When considering the pedagogy you use, you often naturally reflect on your own practice. Reflective practice is integral to individual professional development as well as vital in delivering high-quality provision to children.
Research shows that those who reflect on their learning, are more likely to embed what they have learnt and consequently improve their performance.
Reflective practice can also help practitioners to:
- Be more creative and find solutions in a range of scenarios
- Identify strengths and highlight areas for development as well as pinpointing individual professional learning needs.
Many of the support resources around pedagogy encourage practitioners to reflect on their practice and provision by providing scenarios, case studies and research findings to consider:
- What they do well?
- What difference does this make?
- And what might be developed further?
As reflective practice is a cyclical process, practitioners should act on developments, and also reflect on how effective these have been in improving the quality of practice. Practitioners should consider how this process could be recorded or documented.
Early Childhood Play, Learning and Care (ECPLC): Reflective Practice Toolkit
The Early Childhood Play, Learning and Care: Reflective Practice Toolkit has been developed to support individuals and teams to reflect on the quality of early childhood play, learning and care. It draws together the various requirements for delivering the type of high quality care, education and play provision needed in Wales.
A range of documents have been included within this Toolkit to support self-evaluation and reflection, planning and monitoring for continuous quality improvement. The Toolkit can be used in several ways including individually, for self-reflection and information, with others to reflect on and moderate practice as well as supporting and promoting partnership working across early childhood play, learning and care provision in Wales.
ECPLC: Reflective Practice Toolkit
