Tools for critical reflection

Martin Locock

20 September 2010

 Objectives

•Understand critical thinking and critical reflection

•Apply a range of techniques to enhance reflection

•Identify future actions to improve performance 

Critical thinking and critical reflection

Critical thinking“active interpretation and evaluation of observations” awareness of one’s own thoughts and behaviour [‘meta awareness’]Present focus

Critical reflectionpurposeful thought about experience to understand and learn for the futurePast focus

 http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/critical1.htm

Mezirow’s transformational learning

Learning that leads one to review past experience and assumptions

 

Exercise 1: time allocation

 

How much of your time is spent:

•preparing for activity

•doing activity

•reviewing activity

Planning10%

Activity80%

Review10%

Planning35%

Activity60%

Review5%

Planning25%

Activity60%

Review15%

Type A

Living in the present

Hurry sickness?

Type B

Planning/doing

Type C

Plan/Do/Reflect

Reflection on time use

• How much time spent doing is wasted?• How much time spent planning is

wasted?• How much time spent reflecting is

wasted?

• Whose permission do you need to change your time use?

Hurry sickness: symptoms• Never finish things properly• Miss important meetings and

deadlines• Drive fast and arrive late• Do many things at once• No time for relaxation or exercise• Take work home routinely

Hurry sickness: treatment

• Time management techniques?• Do something you enjoy every day• Spend 20 minutes outside every day• Align work on your priorities• Use your leisure time constructively

• See PSMW Boniwell powerpoint

Critical reflection

Self awareness - the internal narrative

Becoming self-aware in real time

Critical reflection -

what did I learn?

what did I do well?

Building a routine

Critical friends

What is a critical friend?

Someone who will assist your personal development over the medium term

Provides: trust, support, honesty, time = friend

And: challenge, measure progress = critical

Not: information, advice, negative comments

Who makes a good critical friend?

Not your boss

Not your best friend

Who?

Exercise 2: free writing :  A current problem

Free writing is a technique that allows you to follow a line of thought without self-editing and will often end by exposing an insight of which you were not consciously aware.

•Select an issue (a current problem you are facing)

•Start writing what you think or feel about it

•Don’t worry about structure, spelling or layout

•Keep the pen moving across the page

•Don’t go back to correct or erase

Feedback?

Exercise 3: Reflecting on an insight / writing a haiku

Japanese form, three lines, 5 / 7 / 5 syllables

Can have a title

Must have two parts, often marked by : two different aspects of something (outside/inside, event/analysis)

Can seem mundane

First autumn morning

The mirror I stare into

Shows my father’s face

Contract with the new day

I'll do honour toThe thing inside myself that'sGreater than my self

Writing a haikuSubject: an insight or experience from

the last 12 months

•Find a thought 3 minutes•Write it down as a phrase•First draft (title last) 5 minutes•Quick revision 2 minutes•Final version: reading

Judging your poem

•Does it contain a truth?

•Does it express that truth?

•Does it communicate that truth?

Irrelevant questions:

•Is the idea new?

•Is the idea one you are committed to?

•Would someone else have written it differently?

Critical reflection toolbox

•Routine

•Critical friend

•Free writing

•Haiku

Reviewing current status and identifying key areas

  How happy are you with your current state of mind?  How committed are you to change?  To what extent do you engage in critical reflection? What reflective practices do you use?  How far are you self aware in the moment?

Action plan

By tomorrow I will have ... By the end of next week I will have ... By the end of next month I will have ... My critical friend is ...

Conclusion

•Time

•Self-awareness

•Reflection

•Action plan