Reflective practice – How to use it in Early Years

Dr Helen Edwards provides some tips to help get you started with reflective practice in Early Years…

Reflective practice is all about focusing on what is working, adapting what isn’t and continuing to grow and improve teaching and learning experiences for children. Here are some practical ideas that you might want to implement.

Celebrate success

Reflection starts with a simple ‘taking stock’: the process of stepping back, thinking about what we have been doing, what has gone well, and what could be better.

Here are some helpful ‘taking stock’ questions:

• What area of our practice/environment are we going to focus on?
• What have we been doing?
• Who benefits from doing it this way? (Children, staff, families?)
• What has gone well?
• What needs improving and why?
• Who/what else do we need to think about?
• What can we keep/adapt to meet these needs?
• How are we going to do this? (You could include external CPD, in-house training, who will do what, when you will return to this area of reflection to see how things are going?)

Remember to celebrate all the things that have worked well. It’s so easy to slip into the treadmill of ‘what next?’ and a never-ending to do list.

Make sure you acknowledge the really good things, share with your colleagues and congratulate others.

Quick wins and active reflection

There will be areas where you feel things could be improved. Think about quick wins that would solve some immediate problems.

Sometimes reflective practice can sound like we need to tuck ourselves away in silence before we can even start. I don’t know any practitioners that can do that easily!

Instead, think about ‘active reflection’, something that can be part of your day-to-day practice.

• Be mindful
  Use your observations as a starting point. What can you see/hear? How do you feel? How might you be contributing, what influence are you having on the area you are thinking about?
• Make a quick record of your thoughts
  This could be in a notebook or using an online tool. Not only will this help you to remember what you are thinking, it will also create a timeline so you can record this reflective journey, big or small.
• Share with colleagues
  Whether your reflection is about your individual practice or about teaching and learning in the setting as a whole, it’s good to talk!

Using technology in reflective practice

Lockdown forced many of us to embrace the use of technology more fully. We saw this first-hand at Tapestry where the number of videos and postings increased dramatically as practitioners devised new ways to support children’s learning at home.

As educators become more confident about technology, it can be used as a tool to benefit reflective practice too.

You could use video, perhaps with a voiceover to support your reflection. Visual and audio communication can be easier to share and feel more accessible to busy staff, and can require less explanation.

Encouraging a culture of reflective practice

The ethos of a setting is at the heart of creating a culture of reflective practice. Writing about how to get this right could fill lots of articles and many books.

However, leaders and managers are key here. Simple things like modelling the right language can make a considerable difference, for example “What would happen if…..?” or “I wonder if we could change….?”

Questions like this encourage us to pause for thought and reflect.

A simple option is to have a weekly ‘reflective question’ which is shared with everyone. These questions might be good options:

• How are children engaging with a new layout or routine?
• How are children displaying their levels of wellbeing?
• Which activities are the most popular and why?
• Have there been any surprises this week?
• Which activities might we introduce?
• What are we most concerned about?

Inviting everyone to contribute is important. It ensures that all feel their views are valued and that their reflections can help to improve the experience and learning of children.

Dr Helen Edwards is co-founder of Tapestry, an online learning journal for early years and schools which encourages reflective practice. For more information visit tapestry.info.