Reflective Practice - Experience Learning From a Given Situation - Essay Example

Reflective Practice - Experience Learning From a Given Situation Abstract Reflective practice accords use different benefits owing to the characteristics of the practice that allows experience learning from a given situation through reflecting and developing insight. The paper looks at reflective practice as a concept and its relation to skills required by postgraduate students to be strategic learners. The skills include time management, reading and writing, creative reading, and developing of academic English. These skills allow learners to have better professional understanding and develop critical analysis of their practice to benefit from improved ability to meet their learning needs effectively. The study ends with a brief description of the benefits of reflective practice and the shortcomings or criticism that has been labeled on reflective practice. Reflective practice allows for efficient reading and enables learners to develop strategic learning abilities because of the ability of the practice to involve the learner in the learning process. Reflective Practice Reflective practice is was introduced by Donald Shon in 1987 aimed at improving practice and other aspects of practice for learners, professionals, and other users (Brockbank, 2002: 4). Reflective practice entails the ability of reflecting on actions and behaviors to allow for continuous learning and improvement. Reflective practice entails the analysis of the theories and motivations that necessitate certain actions in the course of life to allow for the development of insight into certain actions and behaviors allowing the person to learn more every day. According to Reid, “Reflection is a process of reviewing the experience of practice in order to describe, evaluate, and so inform learning about practice” (Reid, 1993: p. 305). Reflective learning has a close relation to learning from experience owing to the insistence in analysis the precedence if actions and learning from the results to allow for better decision making and knowing how best to act given the same circumstances. Reflective thinking involves the conscious decision by a person to think of an event, analyze the event, and develop insight from the event allowing for the effectiveness of reflective practice (Sugerman, 2000: p. 12). Guidance by a professional is an important aspect of reflective practice. This paper aims at examining reflective practice followed by a critical discussion on the contribution of reflective practice to becoming a strategic learner. Learning styles Reflective practice allows students and other learners to develop analytical, evaluative, and reasoning skills in the course of learning. Reflective practice allows for a person to question the beliefs and decisions made by a person to form the basis for better understanding allowing for the person to have better understanding of the concept under inquiry. Effectiveness of the learning process according to Kolb and Fry requires possession of four abilities; experience, abstract conceptualization, reflective observation, and active experimentation abilities. Converged: characterized by abstract conceptualization and active experimentation allowing for practical idea application, focus on deductive reasoning, and unemotional problem-solving. Diverging: diverging learning style is inclusive of learners characterized for reflective observation and concrete experience. Diverging learning style consists of individuals with a strong imagination, broad cultural interests, and is very good at having different perspectives from the rest and generation of new ideas. Assimilator: characterized by abstract conceptualization and reflective observation. The learners can use inductive reasoning to create theoretical models, and are concerned with abstract and not people. Accommodator: the main characteristics of this learning style are concrete experience and active experimentation. The main characteristics of the learners are immediate and effective reaction to circumstances, intuitive problem-solving, and are risk takers. Experimental learning: According to Javis, “experimental learning involves learning fro primary experiences” (Javis, 1995:75) forming the basis for reflective learning. Reflective practice achieves allows for the achievement of effective learning process. Time management skills Time management skills are the understanding by the students and other practitioners to ensure use of time effectively and to choose the priority actions to undertake within a given period. Time management skills take a process to develop and can be easily achieved through reflective practice allowing the individual to make decisions easily. A reflective practitioner increases the chances of making decisions in an informed, objective, and thoughtful manner reducing decision time and avoiding the need to work on mistakes thereby saving a lot of time in decision making (Moon, 2004: 43). Change requires a lot of thinking, dedication, and honesty with oneself to accept requiring a lot of time. However, use of reflective thinking allow for thoughtful look events, honest, and calm response to change increasing chances of making decisions early resulting in time management. Organization skills are augmented with reflective thinking on current actions and choices, solutions and adjustments. Reflective practice by postgraduate students can benefit from the calm manner of problem solving, decision making, and organization allowing them to develop time management skills in the process. Reading and writing Reading can take different forms according to the intentions of the readers from a certain material. Reading that aims at scanning the material for the main information is known as surface approach and the main aim by the readers is reproduction of the information in an examination setting. This kind of reading has no positive impact in the learning curve of the students owing to the lack of reflective practice (Wallace & Wray, 2011: 12). When student aims at understanding the information presented by a given reading, they adopt deep reading approach allowing the students decipher the author’s message and interact with the ideas in the reading adequately. The strategic reading approach allows the students to use surface or deep approach according to the aim of the reading, which in this case is achieving the best grades. Reading, therefore, determines the learning outcomes of a study and there is a need for effective reading and learning that ensures the students deeply interact with the reading and have personal interpretation and interaction to generate new insight and develop new knowledge. Using reflective practice undergraduate students will get the understanding of the need for knowledge and understanding from reading and not reproducing or for short-term assessment (Lynch, November 2008: 8). The realization allows for in-depth text analysis, reading for knowledge and personal development, applying the reading to practice and actions, and generating new ideas. Reflective practice, therefore, provides the students with channels to develop hunger for knowledge and more understanding resulting in beneficial life changing reading. Reflective practice allows the ability of students to have better writing skills through emphasizing the need for reflection of writing techniques, materials used in the writing, and the results of the writing process (Sen, 2010: pp. 24). Reflective practice enables a learner to scrutinize the use of books, peer-reviewed journals in writing, and understanding of flaws in the writing of books that cannot be understood without reflective practice. Asking critical questions on the quality of writing materials allows the ability of students having reflective practice to choose quality materials for use in writing including books, papers, presentations, seminar content, and case studies. Reflective practice also allows students to be critical in their content in terms of application to their personal lives, professional practice, and benefits to the profession allowing for better writing. Critical reading techniques Critical reading techniques is one of the most important post graduate skills allowing the learners to have an in-depth understanding of the material they study and allows for perspective and better developed professionals (Reissner & Watsonand, 2010: 42). There are different ways through which reflective practice aids in the development of the critical reading techniques as discussed below. Reflective practice allows postgraduate students to develop a behavior of reflecting on the materials provided for use in class. Reflective critical reading behaviors include ability to scrutinize the materials provided critically allowing better understanding go the subject matter and independent formation of conclusions. A post graduate student has to undertake scholarly research and promote the professional’s knowledge development through research. Reflective practice allows a postgraduate student to think of the practice, the depth of analysis undertaken by different researchers and the need development of independent thinking in the profession. The other way through which reflective practice aids in the development of critical reading techniques is that it assists in developing critical reflection in students. Critical reflection entails focusing on one’s experiences to allowing understanding and resolving the difference between the actual and the desirable experience. Postgraduates can apply critical reflection to the levels of their performance and learn to be able to gauge the difference. Critically reflecting on the learning experience and effort allows students to understand the importance and develop creative thinking skills for better learning. This is because of the need for them to appraise critically their learning, resources, methods of instruction, and other teaching skills (Berg, 1966). Developing academic English Academic English cab be developed through analyzing content in a more critical manner allowing for emphasis on the requirement for effective use if academic English for better communication and effectiveness. Reflection on practice and guidance by a professional allows one to develop proficiency in writing and speaking of academic English. Benefits of reflective practice Reflective practice offers many benefits to the users including the ability to have a deeper understanding of their teaching style in cases of teachers (Reid, 1993: 308). The reason is that a reflective practice allows teachers to understand their assumptions and analyzes their methods. Reflective practice increases the ability for deep learning to occur among the students and the teachers when the appropriate learning style is incorporated in reflective practice. Reflective practice allows the users to improve problem-solving skills, become a critical thinker, and make decisions easily saving time (Barrass, 2002: pp.32). However, reflective practice has been criticized for reflection that lacks conceptual approaches, inability of the students to criticize existing methods of learning, and having the mentality of reflection on demand. Despite these shortcomings, reflective practice is more beneficial than it is harmful to students, teachers, and other professionals in improving practice and learning. A strategic learner has to have effective reflective practice skills as evidenced by a contribution to the development of important skills for learning and professional development (Rust, 1998). These skills include developing academic English, time management, critical reading techniques, reading and writing among other skills for effective written and verbal communication and learning. These skills result in the development of a whole person and are very important for postgraduate skills owing to the need for independent scholarly research, use of quality materials in research, and need to add to knowledge in a certain professional field. The importance of reflective practice to strategic learning depicts the need for reflection in learning, research, reading, and writing for postgraduate students for effectiveness and success. References BARRASS, R. (2002).  Study! A Guide to Effective Learning, Revision and Examination Techniques. London: Routledge BERG, P. (1966). Improving Study Skills. In: Journal of Reading, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 343-348. BROCKBANK, A., MCGILL, I., & BEECH, N. (2002). Reflective learning in practice. Aldershot, Hants, England, Gower. ENTWISTLE, N. (2013). How students learn and study. The higher education academy. JARVIS, P. (1994) ‘Learning’, ICE301 Lifelong Learning, Unit 1(1), London: YMCA George WILLIAMS, College.Kolb, A. & KOLB D. 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