In undertaking the Professional Studies Program at the University of Southern Queensland, I have discovered the benefit of engaging in reflective practice, as applied in the workplace to enhance organisational learning as well as unlock the opportunity to engage in work-based learning. Context plays an important role in any learning, and with the rapidly changing technological and knowledge environments we work, knowledge and skill acquisition through learning-by-doing is becoming more prevalent and more efficient. Work-based learning allows individuals and organisations to exploit limited time and training budgets while increasing performance improvements.
Learning-by-doing encourages learning from experiences on your own actions, and reflective practice is a core element of this self-directed, lifelong learning. Embedded within the nursing and education fields, professional reflection involves four main steps: having an experience, reflecting on the experience, learning from the experience, and implementing change or experimentation based on your learning. This simple cycle, originally developed by David Kolb in 1984 can be continued in an iterative approach for continuous development as well as individual and organisational learning.
Reflection is an important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull over and evaluate it. It is this working with experience that is important in learning.
David Boud, Rosemary Keogh and David Walker
Incorporating reflection into my professional practice has enabled me to have greater insights into my own biases, avoid past mistakes and maximise my own opportunities for learning as I challenge and critically assess my knowledge base. David Epstein once said, "We learn who we are in practice, not in theory", and I couldn't agree more. It is also generally agreed that reflective practice promotes better interpersonal outcomes through being more attuned and sensitive to the responses of others.
While there is no recipe or single-solution for becoming more reflective, I have personally incorporated reflective journaling, after action reviews and keeping field notes into my operating system, and subscribe to the understanding that having a reflective practice is more so about creating the right mindset, and should be seen as a process not a specific goal.
Boud, D, Keogh, R, Walker D, 1985 (p19), Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning.