A Place 2 Think - What Is Reflective Practice?
Reflective practice groups are a tried and trusted approach which has been developed and refined for over 50 years. Reflective Practice is a way of engaging at a deeper more intuitive level, with organisational issues and dilemmas. Attending a group can help participants develop their practice and self-awareness.
A Reflective practice group is a chance to step back from the day-to-day pressures and reflect on what really matters. The meetings are an opportunity to get to know people with similar roles, share dilemmas, and for mutual support and learning. The meetings follow a set format to support reflective practice, self-awareness and will utilise the wisdom and experience of group members.
Reflective practice groups are:
- A safe and containing space for learning and reflection
- Protected time to step back from the day to day
- A confidential space to work through challenges and opportunities
- The chance to activate the capacity for intuitive and creative thinking
- The opportunity to share learning, give and receive support
- The chance to build a deeper connection with colleagues
Learning from Experience and Reflective practice
“They never taught us really useful things like how to light a cigarette in the wind, or make a fire out of wet wood…”
–All Quiet on the Western Front
This quote vividly illustrates something about different kinds of learning. We can learn a lot from books, the internet and training courses but this does not always prepare us for the reality of our day to day experience at work. There’s a difference between learning something that might increase the amount of information we have and learning that changes us and how we think and feel. The psychoanalyst, Wilfrid Bion who at the age of 18 was exposed to horrors of the trenches of World War one, called this kind of deeper learning – learning from experience.
Learning from experience or put more simply learning on the job is one of the most important ways in which we learn. This is because when we learn from experience, we are dealing with the reality of our lives rather than something which is abstract or theoretical. The question then becomes how can we maximise or accelerate our learning from experience? This is especially difficult to achieve in the hectic, digitally mediated, churn of our working lives. One answer to this question might be Reflective practice. Reflective practice is fundamentally a method for learning from experience rather than from theory.
The Reflective Practitioner
The term reflective practice was first used by Donald Schon in his 1983 book the Reflective Practitioner. Schon looked at a range of different professions including engineering, architecture, town planning, management and psychotherapy. He argued that intuition and reflexivity had been squeezed out by a narrow focus on technical expertise. He advocated for a more creative and individualised approach to working with people and on problems. Schon wanted to shift professionals focus from working with theory to developing the ability to respond to real world situations. He called this reflection-in-action.
Reflective Practice Groups
Starting in the 1990s Reflective practice groups were developed to support people with complex and challenging roles. Reflective Practice has become widespread in health, social work and education.