Does not come naturally!! Students are bewildered.

Aim of DRP skilling

• Grow confidence

• Find voice, make reflective practice their own

• Make it meaningful, not just a chore at the end of the working day.

• Know how to tackle assessed work that demands reflective practice.

• Make reflection a habit, tune in.

My discovery of DRP

• Via PhD …. Emic not etic approach, pursuing insider stories

• Breakaway from passive voice, professional life only, include personal

• Build on my regular journaling practice, an extension of this.

• Developed confidence, courage to include in my work

‘How can I know what I think until I see what I say?’ Karl Weick

• Writing into the text, discovery not planned• Thinking with the text, not thinking about it• Showing not telling• Emergent learning capture• Action learning applications• Association with release of synchronicity• Seeking psychodynamic leaps • Connection to Donald Schon ‘Praxis’

Offered DRP to volunteer group of Masters Students

• Styled as ‘Creative Writing’ or ‘free writing’• Picked topic close to their hearts,

Coaching, and their experiences of that.• Offered prompts to get us going• Tutors were part of experiment too.• Asked that we trusted the process• Wrote without interruption• Shared writing by reading pieces aloud.

Responses to session

• Felt it opened up windows of memory

• Surprised by what came out

• Remarked on quality of the writing

• Level of disclosure built as session developed

• Found it confronting, unsettling, cathartic, releasing, engaging, appetite and curiosity raising.

Built upon success

• Pilot group worked on for two years.

• New cohort spawned 06/ 07 group, and now 07/ 08 group from MLC

• Built in ‘taster’ to formal programme.

• Offered to Strategic Management cohort also.

Students found that…

• They benefited from seasoned facilitators

• Tended to wait for the next session rather than develop their writing alone

• Great for developing a transgressive view

• Good for defending against inner critic when writing.

• Liked interweaving of experience, reflection, and theory into their texts.

Cautions

• This was self selecting group, would be difficult to mandate.

• Writing is not everyone's natural milieu, though some really develop a flair for it.

• Confidentiality must be observed.

• Difficulties in sustaining journaling

• Can surface strong emotional material that can be difficult to deal with in the moment

Conclusions

• Highly useful complementary tool

• Can be developed as life skill

• Cannot expect students to automatically do DRP, so coaching in it helpful

• Makes mandated DRP activities meaningful

Where to from here

• Four students have already made reflective practice a centre piece of their Master’s dissertations

• The research output from the Coaching study is being written up, and learnings included in a practitioner book

• Work with cohorts continues with plans to include Stratman cohort

Donald Schon ..

• Reflexive practice for practitioners

• Reflection – in – action

• Generative metaphor ..’urban blight.’

• Worked extensively with Argyris on organisation learning

• Interested in how professions introduce artistry

• Improvisation, jazz highly favoured

Why do we journal?

• Discipline• How do I know what I

think till I see what I say? Weick K

• Revelation• Record, source of

data• Authenticity not faking

it

• Psychodynamic leap• Going deeper• Surprise, well spring• uncover• Fun, cathartic• Private/ public

boundary• Taking self seriously

When do we journal?

• Early morning, coat tail on dream state

• Before serious writing, warm up

• After serious writing, warm down

• Retrospective sense making

• Snatched moments

• In between things, let it flow

• High moments, low moments

Journal formats might include

• Mind maps

• Dialogues

• Vignettes

• Sketches

• Different perspectives; the theatre critic, the restaurant reviewer, the soap opera

• Critical incidents

Can also be used for…

• Day book

• Notes to self

• Feelings exploration

• Goal setting

• Messy writing

• Quality check on self .. authenticity

Other random thoughts

• I like it when it is pen on page

• It does not have to be deathless prose

• Can mix left brain with right, but we prefer right brain applications

• Best to be naturalistic

• Be confident that you will find your voice

• It is satisfying to look back on!

We can only access the past through the present

‘We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters.’ (Froude 2004).

Life must be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards

• This narrative explores the reality of living life forwards, but understanding it backwards. In the midst of these tensions the narrative drives relentlessly onward, playing its part in the existential struggle to move life forward. The sense while writing the auto-ethnography was that I was living at least three days in one day, processing yesterdays experiences and the memories evoked therein; re writing the notes from the day before, and crafting the narrative from the day before that; while attending to the experiences of today, still keeping a weather eye out, anticipating the events of tomorrow.

‘How can I know what I think until I see what I say

•

• Writing into the text, discovery not planned

• Thinking with the text, not thinking about it

Writing in expanded time, polychronic time, in the zone.

This passage speaks to the ‘writing ritual’, to the process of capturing the ebb and flow of the writing life, evoking the feeling of ‘wording your world’. It captures the interplay between the external stimulus and the interior reflexive response. It demonstrates that the nearer you move towards a sense of your ‘inner process’, the greater the likelihood that you find ‘your voice’. This is the moment where synchronicities are invited.

Aims of the Day

• Experience reflective writing practice

• Share and develop learning

• Build skills and confidence .. Make it a habit

• Contextualise within theory background

• Transfer of skills to dissertation and assignments, and preparation thereof

Aims once more

• Explore research degree related phenomenon ..

• Deep experience of experiential learning

• Be part of creation of learning community, and reflect upon that

• Collaborate in research project .. The last DRP effort created a ‘research centre.’

Ground rules for our writing day

• What is said in the room stays in the room.

• No preambles to writing … just begin

• Keep writing …. Do not censor

• Just read aloud …. No need to apologise.

Ground rules

• Be sensitive to each others expression

• Allow others air time

• Constructive commentary

• Feel free to say no , or to walk away at any time. This is voluntary.

• It is ok to be sceptical ..this is not a religion!

A great opportunity to practice ..

• Free writing, weaving theory and impressions, fleeting images

• Contact inner dialogue, sense making• Developing a rich picture, inner and outer• New type of writing, unlearning how you were

taught to write, old injunctions• Writing through blocks• Dealing with emotions on the page• Identifying and dealing with inner critic.

Plan for the day

• Introduction, contracting

• First writing cycle, warm up

• Review learnings from first cycle.

• Second cycle …

• Review

• Third cycle .. Writing on writing!!

First prompt question …

• Something I notice about coming here on a Saturday is ……

Dealing with my inner critic

• My inner critic … looks like, sounds like feels like smells like touches like knows like .. Presents him/ herself as …

• Whatever you like to say.

IMM group reflections

• The power of direct speech, quotation• Powerful use of humour• Use of colour evocation of the aesthetic• Light and shade, ebb and flow of prose• Capturing the rhythm, feeling the rhythm within the

prose, its pulse• Writing has a physical component .. Feel it quicken your

heart, or raise the hairs…• Embodiment ..sensual not titillating • of the scene in words before we immerse

IMM continued

• Writing into the chatter, the two voices in our heads, chatting, debating arguing

• We write into the chatter, go deeper, begin to hear the true voice, often the underdog

• How can I write when I am overwhelmed with so much life stuff? This is a part of the chatter.

• Critical incidents are powerful ..the BMW !

IMM 3

• Writing from our dreams, cpturing the tail end of our dreams, take us into the psyche

• This could be therapeutic

• Recollections not in traquility, but in hot emotion, in feelings .. Anti poetry notion?

• Tapping collective unconscious through this means … what is driving us?

IMM 4

• Who is running the show? My story or not?• The story of my life? Or my life story?• Standing outside of myself• Amazed ar how much comes out so

quickly … at such speed• Never thought I would express so much so

quickly• Everyone has there own voice all voices

are valid, equally so.

Autoethnography thoughts

• Write first read later? Different people have different takes on this

• Safeguarding my vulnerability …. Don’t bleed when there are sharks about … Ellis.

• There are many ethical issues attached to this.bypassing the inner critic.. Speed helps with this

• Practice will attune you to your own voice• Reflection takes discipline• Work in first language first to find voice

Reflections on free writing

• Emergence of common/ different themes• Courageous risk taking writing• Sense making ..when I see what I say,

and when I hear myself say, and when I hear others comment

• Our inclinations towards beginnings middles endings ..natural curve of a narrative

• Surprise at what we discover

Reflections continued

• Surprised at which ideas stories come out• What happens when you go with the flow• Balance of inner/ outer focus, weaving between

the two• Throwing the first half hour away• Dealing with self consciousness• Dealing with the inner critic• Using the same phrase time and again for

impact

• Feels chaotic while writing it, doesnt come out as chaotic, seems natural order

• Description ..defend against ‘all on one side of A4 constraints’

• Connection to the aesthetic, the lyrical

• There is a connection to beauty we seek it

• Descriptive building up rich pictures

• Appealing to all the senses

reflections

• Writing in colours, using colours to appeal• Who is the audience/ in reflective writing, journal

work is the audience primarily me?• Is it merchant ivory or a Robert Altman movie?

Going all over the place?• Capturing a rhythm, a beat• Getting beyond jargon• Power of the confessional• Getting to the personal stuff quickly?