Theoretical perspectives on reflection in professional development

[AG1972]

Working with children whilst being an honour and an absolute delight, can be extremely difficult and it is vital that as an Early Years Practitioner you reflect on your own practice in order to continually improve and meet the needs of the children in your setting.
Reflective practice is an important tool in settings where people learn from their own personal experience and may be the most important and effective source of personal professional development and improvement. It can be described as continuous learning and development through looking back at experiences, emotions, actions and responses of not only the children in the setting but of the enabling adults and then using this knowledge and reflection to improve practice.
Jean Piaget was widely known for his theory of cognitive development and he influenced learning theorist David Kolb who proposed a learning cycle which can be used to help us reflect on our learning. Kolb suggested that in order for effective learning to happen, four processes need to take place; doing the experience, reviewing the experience, learning from the experience and trying out what you have learned.

How many times as a practitioner and in everyday life do we say if only we knew…… hindsight is an amazing thing. In the same way, Kolb’s learning cycle allows us that benefit, maybe not of hindsight but of reflecting on what we have done and improving it, adjusting it, adapting it and trying it out all over again.
A more structured approach of this reflective cycle came from Graham Gibbs who adapted Kolb’s work, is this another way of reflective practice? And created a more structured approach.
Already, we can recognise this in our own practice. How many of us observe an activity or an opportunity taking place, observe how it evolves before adapting the idea, enhancing the resources and trying out the new and improved version for ourselves?
Gibbs reflective cycle included analysing the event and also considering our feelings during the event as well as considering an action plan to improve the way in which we work.


In order to effectively use the cycle the adult needs to think about what has happened, their feeling and evaluate the situation. This then needs to be analysed with a conclusion being drawn from this. The final stage is to consider an action plan, which could involve further training and development, more specific curriculum knowledge being gained or observing peers in a similar environment.
As we can see, there are a variety of models available to help you as an adult engage in the process of self-evaluation and reflection. It is important for the process to be successful to choose the model which best suits you and assists you in learning from your experiences.
Over the course of my studies, I have become much more confident in the process of reflective practice and see it in the positive experience that it should be, we are all human and mistakes are made, things can be done better and we become much more rounded adults by accepting this and using a reflective cycle to enable us to improve as practitioners and ultimately give the children in our setting the start in life that they truly deserve.
The reflective cycle should be embraced by practitioners and I believe that it should take place both as an isolated reflection within our own thoughts and also as a more formal approach such as a regular appraisal with the EYFS leader. I feel fortunate to have a very supportive EYFS leader and I feel that our process of peer to peer observations helps us to use Gibbs cycle of reflection and also reflects on all areas of the setting. You may reflect on your own professional development but if you neglect to reflect on your setting, areas of development and knowledge of new initiatives and ideas, you could sadly be letting down the children who rely on you on a day to day basis.
I am also a fan of having an action plan as suggested in Gibbs reflective cycle. This is because I believe that it takes time for children and adults to adapt to changes and what may seem like a minor change, can in fact be quite significant to children in the setting. Time is therefore crucial in the success of reflective practice. Again, it could be that once the initial changes are made, time is needed to appreciate the benefits of the changes. This is very evident in our setting, following an inspection that occurred within weeks of changes being made across the board in school. Unfortunately, time had not been given to see the impact of the changes and we are in fact, now seeing the positive results of these changes, albeit a little late, however, another inspection will hopefully be able to appreciate the changes from the reflection.