We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.’ This fillet of wisdom from John Dewey, an American philosopher and educational reformer, is not news to early years practitioners. Yet in the busy reality of an early years manager’s life, sometimes it feels like there is so much information to get across that there isn’t time to pause. But this is a short-term approach. Because true reflection, based in real experiences, is much less likely to be forgotten.
Gibbs’ reflective cycle is a useful model to use in meetings and training sessions. It takes staff through the process of having an experience, reflecting on the feelings they had at the time, evaluating how it went, and analysing it to make sense of it, before drawing conclusions about what could be done differently and developing an action plan for the future.
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