What Is Reflective Practice?

“Morally and ethically, it is your responsibility to uncover all the prejudices, biases, barriers, and impediments that may prevent you from assisting children/youth” (Burns, 2016, p. 10).

Child and Youth Care competencies and vocational standards point to the fact that reflective practice is an essential component to our education, training, and practice. As Cragg (2020) notes, “reflective practice facilitates self-awareness and understanding; learning and personal growth; critical thinking; and most importantly, change and improvement to practice” (p. 121).

Reflective practice involves taking an in-depth look at an experience that you were involved in and being able to describe what your specific actions were. You should then be able to analyze and evaluate what occurred so you can learn from that experience and ensure your effectiveness as a CYC. Budd (2020) observes that “reflective learning has been described across the reflective practice literature as a process of reflecting on key issues of concerns that are triggered by experiences and lead to different perspectives” (p. 258). If you are reflecting on your practice, you are learning from your practice.

“It is alright to be unsure of yourself and ask for help when you need it. It is a good idea to have a little notebook or a file, to record insights at the first available opportunity.” Denise Berg, CYC Student Placement Supervisor

The Rationale for Reflective Practice

Reflective practice enables practitioners to:

• Monitor, evaluate, and rethink their approach in practice
• Learn from experiences related to practice, self, and experiences
• Be intentional in decisions
• Develop awareness of risks and benefits of decisions
• Achieve greater accountability in their practice
• Achieve greater understanding of the experiences of others
• Explore ethical dilemmas
• Apply learning to future practice
• Challenge personal and sociocultural assumptions that directly/indirectly impact the well-being of children, youth, and families
• Question the uncertainties in practice (adapted from Ash & Clayton, 2009; Pollard & Anderson, 2008; Budd, 2020)

Indeed, there are many benefits to reflective practice as a CYC. It allows you to be intentional and thoughtful and to learn from your experiences, which will in turn immensely improve your practice. Through this learning, you can become more self-aware and gain more insight into your clients and the world around you, as well as become more accountable in your actions. Put another way, “When you reflect on practice, you allow yourself the space to consider other ways of thinking and knowing (Bellefeuille & Ricks, 2010) and step outside the paradigm of your position that implicitly conveys power and privilege (Lareau & McNamar Horvat, 1999)” (as cited in Budd, 2020, p. 7). Remember, as a CYC working with youth and children, there is always a power difference. By being mindful of how this power difference benefits you and may disempower the children and youth you work with, and of the important responsibility that comes along with your position of power, you will hold yourself to a higher standard and take responsibility for what you do as a CYC. Therefore, you are less likely to make assumptions and impose harmful narratives on the children and youth you are working with.

For example, you may be working with a young person who presents with challenging behaviours and in the moment you are working with them, you may find it difficult not to react to those behaviours. Your ability to recognize this child’s strengths in that situation might be unintentionally impaired by your own judgements of the child. Utilizing the practice of reflective thinking, you must think about your own experiences and identify how those experiences may be impacting your view of the child.  Instead of looking at a situation and thinking, “What is wrong?”, you could shift your thinking to “What is there to be learned here?” to focus on a more strengths-based approach.

The term introspection is important here. A CYC needs to develop the skills for introspection in their practice, as it “enables practitioners to notice their internal reaction without letting it influence actions with others” (Budd, 2020, p. 7). If you can reflect inwardly and acknowledge how you are feeling or felt in that moment, and think about how your experiences and ways of thinking influenced you to feel that way, you are practicing reflective thinking.

Doing Reflective Practice

To do reflective practice, you must explore aspects of your Self, including beliefs, values, assumptions, and social location, and how these might impact on your practice as a CYC. Some of the tools suggested in the literature for reflective practice include using reflective prompts, mind maps, art, collages, social media, blogs, audio recordings, and journals. Complete the following exercises to begin this process for yourself.