Research Question
Critical reflection within a team helps to create a culture of openness where team members can reflect on their strengths and weaknesses. This study is providing a clear insight into the ways of creating more and more opportunities of facilitating critical reflective practice within a team along with the discussion about its benefits, Challenges And Influencing Factors.
How might you create opportunities for critical reflection as a team, ensuring that all voices are heard and responded to with respect?
Creating a learning culture in a team concerned about early childhood education requires the consideration of different factors. Foong et al. (2018) mentioned that time for reflection is necessary to be allowed besides the daily tasks assignments. For example, as per my experience during working in a team, we used the reflection book to reflect on our activities every day. We were allied to have that time besides our daily work. It has helped to facilitate collaborative reflective practice. On the other hand, Rouse (2012) have argued that organisations must allow time for employees to develop skills for adhering to reflective practice while working for a team. According to my experience, we were allowed to extract time from our busy schedule and use the communication book for reflecting on the team. This time was like an opportunity to reflect on our experience set up for the children during a day and the improvement needs. We have learned collaborative reflective practice through using the communication book.
On the other hand, trust is another factor that is required between the team members in order to learn and facilitate collaborative reflection within the team. As stated by V Alvarado Gutie?rrez et al. (2019), trusting each other will help to explain own mistakes easily in daily tasks and modifying it with the help of other team members. This practice will help be an effective early childhood educator and educate children effectively as a team after understanding their needs. Moreover, team members must respect each other’s different points of view in order to create a culture of learning where reflective practice can be learned.
There are different benefits of critical reflection as a team that includes conducting tasks through the help of diverse knowledge and experiences. Godínez (2022) mentioned that critical team reflection helps an individual to perform their roles and responsibilities by collecting different views and experiences of other team members. In an early childhood setting, it is essential to set a program effectively through critical reflection both as a team and individual (Education.sa.gov.au, 2021). On the other hand, this also helps in experimenting with new ideas that help to improve the practice of early childhood development. As per my experience, critical reflection in the team helps to share everyone’s views effectively which helps to perform best practices and achieve child development outcomes. Kramer (2018) said that critical reflection as a team helps to create opportunities to discuss best practices and achieve goals properly. We have a staff communication book on child care that helps to conduct daily or weekly conversations.
Factors Required Creating A Culture of Learning Through Critical Reflection
Among the barriers to critical reflection as a team, lack of time is essential. Staff in an early childhood facility is quite busy and exhausted due to a busy schedule. Farrell (2019) said that lack of ample opportunities for critical reflection as a team is the main barrier due to the busy schedules of team members. On the other hand, lack of motivation is another essential barrier to critical reflection as a team. Lack of time and proper support to reflect as a team often reduce the motivation of team members. Thus, proper motivation is required for each team member to get engaged in critical reflection. Gindin et al. (2021) said that creating a supportive environment such as motivating members to use critical reflection tools such as scenarios, case studies, social media groups is essential.
Recruiting mentors of teams is the most potent strategy which can be used to engage team members in a critical reflection activity. According to Kramer (2018), mentors ask the team members to reflect on their everyday tasks and help them to identify the areas of improvement. The assistance to improve self-potential motivates team members to get engaged equally in critical reflective practice again and again. As per my working experience, we have a mentor who plays a vital role to encourage all the team members to be engaged in reflective practice. For example, the mentor is here to help us in creative art. He listens to our ideas with patience which makes us eager to reflect on our daily activities regarding the early childhood education programs. He also gives us advice and ideas for further improvement and in setting up the experience related to our programs. Besides, providing team members with equal opportunity for robust discussion and debates is also an effective startaegy. Farrell (2019) have said that this strategy helps to discuss diverse thoughts with each other within a team which helps to understand different concepts related to the early childhood programs. In addition, an educational leader can be assigned for encouraging the team in critical reflection. The educational leader has the experience, which can be shared with the team, which can help them to link theory into practice. A critical reflection framework can be learned by the team, which is essential to reflect properly. Moreover, the equal chance needs to be given to everyone to share their views. Critical reflection framework such as “The what?”, “So what?”, “Now what?” can be followed to improve the practices regarding early childhood education.
Conclusion
From the entire discussion of this study, it is concluded that critical reflective practice among the team members is necessary to improve their skills and ability to improve their own practices. It also helps to improve the quality of early childhood education programs. Different strategies can be implemented to improve critical reflection in the team and ensure equal participation that including following a framework and assigning an educational leader.
Reference list
Farrell, T. S. (2019). Reflective practice in L2 teacher education. The Routledge handbook of English language teacher education, 38-51. https://dl.avasshop.ir/up/files/the_routledge_handbook_of_english_lan_avasshop.pdf#page=65
Foong, L., Binti, M., & Nolan, A. (2018). Individual and collective reflection: Deepening early childhood pre-service teachers’ reflective thinking during practicum. Australasian journal of early childhood, 43(1), 43-51. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.23965/AJEC.43.1.05
Gindin, E., van Steenbergen, M., & Gleddie, D. L. (2021). Strangers No More: Collaborative Inquiry Through Narrative as Teacher Reflective Practice. LEARNing Landscapes, 14(1), 83-95. https://learninglandscapes.ca/index.php/learnland/article/download/1044/1057
Godínez Martínez, J. (2022). Action research and collaborative reflective practice in English language teaching. Reflective Practice, 23(1), 88-102. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jovanna-Godinez-Martinez/publication/355068206_Action_research_and_collaborative_reflective_practice_in_English_language_teaching/links/61885ad43068c54fa5bdd54a/Action-research-and-collaborative-reflective-practice-in-English-language-teaching.pdf
Kramer, M. (2018). Promoting teachers’ agency: Reflective practice as transformative disposition. Reflective Practice, 19(2), 211-224. https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/304736/Promoting_teacher_s_ageny_accepted_final_version.pdf?sequence=1
Rouse, L. (2012). Reflective practice: A handbook for early childhood educators. Teaching Solutions.
V Alvarado Gutie?rrez, M., A Neira Adasme, M., & Westmacott, A. (2019). Collaborative reflective practice: its Influence on pre-service EFL teachers’ emerging professional identities. Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, 7(3), 53-70. https://iranjournals.nlai.ir/bitstream/handle/123456789/328506/43CCF27C27DE38A1AC6E79A4B8E4DE51.pdf?sequence=-1
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