This time of year there are often celebrations and events in schools that involve the opportunity to celebrate what has happened and the journeys undertaken, and reflect more generally. As practitioners in education, we will reflect to consider learning, development or improvement of practice, and to identify opportunities to improve processes, systems or practice within the school.
TT Education’s Path to Success encourages reflective practice through considering what are our prior experiences and knowledge as a part of ‘Experience It’. Can we explain our understanding, learning and behaviours through ‘Develop It’, and then how can we ‘Connect’ learning, knowledge and behaviours in the future?
Reflection itself is defined as “The ability to reflect on one’s actions so as to engage in a process of continuous learning.” (Schön, 1983). Its benefit to wellbeing is cited in numerous studies, because it helps us learn about ourselves, our motives and our assumptions.
Dr Helen Immordino-Yang highlights the importance of self-reflection noting: “We tend to focus outwardly in education, but inward focus impacts the way we build memories, make meaning and transfer that learning into new contexts.” Research shows that this ‘outward’ reflection within education – reflecting on our role, what we have learnt or what we have applied to our practice in the classroom is important, but inward reflection and even opportunities to daydream are critical for wellbeing. Moreover, reflecting on our own personal circumstances can aid our mental health, creating a more positive state.
Romanoff (2023) suggests that self-reflection can help to grow your understanding of who you are, your values, beliefs and why you think and act the way you do. Being reflective supports our self-awareness and this can support how we regulate our emotional control, our sense of hopefulness and build our self-concept. Wilson et al. (2017) also supports self-reflection, commenting that it “is a required skill for personal growth.” Other benefits of self-reflection include:
Ways to support self-reflection
Reflection is personal; there is no right or wrong way to reflect. Reflection is about creating space to capture, analyse and learn from experiences and emotions. It can be useful to ask yourself questions, including open-ended questions. Here are some prompts to get you started:
Other ideas to support self-reflection
Keeping a journal: journalling is a great way to self-reflect and self-express. Through journalling we can look back at how we have dealt with or handled past experiences, analyse behaviours and actions, and assess outcomes. We can then consider what we might do differently in the future, or in a similar experience.
Write a letter to your future self: think of trying to address questions such as who do I want to be? What do I want to have done? What hobbies or passions would I want to develop? Which friends would I still see? What new friendships would I like to cultivate?
Write a letter to your past self: what advice would you give? What are some of the things you have learned since then? What would you tell yourself to help them through any challenges? What would you tell your past self to look out for?
Take time to process events and emotions: build time into your everyday practices to use reflective tools and strategies. This can be from a few minutes to longer periods of time.
Take both the positive and negative: reflecting on both of these is important for wellbeing and also personal growth. Acknowledge your mistakes, but reflect on what you can learn from them, what you can do differently, or how you can move on positively as a result. Considering both positive and negative experiences or emotions can generate meaningful reflections.
Be gentle with yourself: the idea of self-reflection is not to criticise or judge yourself or your past choices, so be mindful of trying to avoid negative self-talk.
Coaching: coaching is a reflective process and allows you to prompt critical analysis, analyse behaviours, thought-patterns and responses, and aid self-management and decision-making. Coaching conversations are predominantly about promoting and prompting reflection and reflective practice. Coaching individuals in reflective practice is an essential part of developing new skills, but at a deeper level it grows the capacity of the individual to respond to challenges, make timely decisions and manage emotions.