Nonprofit Capacity Building and Training

John Dewey: "We do not learn from experience ... we learn from reflecting on experience."

• Learning from direct experience can be more effective if coupled with reflection—that is, the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.
• Reflecting on what had been learned makes the experience more productive.
• Reflection builds confidence to achieve a goal

Full paper: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2414478

"Though some organizations are increasingly relying on some group reflection (e.g., “after-action reports”), there has been almost no effort to encourage individuals to reflect, and people often fail to engage in self-reflection themselves. Though reflection entails the high  opportunity cost of one’s time, we argue and show that reflecting after completing tasks is no
idle pursuit: it can powerfully enhance the learning process. Learning, we find, can be augmented if one deliberately focuses on thinking about what one has been doing."

In reflective schools, there is no such thing as failure—only the production of personal insights from one's experiences. To be reflective means to mentally wander through where you have been and to try to make some sense of it. Such mental processes include

• Drawing forth cognitive and emotional information from visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile sources;
• Linking information to previous learnings;
• Comparing the results that were anticipated and intended with the results that were achieved;
• Searching for effects and finding connections among causal factors;
• Acting on and processing the information by analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating;
• Applying learning to contexts beyond the one in which it was learned and making commitments to plans of action; and
• Thinking about thinking: conducting an internal dialogue (metacognition) about the completeness of, satisfaction with, and interest in the reflective process (Costa & Garmston, 1994).

By collecting information about what goes on in our classroom, and by analysing and evaluating this information, we identify and explore our own practices and underlying beliefs. This may then lead to changes and improvements in our teaching.

Reflective teaching is therefore a means of professional development which begins in our classroom.

Donald Schon (1983, 1987) provides a framework that not only addresses these cognitive and organizational barriers, but distinctly illuminates the practice of reflectivity as well. Models for reflective practice, based on Schon's (1983, 1987) principles, describe processes that translate theory to action for educators.