Thing 17: Reflective Practice

Learning from doing.

Reflective Practice is not something that I have up until now being consciously doing as part of my working life.

The Rudai blog has been great at making me think about using tools or platforms that I might not have been otherwise aware of before now and reflective practice is another concept that could prove really useful. 

I have never kept a work journal nor am I particularly good about keeping notes when I attend workshops or, as I have already confessed in one of the earlier blogs, conferences.  I just never seem to get around to organising notes or reflecting back too deeply on what I have learned.  A mistake I know!

There is a lot to gain from writing notes or a journal when you do certain things.  If you take the time to reflect on what went well, what worked, what got a good response and also the things that did not work so well, then you can make positive changes for the next time you have to do it and keep reflecting and keep refining.   This type of reflection would be particularly useful after giving classes or tours or even after a session on the Reference Desk.   There is huge value in writing down our thoughts and clearly articulating them to ourselves.  The very act of writing our thoughts in a journal should make us more aware of what we are doing and means that our thoughts have much more of a chance of enduring and therefore making an impact on future actions than if we just think them in our heads.  And it should not be only about changing things.   It is also important to keep track of what worked and what went well.

Reflective practice requires us to use our critical thinking skills on ourselves and our actions and sometimes that can prove challenging and maybe a little bit uncomfortable if we have to reflect on things that did not go the way we wanted.  It is important that we value the time spent thinking about work and use it positively because it is all about learning and, ultimately, hopefully improving how we approach certain tasks and taking some out of the stress out of our working lives.