Reflective Practice

Why reflect?

During your time at university, you will continue to increase your knowledge and understanding of your subject area.

The process of recording, reflecting and planning helps designers build, develop and review their knowledge and understanding.

What is reflection?

Reflection is defined by LEARNING and THINKING and may occur in two ways:

·       We reflect in order to learn something

·       We learn as a result of reflecting

Reflection is not simply about using drawing, writing or any other media as a means to directly express what happens in your head.

Reflection is a representation of the thought process and may use a variety of mediums such as drawing, writing and digital media as a means of expressing or illustrating this process.

The method in which you decide to represent this process helps develop and model the content of your reflection, by engaging in a reflective process you are actively seeking to understand ‘how you have learnt’ or ‘what you need to learn’.

How do we reflect?

Factors that may help shape your reflection could be:

·       A need to organise knowledge or processes which until reflected upon seem fragmented

·       A reflection of your emotional response to a problem that may have affected the outcome; this may be either positively or negatively. 

·       A need to reflect and evaluate on what has been learnt in order to progress further on a project

As you progress throughout your course you will need to utilise various ways of reflecting, by becoming aware of, and actively engaging in becoming a reflective practitioner you are actively seeking to understand how you work as a designer.

It is important to remember that a reflective process within the context of your education should not only help ‘you’ understand either a practical or cognitive process but should also be clear to fellow students and teachers.

Brief

Develop a blog that reflects upon at least one aspect of each of your workshop sessions. You may decide to reflect upon an area that requires improvement or how to refine a technique so that it aids your design process.