Reflective practice
Reflection is something that occurs on a daily basis for ALL people.... we always sit down at some point and think of what we could have done differently for an outcome to have changed. I imagine some of you are reading this and wondering why on earth I'm putting this on my BJJ blog. Well, I do it and started doing it from my very first lesson. I knew I was doing it but didn't know how to manage it and actually learn from it. I got tapped out more times then I can remember and by submissions I never knew existed. I drove home and wondered how it happened, what could I have done to stop it and what do I need to do to stop it happening in the future. That was me reflecting on my performance alas 'Reflective Practice'.
Although this is an every day occurrence, utilising this skill correctly can have a profound effect on your performance as a practitioner, competitor and instructor. One academic defined it like so 'The process of internally examining and exploring an issue of concern, triggered by an experience, which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of the self and which results in a changed conceptual perspective' (Boyd and Fayles 1983). Do we all not experience that after rolling with a better grappler (or in fact an inferior grappler)?
Reflection has been broken down in to 3 processes:-
Descriptive Reflection: A re-living / re-telling of past experience and often told to another person.
Creative Reflection: Learning from our past experience and trying out something new or doing what we have done but in a different way.
Critical Reflection: Includes questioning routines, habits and practices and challenging the conventional wisdom on the matter and being able ask ‘Why type’ questions
In a sporting environment the reflective practice has been highlighted like so:
Reflection for action, on action and in action.
For Action is done during and after an event and is done to facilitate an action for future success.
On Action is done post event and can be done as an individual or group
In Action is conducted during an event 'thinking on your feet' - people who state that a person who does this (majority of good grapplers) are demonstrating the characteristics of a competent practitioner
We can see that reflecting on our performance in class, rolling or even in competition can be done all the time. By doing it effectively we can potentially change the result of our roll/competition in real time but certainly in the future.
We can utilise many tools to reflect on our performance. They could be Language (verbal conversation with our instructor or peers), Pen and paper - keep a journal, training diary (I do) and Visual - videos and photos (see previous blog about visualization and its effect on learning and improving).
I have used one specific model to help my reflective practice improve and that is the Cyclical Model of Reflective Practice (Gibbs, 1988). This entails the following:
Description: What happened?
Feelings: What was you thinking/feeling?
Evaluation: What was good/bad about the experience?
Analysis: What sense can you make of the situation?
Conclusion: What else could you have done?
Action plan: If it arose again what would you do?
The introduction of effective Reflective Practice has been documented to improve performance of individuals and teams alike. It reads like something we all do (and we do) but do we take notice of it. Do we actually note it down or record it visually. The retention of what we learn from mistakes can help our performance in the future.
Reference:
Gibbs, G. (1988), Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford Further Education Unit: Oxford.
Boyd, E.M., and Fales, A.W. (1983), 'Reflective learning: key to learning from experience', Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 99-117.