Leadership: Part 4 - Rich reflection

Everyone who works in the early years is familiar with the phrase ‘reflective practitioner’. We know the importance of reflecting to enable a deeper understanding of children’s learning and development and to improve our effectiveness as practitioners. What is happening here is that, through reflection, we are accessing the knowledge found in our ‘knowledge basket’ (see previous instalments in this series for a fuller explanation of this term). There are many ways in which this might be done. The riches revealed from the basket are the tools practitioners need to access and develop their knowledge in order to do their job well.

REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

One of the main reasons people do not engage in reflective activity is that it is often seen as a negative endeavour. Looking at what did not go well or what could have gone better can start a cycle of self-criticism that is unhelpful and unnecessary. Reflection should look at what we have learned about ourselves and the situations we find ourselves in, involving making connections, seeing opportunities, being creative and exploring possibilities. It can help keep us safe by making visible the thoughts and feelings we hold that we do not recognise in other ways.

For example, in our book, ‘Jackie’ shared her anxiety that a new cohort of children were not settling in as well as they should. She talks about it being very subtle, that she only picked it up because it made her feel uneasy, although there were few outward signs of a problem. Exploring her feelings, she began to see she was mourning her previous group of children and the relationships she had with them. Recognising this enabled her to see that the new children were not ‘hard to settle’; instead it was her desire to get to that stage of closeness that she had with the previous group. Recognising her feelings enabled improved relationships with the new children and a greater understanding of herself and group dynamics.

Reflection can also be a helpful way of appreciating a complex situation by looking at why the actors behaved as they did and how shifting the way we view their actions might improve the way we feel about them and ourselves.

Take the parent who never seems to want to talk to you no matter what approach you take: casual conversation starters at pick-up time are met with ‘gotta dash’, while the date for a suggested catch-up meeting never materialises from their diary. It can be easy to assume they really are too busy and to either dismiss them from your mind or spend time worrying about how you can meet the expectation that your setting works in partnership with all families.

But it might also be that the real reason is a father feels anxious about his capacity to parent and doesn’t want to be found out. A mother might have had poor experiences with a whole variety of professionals and assume that you will be just as bad. The ability to put yourself in their shoes comes through reflection and paves the way for a more emotionally literate environment.

Further, reflection can identify our own values and those of our profession and/or organisation; a useful reminder if your setting aims to have an open-door policy for parents to discuss their concerns.

WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?

Before starting a reflective activity, ask who you are doing it for. Are you doing it for an Ofsted visit or for yourself? Is this a team activity or a whole-setting activity involving the children and families?

Writing for public consumption, such as an Ofsted inspection, will inevitably mean that you will have to make decisions about the depth and detail, the language used and the way the reflection is structured. It may be in a set format. You may decide to use one of the many reflective models, such as Donald Schon’s experience; evaluation; learning; experiment cycle (1983). Consider also what evidence you must provide.

If you are writing for yourself, you can express yourself in any way you choose. Indeed, this type of reflective activity is most productive when used as a free writing opportunity; giving yourself five or ten minutes to empty your head onto a piece of a paper and then looking back over what is written to identify any themes that emerge.

Spelling, grammar, ‘proper’ words and all the conventions of writing can be cast aside as it is the content that you are most interested in. It may be issues for consideration, connections between your knowledge gained from your experience as a practitioner and knowledge of your community, solutions to puzzles or conflicts.

When writing as a team, constructing a joint understanding, barriers of spelling and grammar may re-emerge. It is up to you as a leader to create an environment where people feel able to write what they want in the way they want. This can be done through a careful choice of topic; maybe moving, over time, from the easily accessible to the more complex as everyone gets used to sharing their thoughts.

You may ask the team to write individual journals and then come together to discuss a particular topic, scenario or activity. You could engage in a ‘round robin’ exercise, where one piece of paper has a question at the top and is given to each person in turn to add a thought and fold over before passing it along, with the final discussion around the general themes that emerge from that activity.

Post-its are useful for developing a group perspective. What is known as a ‘double loop reflective activity’ could then be engaged in, where the group look at what has been written and take the opportunity for further reflection; looking for the common threads and the differences. This further round of reflective activity can capture those responses towards a deeper, shared understanding.

A really good group activity is sharing a scenario and asking each person in the team to take on a role in order to explore different perspectives (such as being a parent).

MORE THAN WORDS

If you use a journal for reflection, remember that it can be used for more than just writing in. It can be used as a scrapbook; a repository of artefacts that have significance for you – the daisy you were given by one of the children when you spent time with them in the garden one morning; the kind note left by a colleague. Reflecting in this way helps you engage with deeper feelings and thoughts and to make links and appreciate the significance and inter-relationships between what appears, at first sight, to be unconnected or insignificant.

Your thoughts are free to spiral round, looking at the experience or situation you are engaged with from many angles to enable you to see the different perspectives, opportunities and significances, giving you a much clearer message about what is important.

How to ‘get into the zone’? Reflective activity can be experienced through any mechanism that feels right. This means using art, music, poetry, even baking (it’s amazing what reflective possibilities exist in decorating a cupcake). For example, sculpting yourself as a swan (which is, like you, placid on the surface while paddling like mad underneath the water) and taking the time to explore what enables you to remain serene, what is making you flap and how/whether the activity underneath the surface should/could be shared, and with whom.

If you feel you are best when paddling like mad, in busy situations, this enables you to think about your trajectory – where are you swimming to? – providing clarity to your objectives and better understanding your role in making them happen. These mechanisms can also be used as teambuilding exercises with everyone contributing to a final piece. This is a particularly useful way to access complex thoughts or talk about emotive issues, and the activity – not so much the final product – is the revealing bit.

Using models can help clarify actions. In our book, manager ‘Sue’ explored her thinking about how to improve an outdoor space and introducing free flow. The project had run into difficulties: parents’ complaints about the state of children’s clothes, and inadequate play equipment, stressed her staff. She said, ‘I decided to look at each of the issues that had arisen as a single piece of a larger puzzle. By doing this, I began to see that one of the mistakes I had made was in approaching the task in a linear manner. By looking at the problem in terms of a [jigsaw] puzzle, I can now see that many of the issues are linked and therefore will need to be tackled simultaneously.’

Wholehearted engagement in the process is key to extracting the most from the activity. Yes, reflection can be used to see what might not be working and could be changed, but it can also be used to creatively explore the many different ways in which you and your setting might meet the challenges that present themselves on a daily basis.

How do you know what riches are in the knowledge basket, and thus tools at your disposal, without proper reflection?

FURTHER INFORMATION

Quality and Leadership in the Early Years by Verity Campbell-Barr and Caroline Leeson (Sage, £22.99).

Caroline Leeson is associate professor in early childhood studies at Plymouth Institute of Education. Verity Campbell-Barr is currently undertaking research on the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for working in early childhood education and care.see http://forum.nurseryworld.co.uk/index.php?p=/discussion/116/qualifications-and-training#Item_1