Techniques for Reflective Practice

An annual form is a record, not a practice. What changes how someone works is short, frequent and close to the event, because the useful detail is gone within a day.

The version that survives contact with a real workload is five minutes after a session that felt wrong, answering three questions in writing. What actually happened, what I assumed at the time, and what I would try instead. Keep it for yourself. The moment it feeds appraisal, people write what they are willing to be judged on and the honest version stops being written.

Two things make it stick. Only do it after sessions that went badly or surprised you, because reflecting on the ones that went fine is where the habit dies. And read back over a month of it once a month, because a single note teaches you very little and the same note appearing four times teaches you something specific about your own practice.

Worth adding a caution that comes up often in this kind of work. Reflection can slide into rumination, especially after a session where someone disclosed something difficult, and the two feel similar from inside. The difference is that reflection ends with something you will do differently and rumination goes round.

If a session keeps returning to you and there is nothing left to change, that is a supervision or peer support matter rather than a reason to write more notes. And the reverse is worth naming too: a mentor who never has a session that goes wrong is usually one who is not being told very much.

If you want to reflect with other people rather than alone, EPALE is the European platform where adult learning practitioners publish this kind of account, and reading how someone in another country handled the same problem is often more use than a framework.