Standing back from your work and considering what is going well, what not, how you might do things better, or do different things, and what you can learn from experiences. Much of what we think about reflective practiceStanding back from your work and considering what is going well, what not, how you might do things better, or do different things, and what you can learn from experiences. Much of what we think about reflective practice comes from the philosopher Donald Schön's research into successful practitioner... More comes from the philosopher Donald Schön’s research into successful practitioners in a range of fields, and how they learn to do reflective practiceStanding back from your work and considering what is going well, what not, how you might do things better, or do different things, and what you can learn from experiences. Much of what we think about reflective practice comes from the philosopher Donald Schön's research into successful practitioner... More. Schön differentiates reflection-in-action (what we do all the time to make small adjustments in practice) from reflection-on-action (when we step out of the action and think more deeply). Working with Chris Argyris, Schön looked at how this works within successful organisations as “double-loop learning”, to reflect on collective practice and develop shared capabilities. Michael Aruat (1995) argued that Schön had overstated the distinction between the two modes, and the focus of reflective activity on problem solving. In reality it is more chaotic and emergent, combining more focussed problem solving with less focussed mental intentions and accidental creations. Studies of designers and design teams (Lawson, Cross) show that this is the case, but some structure and sense of process helps teams to negotiate their way through the complexity and make progress on challenges. Key to this is effective description and modelling of the things we are working on: diagramming, prototyping (or playfultyping), and storytelling. This is not something that can be defined in a simple format. It takes practice and meta reflection (reflecting on how we reflect) and is best done collaboratively, with colleagues, friends, and experienced mentors.
The Warwick Award team have created this reallly useful Self-Reflection Toolkit which includes structured approaches that can help you to simplify the process and ensure you reflect with sufficient descriptive, analytical, and critical depth.