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Self-Reflective Practices

Self-Reflective Practices - Pragmatic Steps/Approaches for Reflection

Capturing Events
A key component in reflection is capturing/recording the events worthy of reflection. This is also the most demanding aspect of reflection in terms of time and energy. Capturing events is very important, especially since opportunities for mentors and mentees to meet face to face do not necessarily occur every day.

There are a number of approaches that can be used to capture/record important events of the day, week or some longer period of time. Whatever the format used, it is important to capture not only the event, but what might have lead up to the event and what happened afterwards. That is, the event should be placed within a context.

Following are a number of different strategies:

• Journaling
  Journaling is probably the most common form for capturing events and reactions to events. It is a good strategy, especially for beginning special educator to use for self-reflection. It also is the most time consuming. A reflective journal might include descriptions of critical events, lessons or units. It should also include the uncertainties around the entry and the questions that this causes. It should also include beginning answers to these questions or the issues that might need to be resolved in order to come up with viable answers.
• Tape Recording
  Tape recording rather than journaling might be a good option for those that find writing to be hard work. Tape recording can take some getting use to and may initially work better for capturing events rather than reflections on those events. With practice, however, taking 5 minutes during the day to "brain dump" can be a very effective and efficient way to capture events for both self and collaborative reflection as well as pose questions and potential answers. In essence a tape recording can be set up the same way as a journal.
• Other Written Records
  Some teachers have found that recording events on 3X5 cards or other less formal strategies is an effect way of quickly and immediately capturing critical events so they don't get lost in the craziness of the day.
• Observation
  Taking the opportunity to capture critical events while conducting observation of beginning special educators, or while they are observing their mentor, can also provide a powerful way to facilitate collaborative reflection.
• Informal Debriefing
  Even if the beginning special educator can't find the time day to day to capture the critical events that they have questions about, they can still be systematic in asking themselves a set of questions at the end of the week or even less frequently. These might include such things as:
  • From (this time) to (this time), I remember doing the following in class:
  • During this time I've learned:
  • Considering my desires for this class (or these students), we have made progress on these things:
  • My feelings about reading, writing, the class, the students, etc. are: