3. Reflection

Jump to: Reflective Activities | Further Reading | Diagrams and Figures

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Reflective Activities

• To deepen collaboration with colleagues
• To consider what you have taken from what you have read and understood about reflective practice
• To review experienced dilemmas
• To plan to conduct a small piece of research in your setting
• To support critical engagement with policy documents
• To explore how improvement can come from collecting evidence of our practice

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Further Reading

Overview

For key texts on reflective practice, see:

Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education, New York: Free Press.

Dewey, J. (1933) How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Education Process, Chicago: Henry Regneny.

For a summary of writings about reflective teaching and related practices see:

Zeichner, M. and Liston, P. (1996) Reflective Teaching: An Introduction, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Donald Schön extends the work of Dewey to develop ideas that have been very influential, as thinking about reflection has developed over the last thirty years or so.

Schön, D. A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, London: Maurice Temple Smith.

Schön, D. A. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner, San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Michael Eraut has produced a very useful critique of Schön’s thinking.

Eraut, M. (1995) ‘Schön Shock: A Case for Reframing Reflection-in-Action’, Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 1, 1, p.9-23.

Book which focus on reflective practice in the early years include:

Reed, M., and Canning, N. (Eds) (2010) Reflective Practice in the Early Years, London: Sage Publications.

Lindon, J. (2010) Reflective Practice and Early Years Professionalism: Linking Theory and Practice, Abingdon: Hodder Education.

Paige‐Smith, A. and Craft, A. (2008) Developing Reflective Practice in the Early Years, Berkshire: Oxford University Press.  

Undertaken research in your place of work can be hugely valuable but also complex. Books which may support you include:

Dunne, M., Pryor, J. and Yates, P. (2005) Becoming a Researcher: A Companion to the Research Process (Conducting Educational Research), Berkshire: McGraw-Hill.

Slyva, K. (1999) ‘The Role of Research in Explaining the Past and Shaping the Future’, In Abbott, L. and Moylett, H. (Eds) Early Education Transformed, New Millenium Series, London: Falmer Press.

McNiff, J. and Whitehead, J. (2010) You and Your Action Research Project, Abingdon: Routledge.

McNiff, J. (2002) Action Research: Principles and Practice, London: Routledge.

Thomas, G. (2009) How to do your research project: a guide for students in education and applied Social Sciences, London: Sage Publications.

Harcourt, D, Perry, B. and Waller, T. (Eds) (2011). Young children's perspectives: Ethics, theory and research, Abingdon: Routledge Falmer.

Media files

• Workforce Strategy

Useful links

• English Early Years Framework
• English Early Years Foundation Stage Framework
• Scottish Early Years Framework
• Northern Irish Early Years Framework
• CCEA Northern Irish Foundation Stage
• Welsh Early Years Framework
• EPPE and EPPSE reports
• Nuffield Foundation: Goverment lacks strategy to improve early years workforce quality
• Development Matters
• Osgood, Rethinking 'Professionalism' in the Early Years
• Chalke, Will the Early Years Professional Please Stand Up? Professionalism in the Early Childhood Workforce in England
• Brock, Dimensions of early years professionalism - attitudes versus competences?
• Early Education website
• PACEY
• TACTYC
• EEF Early Years Toolkit

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Diagrams and Figures

• Figure 3.1 The spiral of professional development
• Figure 3.2 Evidence-informed practice
• Figure 3.3 Regulations for the education of pupil teachers, 1846
• Figure 3.4 The process of reflective teaching