Theoretical perspectives on reflection in professional development

[LHuddleston]

Hi everyone,

As part of my Level 3 Early Years Educator diploma I would like to discuss theoretical perspectives diploma for the early years educator I would like to discuss theoretical perspectives in relation to professional development.

Professional development is really important especially in the early years as they give practitioners the chance to reflect on their practice, what has gone well in their practice or not. They can also think about how they could have made this better and what they could do in order to improve this. Professional development helps practitioners become the best they can at their job and develop their knowledge and skills further in their career. It not only develops these but it is a way to go further in your career and progress. Professional development benefits not only the practitioners but the children in their care and their carers/parents.

I have been looking at David Kolb's theory of professional development, his theory is a model of reflection which practitioners can easily follow in order to reflect on their professional development. David Kolb made the experimental learning cycle which is used widely by practitioners for reflecting on their own practice. It involves a four-stage learning cycle in which the learner should hit all four bases.
These include;
Concrete experience where you immerse yourself in the experience and what you are doing, immersing yourself in the work
Reflective practice which is where you think about what you noticed about the experience, what happened and what did you do?
Abstract conceptualization where you think about what you could change or would change about the experience, how would you improve this?
Active experimentation where you try out the new ideas to develop your practice and further develop

The idea of his cycle is that you keep going around, constantly reflecting on your work and improving your professional development from immersing yourself in your work, reflecting on this yourself and thinking about how it went overall, thinking about how you could improve this and how you could make your practice better and then finally carrying this out in your practice. This way you are constantly improving your practice and work skills/knowledge to be the best you can and provide the best care to the children.