Facilitating the Reflective Process

By Sarah Wright, Head Teacher and Manager of Special Projects, and Beverley Hartman, Head Teacher and Director of the Bing Institute

"I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. There are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one."

—Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Standing where the edges meet, observing the frictions and incongruities of learning, is a situation in which we rarely find ourselves as teachers. The job, by its very nature, places us right in the center, allowing us limited time to step back to the edge. We, the teachers, are slap-bang in the middle of the learning action. Positioning ourselves metaphorically where the edges meet provides a very different viewpoint; a place of discovery, a place to reflect, re-think and re-define our role and work in an intentional way.

Research that concerns itself with this “reflective process” was the focus of the work presented by Kristie Brandt, PhD, in her two-day workshop: “Facilitating the Reflective Process.” Brandt is director of the Parent-Infant & Child Institute, a Child Trauma Academy fellow and an assistant clinical professor of pediatrics, visiting faculty, at U.C. Davis School of Medicine. The conference, organized by FIRST 5 Santa Clara County, was held December 6-7, 2010, in San Jose. Brandt promoted the importance of reflective practice and invited us to stand on the periphery to challenge our assumptions and think with intention about our own teaching practices.

During small group discussions, we engaged in role-play situations that helped us uncover cultural assumptions and form questions about our own bias in our work. Questions that seemed easy on the surface led to more difficult questions and a more dynamic dialogue. Brandt suggested that the cycle of questioning is necessary for discovery and understanding. As John Dewey, the esteemed educator, stated, “We don’t learn from experiences, we learn from reflecting on our experiences.” (How We Think)

To make sense of the potential of reflective practice in our work and to determine the direction of our inquiry, the workshop encouraged us to stop and analyze our own personal profile—that is, who we are and what we bring to our experiences. Brandt advocated the need to create a space to develop self-awareness and considered its application to our work as professionals. With an increased sense of self-awareness, she suggested, we will be more skillful at understanding others’ perspectives. “Reflective practice is a deeply meaningful journey seeking new awareness, new understandings of ourselves in the context of our work. It is not a destination…it is a state of being.” (Facilitating the Reflective Process)

Over the two days, in the safety of the group, we explored our own bias and developed skills that will help us wrestle with complex issues. Our challenge now is to dedicate more time to deliberately engage in this process on a regular basis. We have come out of this experience trusting that further development in this discipline will move us toward a greater level of understanding of ourselves, and the children and families we serve.