We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.’ This fillet of wisdom from John Dewey, an American philosopher and educational reformer, is not news to early years practitioners. Yet in the busy reality of an early years manager’s life, sometimes it feels like there is so much information to get across that there isn’t time to pause. But this is a short-term approach. Because true reflection, based in real experiences, is much less likely to be forgotten.
Gibbs’ reflective cycle is a useful model to use in meetings and training sessions. It takes staff through the process of having an experience, reflecting on the feelings they had at the time, evaluating how it went, and analysing it to make sense of it, before drawing conclusions about what could be done differently and developing an action plan for the future.
Introduce the concept
An obvious approach is to immerse practitioners in a real learning experience and invite reflection, as in the case study below. Another approach is to ask each practitioner to bring a challenging situation they have recently experienced to the staff meeting. Introduce Gibbs’ reflective cycle, and share your own challenging experience. This is an opportunity to model how the process works. Invite each practitioner to share their experience with the group. Together the manager and team can support each other in using Gibbs’ model to reflect, and develop an action plan for future situations. It is essential to listen with empathy and without judgement so that people can be honest in their reflections.
Journals
The idea of a journal is not simply to describe what happened during the day, but rather to focus in depth on two or three events. The key point for practitioners to remember is that this is about them and their role in the event. It is always possible to find external reasons for why things didn’t work well: ‘There weren’t enough members of staff; ‘The children were all tired and over-excited.’ There may well be some truth to these statements. However, the focus of a reflective journal is on how the individual coped with the situation, including how they managed the external challenges they were faced with. Some useful questions might include:
- What happened?
- How did I feel just before, during and after?
- What do I think other people were thinking and feeling at the time?
- What could I have done differently and what impact might this have had?
- What would I do next time?
Some practitioners may need support with writing this during supervision. Feelings that external situations are to blame for events can be very un-empowering for team members. This approach enables each individual to develop their own strategies, and ways of communicating effectively and managing their feelings.
Brainstorming best practice
It can be useful to think through as a team what ‘best practice’ would look like in relation to any given area of your work. I recently visited a nursery where the manager had initiated this type of discussion at a staff meeting on the topic of ‘What makes an outstanding early years practitioner?’ The points the team agreed on were turned into a document, and this is now used at supervision meetings for practitioners to reflect on their own practice. The fact that each practitioner made a contribution to the document and agreed on its contents makes it a far more effective tool because it is meaningful to them.
CASE STUDY: CHILDREN’S NATURE NURSERY, LYMINGTON
One evening, I arrived for a teaching practice observation at the Children’s Nature Nursery. The last of the children were leaving, and nursery staff, who had been working since 8am, nipped to the toilet, and those who hadn’t spent the afternoon outdoors donned warm clothes and boots. I was similarly clad. The manager, Felicity Warriner, produced a wooden trolley full of kit and we set off up to the lane. We were off to the woods.
The lane in question is the drive to an old country house. The nursery has permission to use an area of woodland adjacent to the drive. Ms Warriner pointed out features of some of the gnarled trees lining the drive. After a few hundred yards we reached the wood, climbing over or through the fence to gain entry, lifting the trolley over the top. We made our way to a small clearing where there were logs laid out in a circle, sat down, and the training began in earnest.
Ms Warriner organised the team into pairs to work together: one was blindfolded and her partner took her to a tree, which she was to explore with her hands. After a few minutes, the blindfolded person was led away, the blindfold removed, and then she was set the challenge of finding ‘her tree’. After a while others took turns to find ‘their tree’ with the distinctive grooves in the bark, or with a fork in the trunk just above head height, or with a low bough on the left.
Everyone was delighted – not only were they developing teamwork and trust in one another, but they were also having real learning experiences, exploring the world through their fingertips.
There were further games (including mud art) before the sun set. We paused to enjoy the trees silhouetted against a coral pink sky. It was time for refreshments; we sat on the circle of logs, and hot tea and chocolate biscuits were produced from the trolley and devoured in the open air.
The final activity was for each individual to share something special from the session; reflecting on the experience. Reflections might include how they had felt before, during and after the activities. How might the children feel when taking part in these experiences? Questions such as these lead naturally to a reflection on current practice, evaluation of previous experiences with the children, and consideration of how to evolve practice in the future.
Now it was dark, the moon and the evening star were rising, and a distant tawny owl hooted. As we walked back to the nursery, lights twinkled in scattered cottages and a smell of woodsmoke drifted through the air.
This training could have taken place indoors at the nursery. The manager could have told the team some good outdoor activities to do with the children. She could have shown photographs, given out laminated resources to pass around, and twigs and leaves to handle. But she gave them so much more. They saw, they heard, they felt, they smelled, they tasted… they enjoyed and reflected on an experience they will not forget. Their feedback confirmed they would engage in these activities with enthusiasm and confidence because they knew what it felt like to learn in this way, and had engaged in a deeper level of reflective learning as a result.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Mind Tools offers lots of examples of effective questions you can use to support practitioners at each stage of the Gibbs reflective process, https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/reflective-cycle.htm
The Open University offers a free online course, ‘Learning to teach: becoming a reflective practitioner’, www.open.edu/openlearn/education/learning-teach-becoming-reflective-practitioner/content-section-6.2
Anne Oldfield is a qualified social worker and head of professional studies at Brockenhurst College. Sarah Emerson is an independent early years and parenting consultant, and a consultant for Indigo Wellbeing, and works at a children’s centre-based nursery.
