Your Learning Log

Contents:

• Developing Reflective Learning
• Getting Started
• Reviewing the Learning Log
• Getting the Habit

Developing Reflective Learning

Reflective learning is about exploring your experiences to understand how you learn so that you can improve your performance as a leader.  As you develop your skills as a reflective learner you will become more self-aware and self-critical; honest about yourself, be open to criticism and feedback; be more objective in weighing up evidence; curious to discover other approaches and more motivated to improve your performance.

Reflective learning happens when you consciously think about and analyse what you do or have done and we all do this to some degree.  A structured approach helps you to reflect on your learning and to understand your own learning processes.

The process of reflecting on behaviour and using such feedback to learn and modify behaviour is the quality improvement process.   Most hard-working MDs keep their noses to the grindstone to complete tasks and as a result have a strong work ethic.  How do you know that you have done it the most efficient way? Or kept track of what you have learned? You might have taken corrective action!

Reflective learning is linked to your learning style – and the Learning Cycle:

1. Experience – we ask ‘What happened?’ - Activist
2. Observe – we ask ‘What does it mean?’ - Reflector
3. Abstract ideas – we ask ‘What do I know?’ - Theorist
4. Test out – we ask ‘what do I do?’ - Pragmatist

Many companies encourage their workers, individually and in teams, to use quality management techniques to continually improve the quality of their work.  Two key features of quality management are:

• keeping records that enable you to judge quality, and
• reflecting on what went right or wrong, in order to work out how to improve quality in the future.

A ‘learning log’ is one way to improve and encourage reflection and others include:

• Self-assessment
• Peer-assessment/debriefing
• Learning partners/critical friends
• Critical incident diaries
• Project diaries/logs
• Diary and autobiographical writing
• Using questions to guide issues
• Personal development plans
• Action learning

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Getting started:

Keeping learning logs or journals and writing reflectively can seem threatening to some and you may be turned off by the idea before you start.  Start slowly and take small steps to make reflective learning a habit.

An easy way to start is to structure the log by using set questions:

Other approaches include:

Write from different perspectives: write about your experience of an event in the third person to see a different viewpoint to the problem.
Unsent letter: Write the experience as an honest open letter to someone.  Keep it in the learning journal.
Reflection on a book: keep comments on what you are reading.
Learning partners/critical friends: Get someone to help you compare and criticise the experience/approach, exchange ideas.
Describe the process of solving problems: useful if you have a structured/staged problem-solving process.
Focus on past experience: Look for links with different experiences to get a new outlook or develop a more imaginative approach.
Lists: Write lists to generate ideas 'What am I good at?', 'Things I could change'.
Stepping stones: For specific experience list in chronological order, what you remember about the 'event'.
Team review: get members of the team/meeting to review effectiveness of the group -

• What helped or facilitated our meeting? (Continue)
• What hindered our meeting effectiveness? (Stop)
• What changes do we want to make for next time? (Change)
• What have we learned about ourselves and teamwork? (Learn)

Critical incident analysis: record and analyse an experience or incident, to improve practice, keeping to one side of A4.   Your analysis will pick out the key parts of the event so that the importance of actions and responses is understood.  This helps focus on a significant 'incident' or when you want to make note of a particular learning experience.
Questions can help identify the key steps in the situation:

• Critical Incident Analysis 
• Description of the situation 
• Who was involved? Roles? Responsibilities? 
• What learning occurred? 
• What were the outcomes? 
• How has your practice changed? 

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Reviewing the Learning Log

At least every three weeks look over your log and reflect on the learning processes you have gone through.  Be critical of yourself:

• Did something go well?  Then what did I learn from it? How can I build on it?
• Did something go badly? Then exactly what went wrong? How can I fix it, overcome difficulties, and improve upon it?
• Have my ideas changed?  If so, why?

Here are some statements to help you log your learning:

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Getting the Habit:

Every day stop to write in your Learning Log. 
Choose one or more of the following sentence starters to help you get started and be specific:

Today I was very successful because...
Today I was unsuccessful because...
Today I had a problem trying to ... Tomorrow I will try to solve that problem by...
Today was the first time I ever...
The easiest part of ………..was...
The hardest part of ………..was...
I need help with... so tomorrow I will...
I am proud of myself today because I...
The most helpful source of information is/was... because...
Today, I changed the way I ... because...
One thing I learned today is...
One thing I learned today about how I behave is...
One thing I learned today about myself is...
One thing I learned today about how I learn is...
I used time well today because I ...
I need to do a better job of ... tomorrow ... because...

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