Nursery World - Nursery Management: Leadership

Reflective practice can take many forms. In an extract from Quality and Leadership in the Early Years, authors Verity Campbell-Barr and Caroline Leeson present two of them

There are numerous ways in which practitioners might reflect on their practice, with many models of reflection being firmly embedded in the reflective landscape: such as Kolb’s (1984) cyclical model of experience, reflect, conceptualise, experiment, experience; and Gibbs’ (1988) model, also cyclical, of description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan.

Engaging in reflective activity enables a close look at the motivations, thoughts and feelings that have informed every action, and explores what has shaped that understanding and who or what has tried to influence that thinking. What reflection should not be is a mechanism for criticising. All too often, reflective activity can start a cycle of self-criticism that is unhelpful; asking oneself what did not go well and why that might be makes practitioners anxious and they can begin to lose their confidence.

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