Exploring Cooperative Reflective Practices in the Early Childhood Education Setting
Reflective practices involve thinking intentionally about what you are doing in the learning environment, why you are doing it, and how successful you are in serving your students and your goals for their learning. By reflecting upon your teaching practices through the lens of your learning and development goals for the children in your care, you can constantly improve as an educator and ensure you are doing what is best for each child you teach.
Reflective practice is often thought of as a solitary endeavor for professional development. However, there is benefit to engaging in cooperative reflective practices within a teaching community. Rather than merely thinking about your teaching practices, discussing them with colleagues with an eye toward ensuring the greatest benefit to students can lead to even greater professional development. Here are some ways in which joining together with others in reflective practice can be helpful even beyond the usefulness of solo examination:
- Gaining impartial perspectives. Many people judge themselves too harshly, or too easily. It is not a simple matter to see oneself (or one’s actions) clearly. Having others join in reflecting on the practice of teaching within the learning environment ensures a balanced view of things.
- Shared experience. In the same way that mentoring relationships help guide and support new educators (see The Practice and Value of Mentorship in Early Childhood Education in this newsletter), cooperative reflective practices can help new teachers learn from the experience of more seasoned educators.
- Helping others learn about themselves. The goal of reflective practice is to develop your skills as a professional educator by thinking intentionally about what you do and how it serves your goals. By sharing that process with other professional educators, you can help them to do the same. The way you have thought about something may help someone else look at their practices and in a new and insightful light.
The article An Introduction to Reflective Practice in this newsletter gives some tips on how to go about engaging in solo reflective practice. Here are some tips on how to do so cooperatively:
- Be intentional about cooperative reflective practice. Set aside a time and a topic for each discussion to maximizes the benefits by allowing professionals taking part in the group practice to prepare for the discussion by engaging in their own self-reflection first.
- Use real world scenarios – rather than hypotheticals – for group reflection. Reflective educators are always looking for scenarios in their learning environments that prompt further thought. Allow members to bring these scenarios to the group for discussion.
- Choose a moderator for each discussion to guide the group and keep everyone on topic. This practice is most helpful when it is deliberate rather than a generalized discussion.
- Suspend judgement. The goal of cooperative reflective practices is not to make a determination about particular actions or decisions, but rather to discuss the impacts and alternatives to find what best serves the needs of the children.
For the main article Building Bridges: Professional Growth Through Mentorship and Reflective Practices, CLICK HERE
For the article The Practice and Value of Mentorship in Early Childhood Education, CLICK HERE
For the article Exploring the Benefits of Mentoring to the Mentor, CLICK HERE
For the article An Introduction to Reflective Practices, CLICK HERE