Improving Practice through Reflection

Reflective practice is an important skill for practice-based professional learning and is arguably a critical skill to ensure we can become more effective in what we do.¹ It is a cycle of continuous learning that happens when we take the time to stop, recapture an experience, contemplate it, mull it over, and evaluate it.² It is a technique of continuous learning from experience and enables us to solve problems, which arise in complex and difficult situations.³

I am sure a lot of you undertake it in one form or another. It is not a new concept. However, at the risk of telling you the obvious, it is a worthwhile topic to raise, particularly for my fellow junior practitioners. As well as being a helpful learning tool, I consider it is a good way to keep life at the bar in perspective.

There are a number of different theories and models of reflective practice, but in applying the “keep it simple” principle, I like the model based loosely on SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threat), which emanates from the business arena.⁴ This particular model requires us to consider an event or circumstance and to formally analyses it by asking ourselves:

• What worked well?
• Why?
• What did not work well?
• Why not?
• What will I do the same next time?
• What will I do differently next time?

However, rather than just asking ourselves these questions from our own view point, it is helpful (albeit confronting) to consider these questions through the eyes of our instructing solicitors, our clients, our fellow barristers and the judge presiding over the case.⁵

I suggest reflective practice is a tool that cannot only be used when things go wrong, but with discipline can be built in to our daily practice. If we have a successful day, why not try and recapture the elements that worked well and make sure we use them next time.

There is no one way or a right way to implement reflective practice and I am sure there are a lot of you who do it unconsciously. However, to take it to the next level, to ensure you are truly benefiting from your experiences (good and bad), two helpful approaches are to keep a reflective journal and to set up a debriefing system with a mentor or colleague.⁶

Perhaps for very junior practitioners such as pupils, small group discussions led by an experienced and supportive barrister may be a further way to implement reflective practice (sharing and learning from each others’ war stories).

So next time you have a bad day, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, stop and reflect on what happened, ask yourself those important questions to ensure you benefit from the experience and do better next time. It is quite a journey.

Footnotes

1. Weston T, Reflective Practice www.worklifedesign.com.au (accessed June 2011)
2. Boud D, Keogh R, & Walker D (Eds) (1985) Reflection: Turing experience into learning London, England, Kogan Page
3. Goldring J (2003) The Reflective Judge: Aims and Content of Judicial Education, Journal of Judicial Administration, Vol 12 p 216
4.  www.brainbox.co.uk/a3_aspects/pages/ReflectionModels.htm (accessed June 2011)
5. Brookfield S (1995) Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, San Francisco, USA, Jossey Bass
6. Eyler J, Giles DE, Schmiede (1996) A Practitioner’s Guide to Reflection in Service-learning: Student Voices and Reflections, www.compact.org/disciplines/ reflection/bibliography (accessed June 2011)