Article Printed in:

School Administrators Association of New York State Journal, Winter 2011, 40(1), 9-11.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Was My Last Decision the Fairest of Them All?

Building a Reflective Practice as a Professional Development Strategy to Support Administrative Decision-Making

Don Sternberg, Ed.D.

     Absent the ability to utilize and/or having access to a mirror that can foresee if you are, in fact, the fairest of them all; it is important that you have at your disposal an ability and process to professionally develop your skills. In our profession, basically everything we do is on-the-job training.  Unfortunately, even under that parameter, it is imperative that the majority of your decisions are correct; the first time. The complexity and ambiguity of being a principal necessitates that we reflect on our actions and deeds and the subsequent impact on our stakeholders.

     The best scenario for our professional growth would certainly be a peer, group process to support and/or challenge existing theories and preconceived views that influence our decision-making procedure. However, the reality of that occurring on a regular basis is rare and frankly, who are you really comfortable enough with to open up to the degree necessary to promote effective and lasting internal change?  The mirror to introspection is to develop a reflective practice that enhances your capacity to reflect on your professional practices.

Developing a Reflective Practice

     The importance of reflecting on your decision-making as a component of a professional development process is important for continual and sustained growth.  Developing a practice of critical reflection based upon previous experiences and a proactive thought processes, can prove to be an effective technique for professional development.

     Donald Schon, in 1987, introduced the concept of reflective practice as a process in refining one's ability in an area or expertise. Reflective practice is a way for neophytes and veteran practitioners to build upon successes and learn from various situations. As defined by Schon, reflective practice involves thoughtfully considering one's own experiences in applying knowledge to practice (Schon, 1996). Operationally, reflective learning is self-motivated learning. It is a process that requires discipline and focused critical thinking about your processes and subsequent interactions with people. 

Critically reflecting on your decisions
     Gaining an understanding of what a reflective practice is and the process of entering into a continual reflective environment is important for professional growth. The notion of reflection as a contributor to the improvement of practice has its roots in the work of John Dewey.  For Dewey, reflective thought (as he referred to it) is provoked by an event in one's life that arouses a state of doubt, perplexity or uncertainty, and leads to the individual to search for possible explanations or solutions (1933).  We, as professionals, must view our initial understanding of a situation and our actions surrounding that situation and develop an understanding of what led us to generate the solution that we operationalized.

     If you buy into the concept that expertise comes from experience, it is not enough to expect that physical experience alone will lead to expertise. Within any period of reflection, there will be ambiguity and uncertainty.  However, that ambiguity and uncertainty is an important part of the process.  Your ability to analyze your own thinking process is a keystone that needs to be honed and cultivated. 

     As practioners, it is beneficial to critically reflect on practices, focusing on weaknesses as determined by the outcomes of decisions, and tracking repetition of practices that led to either good or less than stellar outcomes. Conceptualizing in this manner allows you to note similarities in your decision-making process and the possible influences, both internal and external, that might have influenced those decisions.  
 

Teaching yourself to be more reflective
     As you reflect, you need to look at your response process to both familiar and unfamiliar situations. What were the steps utilized to come to the decision? Upon reflection of the results of your action:

• Did the decision come to a positive fruition or not? Why?
• Would you rethink the deliberation that lead to the decision, if it was a less than satisfactory outcome? 

Part of the reflection process is a response to the question; Was a logical deduction process utilized to ascertain the decision?  Becoming a reflective person is a conscious, deliberate, and systematic process of training yourself in light of consequences of your actions and you must be willing to question your practices in a purposeful manner. 

     The path toward a solid reflective process is a constructive system of analysis, change, and restructuring. The consequence of the decision be it effective or not effective must be analyzed in terms of what went into your decision-making effort. For example:

• Prior knowledge.
• Attitudes and desires of influential people.
• Prejudice or a particular leaning in a certain direction.
• Did you discount, ignore or limit input from others?
• Was there an ego-related component added into the decision-making mix?
• Did you think too long or too hard on the issue and became paralyzed?
• Did you not give the issue enough thought and/or lead-in time?
• Did you have enough information to make a good decision?
• Was the impact of the decision more or less than you expected? Why?
• Did people ignore, act complacent, or become agitated as a result of your decision and/or their degree of involvement?

The period of growth, as you respond to these types of questions, commences when you ask yourself; How, given the need to make a similar decision and/or the next decision; will I/should I react?

Developing a Critical Distance

     You need to create a critical distance. It is impossible to judge an event or experience as it is happening, so the aspect of critical distance places the administrator, either following the event [with its consequence in full view] or at a more proactive juncture, where the decision has not been finalized because you are in the thinking process.
 
     As an administrator, there is no question that many times a sense of doubt can be a prevalent concept floating in your mind. That sense of doubt can begin to dissipate as you became more and more reflective.  The key here is that reflection leads to more reflection. As you get better at the practice, it becomes easier and the pattern that your decision-making takes, and the analysis of the results, becomes clean, crisp and clear. 

Serve or Volley
     The best metaphor I can suggest is tennis. The majority of shots you drive across the net are reflex actions based upon determining the speed of the ball coming to you and the angle at which you set your rack as the ball hits it.  All of these are instantaneous reactions to the ball being hit at you.  This is not unlike your average day as an administrator with questions and situations coming at you fast, often, and even aggressively. Your experiences will allow you to make the best response you can. However, when you are preparing to receive serve, you have time to wait, think, anticipate and decide how you are going to move when the ball is eventually hit to you. The knowledge gained from those serve opportunities set up your instantaneous decisions during the match. After the game, you reflect on the shots made during the match and how adjustments [body position, racket angel and speed] could have influenced your volley. This is pure reflection with clear, obvious indicators of were you well prepared and did the ball go where you intended!

Reflecting on Reflection

     The self-inquiry system causes you to take a step back and critically reflect not only on how you approached a situation, but also on why you responded in a particular manner. The questions of who was involved in the decision-making process, who was not, who should be added in and who should be deleted, are all part of this dynamic process to gain a deeper understanding of your own administrative style, deliberation process and, ultimately, enhance your effectiveness as a principal.

     We tend to shy away from people we see talking to themselves and think that they might be crazy. The bottom line to productive professional development utilizing a reflective practice is that you will need to talk to yourself. However, in this case, if you don't, you might be crazy not to take advantage of this strong professional development practice!

References:

Dewey J. How We Think. Boston: Heath 1933.

Schon, D.A. (1996). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc.

Schon, DA. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.

Don Sternberg, Ed.D. (sternbergd@wantaghschools.org) has been the principal of the Wantagh Elementary School (Wantagh, New York) for the past 29 years. He was the New York State Elementary School Principal of the Year in 2009 and is a National Distinguished Principal. He is co-president of the Nassau County Elementary School Principals’ Association and is an adjunct at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, teaching educational administration classes.