Reflective Practice

Wagner believes that ‘A reflective assessment will help you celebrate your accomplishments, evaluate your skills…and continue to set and attain goals’ (2006, p.1). Similarly Burns states that reflective practice ’is changing future action in light of experiential learning from past action’ (2014, p.142). Essentially, both agree on the significant benefits of reflective practice to education and learning. For the purposes of this essay, reflective practice is taken to mean that our experiences mould our education and our ability to adapt our self-awareness is vital to achieve goals. Reflective practice is a way to review our experiences and effect change to improve learning in an educational and professional setting. This paper argues………….A

The subject poses many questions, one of which being, how do teachers use reflective practice efficiently? Larrivee states that ’Developing as a critically reflective teacher encompasses both the capacity for critical inquiry and self-reflection’ (2000, pg.2). However Finlay argues’ There are questions about how, when, where and why reflection should take place. For busy professionals short on time, reflective practice is all too easily applied in bland, mechanical, unthinking ways’ (2008, pg. 1). Teachers have a vast amount of knowledge and life experience and are required to use both to reflect effectively in a learning environment. Learning environments vary and adult students individually have different beliefs, needs, learning styles and capabilities which would require teachers to adapt their own particular behaviours to a classroom. Adult learners also carry with them a life experience and in some instances a resistance to changing their ways. Those educating in these scenarios would rely on reflective practice to alter their communication of particular subjects in order to communicate the subjects to students in a way it is recognised by a student’s needs. Furthermore, effective use of reflective practice by educators will in turn allow effective teaching of the reflective practice process to students. To refer to the original question, teachers cannot effectively teach adults without changing some behaviours and habits of a lifetime. Thus reflective practice in adult education allows adults to equip themselves with skills to revise experiences and knowledge to aid in their transition back to