Reflecting on Reflection

The exercise below – called a Graduated Scenario – is designed to help you to come to a deeper understanding of reflection and its depth dimension. It is a simplified, 3 stage, version of Moon’s 4 stages.

A Generic Framework for Reflective Writing

There are 3 ‘levels’ of depth of reflection described below, and in the following example. The colour of the font links to each level. They do not necessarily accord directly with the example – but provide a general guide to the qualities of deepening reflection.

Descriptive Writing
This account is descriptive and it contains little reflection. It may tell a story but from one point of view at a time and generally one point at a time is made. The account describes what happened, sometimes mentioning past experiences, sometimes anticipating the future – but all in the context of an account of the event. There may be references to emotional reactions but they are not explored and not related to behaviour. The account may relate to ideas or external information, but these are not considered or questioned and the possible impact on behaviour or the meaning of events is not mentioned. There is little attempt to focus on particular issues. Most points are made with similar weight.

Descriptive account with some reflection
This is a descriptive account that signals points for reflection while not actually showing much reflection. The basic account is descriptive; however, the account is more than just a story. It is focused on the event as if there is a big question or there are questions to be asked and answered. Points on which reflection could occur are signalled. There is recognition of the worth of further exploring but it does not go very far. In other words, asking the questions makes it more than a descriptive account, but the lack of attempt to respond to the questions means that there is little actual analysis of the events.

Reflective writing
There is description but it is focused and only serves the process of reflection.  There is clear evidence of standing back, mulling over and internal dialogue. A metacognitive^* stance is taken (i.e. critical awareness of one’s own processes of mental functioning – including reflection).
Self-questioning is evident (an ‘internal dialogue’ is set up at times) deliberating between different views of personal behaviour and that of others). Where relevant, there is willingness to be critical of the action of self or others.
There is evidence of external ideas or information and where this occurs, the material is subjected to reflection.  There is recognition of the role of emotion in shaping the ideas and recognition of the manner in which different emotional influences can frame the account in different ways.
There is recognition that prior experience, thoughts (own and other’s) interact with the production of current behaviour. There is observation that there is learning to be gained from the experience and points for learning are noted.

*  Metacognition is important in deep reflection. It is a willingness to review in a critical manner the processes of the reflection that have been undergone - Have I made assumptions? Have I been unduly biased for a particular reason? Are there other points of view that would reasonably contradict my conclusions?

In deepening reflection, there are shifts:

• From description to reflective account
• From no questions to questions to responding to questions
• Any emotional influence is recognised, and then handled increasingly effectively
• There is a ‘standing back from the event’
• There is a shift from the story of the event to self-questioning and challenge to own ideas.
• There is increasing criticality
• There is increasing recognition of relevance of prior experience.
• There is increasing willingness to take into account others’ views.
• There is a shift towards metacognition.

Example Reflective Account

The Background and Planning:

Sarah is a long term student/mentee, who is currently working towards her canoe leader assessment. She would like to increase her personal skill level and leadership in windy conditions on open water.

Technical and Tactical: Sarah’s canoe skills are pretty strong, so she has all the tools she needs to be able to paddle well in a F4 environment. I think it’s going to be more about encouraging her to think about the tactical application of her skills.

Physiological: Sarah is young, fit and strong although she is slightly built, and this means she has always needed to use skill rather than force to paddle well.

Psychological: Sarah is a confident paddler but she has a slight mental block on paddling in the wind, I think partly due to her lightness, she feels it’s just lots of hard work and no fun!

What to Coach:  As Sarah has some experience in these conditions, my plan is to set some progressive challenges, and use the WASP coaching model to determine areas for improvement that we can work on together. I also want to challenge Sarah to make the decisions about the journeying and to think about how she might adapt those decisions if she had less experienced paddlers to lead.

How to coach: Sarah is a sheltered water coach and is very capable of applying that knowledge to her own skill development. To keep everything as student led as possible. I will aim to provide a constructivist approach to learning as much as possible, setting problems for Sarah to solve, and using environmental and task constraints to challenge her to think rather than giving her answers.

Reflection

Day 1 – This was an opportunity for Sarah to practice some open water skills but also leadership and decision-making skills.

Forecast was for F3-4, so we started at the more sheltered end of the lake were we could use the a gradient of conditions to try out ideas then test them in the stronger conditions.

This decision was led by me, in discussion with Sarah – maybe I should have encouraged her to be more active in this process – I will next time.

That said, she’s been under a lot of pressure with exams recently, and on the drive up I got the impression that she really just wanted the day to be a chance to relax, and not have to make too many decisions, so perhaps I was right here to not push it.

I wondered if the more exposed end of the lake might have been better, but went with this end because of the options it provided (other end is somewhat featureless), In hindsight it was the right decision, and the variety of environments we had at our disposal was plenty challenging enough.

But… Did I just go there because I knew it and it’s easyish to get to? Could we have been a bit more adventurous and gone somewhere completely different?

Early in the day it became clear that while Sarah had a good understanding of the technical and tactical aspects of paddling in the wind, but she was struggling a little to maintain speed, across and particularly into the wind. Therefore, we looked at generating momentum effectively.

Sarah struggled more than I expected with paddling across the wind out of the shelter of the bay. Perhaps I need to think a bit about my own assumptions here – I know she progresses loads in between each time I see her, and she’s always had a really natural talent for all things paddling – perhaps I expect too much of her sometimes?

She’s has been a ‘naturally capable’ paddler since she was a young kid, but there’s always been an element of needing to be good because she is small and can’t just use brute force and ignorance. The whole concept of acknowledging natural talent comes with all the fixed mindset issues, so I am generally reticent to over play this – she’s good because she’s (had to) put the effort into being good. Does it do this effort a disservice to simply say she’s naturally talented?

After some more observation and questioning, we hopped onto the bank to do some modelling of forward power strokes and then put this into practice in a sheltered bay and out in the wind. We also had a play with cadence and the recovery phase of the stroke. This had an immediate effect and Sarah sped up considerably, but after some experimentation she decided a new paddle might needed.

Was I too ‘in charge’ here? The bank-based exercise worked really quickly, but perhaps, in hindsight, I was ‘telling’ a bit too much, rather than setting up an exercise to let her discover it for herself. Not entirely sure how I might go about this though…

After a few recent chats with my mentor and a group of other experienced coaches, I am wondering if I concentrated on the core muscles too much, and whether this has too much of an internal focus of attention. I need to make sure I use the analogy of ‘falling on the paddle’ rather than ‘use your core’ or similar as it’s more of an external focus of attention.

We spent a bit of time poling on the river section. Sarah worked fairly independently, using previous understanding. So, I just needed to ask some questions occasionally, and give her some ideas to play with, like setting up the feet for stability and power transfer, tactical application of different techniques, steering with the pole etc. This is still an area I feel I need to improve my own personal skills and coaching so this was also good practice for me.

Perhaps the fact that I don’t have any pre-conceived ‘session plans’ here actually allows me to be a better coach?

Maybe in future sessions I need to be aware of when I am finding it ‘too easy’ because I’ve already got a ‘trick up my sleeve for that problem’. And then do something different.

Day 2

Wind F2-3. Sarah made the decision that we should start from the main car park, to make the most of the fetch, as the wind was not that strong.

This time I asked Sarah to decide upon where to go and make a plan for a trip, to give her some practice at decision making based on weather forecasts and her prior knowledge of the area, before being able to actually see the conditions. Her plan was get the best of the fetch and wind available.

Sarah seemed a bit more chilled today and was more up for taking control. Also, I made it clear in the lead up to the day that she was in charge of decisions as to where to go etc, so it wasn’t sprung on her on the drive to Wales.

We paddled into the wind, using the middle of lake to get best of the wind, and using buoys as targets to get some different angles to the wind, allowing Sarah to make decisions about tactics and techniques to use each time. The random changes of angle to the wind allowed the environmental constraints to change subtly each time we changed course, meaning Sarah needed to make subtle changes to the trim, edge, paddling sides etc.

It was my suggestion that we head into the middle and use the buoys, but after that Sarah picked the course. This worked well, but I do wonder why it was she naturally wanted to stick to the edge – have I inadvertently instilled this into her in the past, when I have been leading groups and been trying to keep them safer?

I did not measure progress here, or make any explicit reference to the changes each time – e.g. I didn’t ask her what she’d just done. Perhaps this could have been a lost learning opportunity? After a bit of thought, I think she was at a stage where the decisions about trim etc were starting to become tacit rather than cognitive, and I wanted to encourage more of that – just paddle, chat, and allow her to feel when she needed to make a minor change, without drawing too much attention to it. I think it was the right decision but this wouldn’t work for everyone.

While the wind wasn’t strong enough to really challenge Sarah, she did have a psychological breakthrough early in the day, realising how easy this wind was to deal with (in comparison to her first experience of a similarly windy lake a few years ago). The whole day was set out to be as student initiated and designed as possible, with a lot of the questioning coming from Sarah rather than from me.
By the end of the two days Sarah’s paddling in wind had improved a lot. She had gained some technical skill, in terms of improving her ability to generate power in her forward paddling where needed, but the majority of her learning was tactical; she had started to understand how to make the best of the wind and how to alter her trim to use it to her advantage, whether paddling, sailing or poling. She had also actually started to enjoy open water paddling rather than feeling like she hates the wind.

Sarah is an experienced coach. Because of this I was very keen for her to be in charge of decision making as much as possible. However, on day 1 she was more keen to relinquish control a bit so I did a fair bit in terms of setting the task/environment, although she was still in charge of the skill development within those constraints. I think I just about got the balance right here. Day 2 she was far more active in deciding her own areas for development, and her own challenges/constraints/criteria for success.

Interestingly it did highlight how much I enjoy coaching like this, but also how uncomfortable it can seem – I wonder if I’d have been more keen to ‘do something’ more often if this was a paid day of coaching rather than a friend… and would that actually have been detrimental to the paddler’s skill development?