Reflective practice
Among the various approaches highlighted, reflective practice offers the most comprehensive approach to community development. This is mostly because the method is modern, and it provides an evolving framework for the traditional technique of self-improvement. Basically, this method aims at assessing an individual’s actions and thoughts for his personal development and learning. To many people, reflective practice is both intuitive and natural.
Reflective practice is one of the most easily adaptable processes. It brings together a set of ideas to be used together with other concepts of learning, self-improvement, training, and personal development. For instance, the method is significantly helpful and relevant towards Continuous Professional Development (CPD). It is also useful in developing and teaching young people as well as children. It focuses on self-development to enable personal growth by addressing how people feel and think about themselves and the situations surrounding them. Reflective practice is, therefore, a valuable methodology for looking into the past to assess the progress and also determine the future.
This brings along with it numerous benefits more than the professional development and learning. These benefits extend to but are not limited to rehabilitation, mediation, parenting, human relationships such as romance and workplace, stress reduction and management, reconciliation, and coping with trauma and other changes. Reflective practice is an old and flexible concept that can be described using alternative terminologies which help us understand its scopes and principles better. It is, therefore, synonymous with self-review, self-appraisal, self-assessment, reflective dialogue, critical evaluation, intra-personal awareness, and self-criticism. Increasingly, these terminologies, principles, and underpinning theory are conveyed and defined within the term reflective practice and its application as well as the supporting framework terminology.
As such, the method is a theory by which both traditional and modern self-improvement ideas can be defined in a more precise way, be refined, taught, applied, adopted, and expanded, for coaching and teaching, personal development, and broader organizational improvement. It is also helpful for individual happiness and personal fulfillment in the sense that one can understand himself more objectively. It enables better thinking and minimizes one’s tendencies towards emotional bias.
To learn more about our community, I have taken it upon myself to ensure that I spend the better part of my time engaging in community activities. I have to choose the projects based on the kind of information I want to draw from the people I am to interact with. For instance, to know more about the origin of the community, the traditional activities, and the values and beliefs of the community, I must spend time with the older people. An activity that features well the old involves some charity work where you call the older people and offer them with various gifts such as blankets, walking sticks, and even food. At that time, you form discussions where you discuss the former things, the changes that have taken place, and where the community is heading to. If the young people, then activities such as tree planting will connect you with them. Other activities for young people involve sports, drama and music festivals and any other fun event. These activities have enabled me to interact more closely with people of all ages. For children, you organize for games and fun events, and you also ensure they get small gifts such as sweets. These allowed me to learn about my community.