This blogpost looks at my initial thoughts on critical reflection, click here for a reflective style blogpost of the week.
We were introduced to the topic of critical reflection this week and after the course content and reading a bit more on the topic, it’s started to sink in and make sense in my brain. This is a mini post on the things that I have found most relevant and interesting and how I intend to apply them in my practice.
The biggest find of the week which was shared with the cohort was this website (University of Edinburgh 2023) that has a comprehensive breakdown of many reflective practices. After reading through them I have collected my thoughts here on what stood out to me most. I don’t explain the practices themselves so please use the website to refer to them if in doubt.
These are very similar and I feel bleed into each other quite naturally. They are definitely approaches that I intend to keep in mind as they actively encourage academic findings and wide literature reading to underpin ideas and notions. As correct academic referencing is an important part of this module these models become all the more important and seem like a good practice to get into.
This seems useful for micro reflections on smaller events. They could be useful when undertaking continual assessment on a project to ensure that I am on track, or else as smaller interventions for smaller issues that arise.
The other methodologies seem meatier in nature and would therefore be better placed for checkpoint or end of project reflections.
Within 5 Rs framework I thought that the Relate section was interesting. It asks you to zoom out and spot a pattern in your behaviour / the results of your explorations which none of the other techniques particularly stressed. As someone with the habit of squirrelling and spiralling into the details, this section could be useful in keeping the distance that is required for objective observations. This zoomed out view of the problem is definitely something I want to keep in mind going forward.
Reflective writing isn’t new to me, but I have never had to document it and expose it like this before and neither have I ever had to particularly underpin my thoughts with research. It will be a learning curve both in making sure I document everything of importance and also in not letting my research slack. I have now understood how important it is to read widely as this will help me ask better questions and make me a better practitioner all around.
With the aim of becoming a better researcher in mind, I also know that I want to start reading more books surrounding the topics that we’re going to cover in the next few weeks. I am kicking this off with Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek.