ABSTRACT
Managers of child-centred settings will no doubt already be familiar with the term ‘reflective practice’ in the context of face-to-face work with children. Reflective practice can generally be described as a tool for self-evaluation, in that it enables us to learn from our achievements and our mistakes through assessing our own practice. This chapter focuses on reflective practice as a technique which helps us to learn from our interactions with other people, as these interactions play large part in the role of a manager in a child-centred setting. Some people find reflective practice easy and others have to work a bit harder at it. This is simply because different people have different ways of thinking, learning and processing information. Being a reflective practitioner means that we are able to start from a different point, as reflective practice stops us looking for answers where none exist.
