What is critical reflection?
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are".
Anais Nin - Seduction of the Minotour (1961)
Critical reflection can be defined in different ways but at core it's an extension of critical thinking. It involves learning from everyday experiences and situations. You need to ask questions of yourself and about your actions to better understand why things happened.
Critical reflection is active not passive
Critical reflection is active personal learning and development where you take time to engage with your thoughts, feelings and experiences. It helps us examine the past, look at the present and then apply learnings to future experiences or actions.
Critical reflection is also focused on a central question, “Can I articulate the doing that is shaped by the knowing.” What this means is that critical reflection and reflective practice are tied together. You can use critical reflection as a tool to analyse your reflections more critically which allows you to evaluate, inform and continually change your practice.
Critical reflection: think, feel, and do
The events, experiences or interactions you choose to critically reflect on can be either positive or negative. They may be an interesting interaction or an everyday occurrence.
No matter what it is, when you are critically reflecting it is a good idea to think about how the experience, event or interaction made you:
Think
Feel
And what you can do to change your practice.
What you think, feel and do as a result of critical reflective learning will shape the what, how and why of future behaviours, actions and work.
Critical reflection: what influences your practice
Critical reflection also means thinking about why you make certain choices in your practice. Sometimes this may feel uncomfortable because it can highlight your assumptions, biases, views and behaviours. But it is important to take the time to think about how your own experiences influence your study, your work and your life in general. This involves you recognising how your perspectives and values influence the decisions you make.
Click on the plus (+) icons beneath each thought bubble to view some example assumptions that may influence practice.
Activity overview
This interactive hotspot activity provides examples of assumptions that may influence practice. The hotspots are displayed as plus (+) icons that can be clicked to reveal the examples, as follows
Example 1:
Assumption: People have their cameras and mics off for digital meetings to avoid active involvement.
Possibility: People may have low bandwidth and/or other people in their space and either cannot share camera view, or respect the privacy of others.
Example 2:
Assumption: Everyone in your professional workplace will be digitally literate.
Possibility: People have had differing experience of working with digital tools and in online environments.
Example 3:
Assumption: Having people work from home will cause a drop in productivity and loss of workplace culture.
Possibility: Productivity will maintain or increase. A new digital culture of connection emerges.
Example 4:
Assumption: All students hate group work.
Possibility: Some students prefer collaboration. They are stimulated by brainstorming, creating solutions and putting together assignments in a group.
Example 5:
Assumption: After emailing my work group with the finished report everyone will be aware of the project’s goals and outcomes, ready to discuss at our next team meeting.
Possibility: Your email may not be seen or reading the report was not a priority for other team members when you sent it.
Example 6:
Assumption: People who are quiet and don't ask questions in my class are having no problems with the content.
Possibility: People might be struggling with understanding but come from a different cultural background which considers it disrespectful to interrupt the lecturer or ask questions
Example 7:
Assumption: Everyone can jump online at anytime to use the self-service portal.
Possibility: People may not have data or connectivity at all times or may not have a digital device of their own.
Scaffolded approach to think, feel, and do in your practice
There is quite a bit to keep in mind with using critical reflective to shape your practice. Making critical reflection part of your everyday is easier if you have a framework to refer to.
Your Task
This critical reflection and reflective practice framework is a handy resource for you to keep. Download the framework and use it as a prompt when doing critical reflective assessments at uni or as part of developing reflective practice in your work.
Critical reflection includes research and evidence-base
Why you need to use academic literature in critical reflections can be hard to understand as you may feel that you don’t need to draw on other sources when discussing your own experiences. Critical reflections involve both personal perspective and theory = the need to use academic literature.
Personal plus theory underpins reflective practice
Keep in mind that when you are at university there is an expectation that you support the points you make by referring to information from relevant, credible sources.
You also need to think about how theories can influence and inform your practice. Reflective practice relies on evidence, with research informing your reflection and what changes to practice you intend to put into play. This means you will need to use academic literature to support what you are saying in your reflection.
Tip
Learn more about including literature in your writing. Deakin’s academic skills guide on Using Sources will help you weave academic literature into your critical reflection assessments. It’s focused on supporting evidence in your writing.