Explain Expectations About Own Work Role as Expressed in Relevant Standards

Reflection entails reviewing experience from practice so that it may be described, analysed, evaluated and consequently used to

6. Why it is important for practitioners to have high expectations and ambitions for children and young people? (Ref. 2.1, 5.1, 5.2)

Within this essay I will be concentrating on explaining how an individual can implement reflection in their learning experiences. Applying skills of reflection to a particular learning experience such as induction week will be the main focus of this essay as it will convey the importance of reflecting upon the experience of working with other students.

In order to improve their work with young children practitioners use their own learning by using ways of work that are non-judgemental, sensitive and positive. Therefore, practitoners through initial on-going training and development need to develop, and demonstrate and continuously improve a number of things in their work. They may have to work with the wider community such as parents and carers and also with other professionals with inside and outside the setting. They may have to improve on their relationships with both the children and their parents and develop a knowledge and understanding of the diverse ways that children can learn in order to support and extend children’s learning across all areas and aspects of learning (Leicestershire County Council).

1.2 My expectations as a members of staff in my setting is to become a valuable practitioner, to be reliable and build good relationships with children and parents. I encourage children to play, learn and explore and I always keep in mind their best interests. I work well as a part of a team both with members of staff and parents in order to support learning and development. This will help children feel confident, safe and secure. It will make parents feel confident as well. I make sure I always follow policies and procedures in order to keep my work place safe following all the regulations and codes of practice.

Reflection on best practice helps me think about my own efforts and successes or achievements. Reflection is a critical thinking strategy in which I review and analyse my work, making connections between what I have learnt and my efforts.

The practitioner has many responsibilities when engaging in professional relationships with children, their families, colleagues and other professionals. A very important thing to think about when it comes to the relationships with the family is confidentiality and building trust. Beaver, M (2008). When working in an early years setting having a good relationship with the parents should be important because parents have the most knowledge and understanding of their child, if they have good relationships with the practitioner they are more likely to want to share this knowledge and then they will feel valued and the child will benefit. A practitioner should always be diverse and engage in inclusive practice. A practitioner should

Reflective practice is an important and personal attribute needed by teachers in order for them to improve their teaching practice and develop. Furthermore, authors have considered what reflective practice means for a teacher, Robins et al (2003) suggests that reflective practice is a useful tool for teachers to learn about their own values and attributes. It also provides them with greater knowledge of the diverse needs in their classroom. This tool is suitable to use when planning lessons, as reflections should show what works for different children and how you could possibly adapt your strategies so that every child is supported in the best way possible. Reflective practice provides professionalism and empowering skills to professionals,

Reflection has been defined as an active, persistent and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge (Dewey, 1933. Dawn, 2007). Reflective practice is a process to improve quality of performance in the workplace, skills up to date throughout workplace and leads to understanding the field of care. Reflection requires self-awareness and analysis (Schutz et al, 2004). To reflect the incident, I have used Gibbs (1988) reflective cycle because it easy to follow, well structured and it allows reflection on feelings as well as actions (Pat, L., 2008). Besides that, it helps to recognize what we do well and how to interpret in the other situations.

‘Reflective teaching should be personally fulfilling for teachers, but also lead to a steady increase in the quality of the education provided for children.’ Pollard (2008, P.4) Here Pollard is suggesting that reflecting on our own teaching experiences is not only important for the standard of education we provide, but also for our own benefit as it can be rewarding and very worthwhile to reflect on our practices. By reflecting on my own practices in SE1, it will enable opportunities to analyse strengths and weakness and how to improve for future practice, which will allow me to develop more as both a reflective and a professional teacher. This idea of reflection stems from Dewey’s (1910) cited in McGregor and Cartwright (2011) ideas where he suggests that there are three attributes which enables us to be reflective, them being ‘open-mindedness’, ‘wholeheartedness’ and ‘responsibility’. By taking responsibility for our own teaching and reflecting upon our actions, it allows us to be open-minded about changing and adapting to new ideas from what we have concluded from our reflections, which then allows us to fully engage with these new thoughts.

Reflective practitioners are those who transfer the hidden wisdom and formal past knowledge to discover missed values, achieve a higher level of understanding, and recast current experiences. As Eliot indicated, “we reflect on an experience we had but missed the meaning” or “to get the meaning from an everyday experience” as Jonathan, Gosling, and Mintzberg explained. Reflective practitioners are never happy to accept ’routine actions’. As Dewey recommended, they believe that any current reality is one of many possible intelligently selected alternatives that are based on applying ‘reflective action’ to make a difference in their own, their students, and others’ lives. They are those who know their strengths and limitations, understand theories, see beyond an established way of thinking, are aware of cultural and context issues, and are not afraid to challenge and change. In Lebanon, teaching is sadly undervalued with thoughts of being a straightforward task despite the wide-ranging challenges teachers face. A number of schools are trying to apply reflective practices as a matter of adapting to the educational changes happening in the

Professor Graham Gibbs’ model of reflection is demonstrated in a Reflective Cycle (1998) and states that there has to be a more direct approach to reflection. Gibbs suggests you learn by doing, proposing that individuals make their own description, analysis and evaluation of the experience, helping the reflective practitioner make sense of their experiences is to examine their practice. Gibbs believes that reflection is not enough, you need to put into practice the new experiences gained, allowing the reflective process to inform your practice. Gibb’s model on reflection has six stages: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. Gibbs’ model was developed by an earlier concept by David Kolb’s experimental learning cycle. However Kolb’s reflective model was experimental (meaning learning through experience), Gibb’s model was referred to an iterative model (learning through repetition) (Learning Theories,

Reflection is considered as a state of mind which is a continuous practice (Fanghanel, 2004, p. 576). It yields confidential and safe ways to demonstrate personal experiences as well as continuously challenging perceptions, illusions and biases that can be damaging to cultures and society. Reflective practice enables the practitioner to learn about themselves and their work, their culture and society in which they live.

Reflective practice is a judgment about what one has done or is doing. It is directly associated with the notion of learning from the experience, in which you primarily think about what you did, and as a result what happened, and from there choose i.e. what different steps can be taken next time to ameliorate the learning experience. In other words Reflective practice is a vibrant action-based and principled set of skills, used in actual settings and thus let us deal with real, intricate and ticklish situations.

Reflection is considered as a vital element of professional practice as it precedes to insight and then subsequent change in practice. The hypothesis of reflection is not new as it can be tracked as far back in the 5th century by the influential Greek philosopher, Socrates and to the 1930s primarily focusing on John Dewey’s work. Dewey is one of the founders of learning from experience. He theorised reflection as ‘active, persistent and careful consideration’ (Dewey, 1933) initiated by a specific situation which was opposing, perplexing or uncertain. One of its most common use today is coming up with a thought, an idea, or opinion made or an observation made as a result of concentration, suggesting in essence a way of thinking in which one looks back and meditate upon (Agnes, 2004).