Reflective practice

Reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one’s thoughts, emotions, actions, decisions, assumptions, and professional experiences so as to take a critical stance or attitude towards improving one’s own practice, understanding, judgment, and future actions, while challenging automatic reactions and assumptions and engaging in a process of continuous adaptation and learning. According to one definition it involves "paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively. This leads to developmental insight". A key rationale for reflection is that deliberate reflection on experience is essential for engaging in meaningful action.

Reflective practice can be an important tool in practice-based professional learning settings where people learn from their own professional experiences, rather than from formal learning or knowledge transfer. Although reflection alone is not fully reliable, because insight, introspection, and self-appraisal can be distorted by cognitive biases, reflective practice can still be a major source of professional development when combined with critical analysis, feedback, and evidence-based knowledge. It is also an important way to bring together theory and practice; through reflection one is able to see and label forms of thought and theory within the context of one's work. Reflecting throughout one’s practice is taking a conscious look at emotions, experiences, actions, and responses, and using that information to develop new meaning, add to one’s existing knowledge base, and reach a higher level of understanding.