With the end of the academic year rapidly approaching, in this blog, Sarah Allsop challenges us to think about scheduling a session of reflection through 3 lenses: retrospective, introspective and prospective and how these can help us to learn, focus and plan.
So, we have made it to the end of another academic year. This may lead to a mixture of excitement, anticipation, or simply relief! Often, we start to think about taking a break, planning summer conference trips and projects, as well as shifting focus to the next academic year.
A really useful task that we can schedule for ourselves at this time of year is reflection. For some, this will come very naturally, for others perhaps not so much, but regardless of your viewpoint on reflective practice, it can help to have a focussed approach.
There are a multitude of different reflective tools and models to support reflective practice such as Gibbs, Kolb etc, and I recently read an interesting summary blog by Tom Barrett, ‘From Awareness to Action: A Complete Guide to Reflective Practice Cycles for Teachers‘. I was particularly drawn to the ideas and simplicity of a model they describe which breaks reflective practice into three parts: retrospective, introspective and prospective reflection.
Let’s take a look together at how to use these three aspects to support a focussed actionable reflection process.
Retrospective reflection – What have I learnt?
Looking back over past experience may be what you first think about when you read the term ‘reflection’. This process of evaluating what has gone well and what things we might do differently in future is a great learning technique. However, if we reflect on a whole academic year, that can be challenging.
One way to compartmentalise the process is to use the “Start-Stop-Continue” model.
- What do you want to start doing?
- What do you want to stop doing?
- What do you want to keep doing?
This gives you three categories allowing you to: celebrate your successes, consider how to learn from challenging experiences and to focus in on your future goals. This gives you a considered plan which you can take to an annual review or meeting with your line manager, and discuss your current journey in a constructive and forward-thinking way.
Introspective reflection – What do I want?
Once we have identified what we want to learn from past experiences, the next step is thinking about how we feel, using introspection to look inward. Thinking deeply about our feelings in relation to our work, can help us focus on why certain aspects of our jobs give us the most joy, the so called ‘finding our passion’. This can be done with reference to different time points, for example, how did a past experience make me feel, or how do I feel right now?
One of the most popularised ways of conceptualising this, is a diagram by Marc Winn based on the Japanese concept of ‘Ikigai’ (roughly translated to ‘reason for being’). The diagram proposes your reason for being or sense of purpose at work, can be found at the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs and what you can be paid for. Thinking about this in the context of your current role can help you to think about what you want and hope for from your career, identifying potential gaps in your development, and thinking about how to move towards your future vision.
Prospective reflection – What’s next?
From thinking about what we want, prospective reflection needs to occur both at a personal level – where am I headed and how do I get there, but also what does the future landscape of my discipline look like. This forward thinking phase of the reflective process is where you put your learning, focus, priorities and ambitions into action.
Prospective reflection may be as simple as thinking about where you want to be in six months, 12 months, five years, 10 years etc., but you also need to think about where your discipline is headed. What is going to be needed for the future and how do you make sure that you are well placed to serve that future. To make prospective reflection actionable, you really only need to think about one thing – the next step. So, we end with a simple question to move your reflection to action:
What is the next actionable step that can move you forward in your academic journey?
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Have you had success using reflective techniques? What are your favourite focussed reflection techniques and why? Comment below: