Early Years Reflection

878 Words2 Pages

What Reflection means to the author.

This essay will explore the authors meaning of reflection, how various reflective styles can benefit the practitioners within their settings, and how important reflection is within Early Years Practice. According to Appleby (2010, p.10), reflection is a generic term which describes various behaviours involving feelings, and thinking about thoughts and experiences, in order to examine issues and develop, new understandings and insights. Reflection within practice allows the practitioner to develop a sense of awareness around their daily activities, and helps them to evaluate how they could evolve these activities further, if the given opportunity was to arise again. Similarly, keeping a reflective journal …show more content…

Kolb’s learning cycle is used to break up the learning process into different stages, such as doing, reflecting, conceptualizing and experiencing (Kurian, 2013, p.162). The use of Kolb’s learning cycle (1984) has a wide impact on the advancements in learning. Within the four stages, the practitioner would have taken part in a task and would have noted down their observations. At this stage the practitioner would have begun to see the positives and negatives of the task that they have just carried out. From then on the practitioner will form new ideas from the observation notes. Later, being able to use these new ideas to plan their task effectively. Once the practitioner has implemented their task, for the second time with the new ideas. Kolb’s learning cycle (1984) begins again. However, Kolb’s model has been criticized due to the fact that it does not give a wide range of detail about the process of reflection, and lacks evidence. It can sometimes be seen as rigid and sequential (Trodd, 2012, …show more content…

One reason for Reflection being used is to give practitioners the chance to change an aspect within their setting, which they feel can be improved in order to help the development of children within their practice. Reflective practice is about improving practice and coming up with theories to support the improvement (Holmes, 2011, p.7). Reflective practice using critical reflection will allow the practitioners to identify what they do well and what they need to improve on within their Early Years settings. It can also give practitioners the opportunity to develop their professional identity, and work at improving their working environment (Forde et al, 2006, p.65, 66). By allowing practitioners the chance to improve their working environment, it can have a huge influence on the children and their development within the Early Years. For example, a teacher looking back and being reflective over their lesson, will allow them to make amelioration for when they teach that lesson again, thus leading to further learning development of the

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