Reflective Practice in Youth Work: The Art of Understanding Self
- The Youth Work Common Room
- Mar 15
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 16
#youthwork #TheYouthWorkCommonRoom #YWCR #reflection #weareeducators #professionaldevelopment #informaleducation #youngpeople #coaching
I was with a group of youth workers recently, exploring models of reflective practice which lead us into a discussion around purpose and intent based upon our core values and principes.
We identified that youth work and informal education in both an old skool and contemporary sense has the capacity for a depth of self-awareness and reflection is not just merely a superficial scratch across the surface of ‘what happened’ but is an essential component of developing self and practice through critical enquiry. If as a profession we are truly invested in showcasing the value of youth work, we need to be able to develop an ability to respond to the questions about our work that encompasses the complexities of working with young people in our approach. This is a response that blends reflection, coaching, and supervision to enhance both personal and professional development based upon the credible youth work ethics and principles that guide our own professional standards. Identifying what matters and what we want is a personal honesty key to unlocking our potential that through effective reflection and coaching we can reach resolutions.
My own work in education and training focuses on working with colleagues to synthesise reflective models such as Donald Schön’s reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, David Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, Brookfield’s lenses, and Graham Gibbs’ reflective cycle. In this way, practitioners can gain a delicate understanding through blended models of reflection that impact on their development. If coaching is something you are interested in or you would like team development around using reflective practice as a model for evaluative conceptualisation, get in touch.
The process of coaching and supervision and to an extent in the learning and teaching space, it is important to remember that we are wired for storytelling, pattern recognition, and meaning-making. Effective reflection taps into these processes, enabling us to process experiences deeply and shape future responses; young people lives are perpetually moving and so it is valuable to incorporate purposeful reflection to steady the values compass. When youth workers have supported structured reflection, the development of emotional intelligence, resilience, and adaptive problem-solving skills are enhanced. Reflection acts as a mirror to our self, unconscious biases, emotional triggers, and habitual responses.
The integration of various reflective models, enables youth workers to develop a more holistic approach to self-understanding and practice.
The group of youth workers I was with, highlighted the schemes and processes of various reflective models and together we established that the models must be vigorously attended to and not superficially overlooked as simplistic; (acknowledging there is much we do not understand or know everything is a good starting place)
Schön’s Reflection-In-Action and Reflection-On-Action:
Reflection-in-action encourages practitioners to think and adapt in the moment, responding intuitively to the needs of young people.
Reflection-on-action allows for deeper post-experience analysis, refining future strategies and approaches.
The principles of intuition in this model requires connection to our own truths and how we feel about events to draw out a future-view of potential.
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle:
Concrete experience → Reflective observation → Abstract conceptualisation → Active experimentation.
This cyclical process ensures that experiences are transformed into learning moments, supporting iterative development in youth work practice.
The model strives to seek out transformation and change through keeping going (iterative) through the cycle to find solutions that are mutually beneficial.
Brookfield’s Four Lenses of Critical Reflection:
Self-lens: Examining personal experiences and biases.
Young people’s lens: Understanding how young people perceive and experience interactions.
Colleagues’ lens: Gaining insights from peer feedback.
Theoretical lens: Anchoring practice in wider theoretical frameworks and best practices.
This multi-dimensional approach prevents practitioners from becoming trapped in their own perspectives and reviews the intersections of various voices, considering empathy and more informed decision-making.
In this model, the concept of anchoring practice, stabilising an understanding to establish from the various perspective what can be done next.
Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle:
A structured method involving description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action planning.
This model is particularly effective in supervision sessions, providing a scaffolded approach to unpacking complex or emotionally charged experiences.
This model enables change in the emotionally charged experiences into safe exploration of positive change.
A clear connection in each of the reflective models is the feelings the youth worker has in relation to the event or activity that forms the experience. An important question is whether we have acknowledge and processed these feelings and importantly if we do not have any! The ability to consider our feelings and therefore actions through reflection is key to development and understanding why a principle that is tied to our core values and beliefs around young people and their voice and agency.
Developing your own practice (Top Tips)
The following are some ideas to begin to blend reflective models to support practice development. If you are interested in coaching, training or supervision, please contact me direct;
Structured Reflective and Reflexive Journals – If youth workers write in a journal, where they note their experiences, what emotions were at play, and insights using Gibbs’ cycle or Kolb’s framework.
Supervision Sessions with a Coaching Mindset – Move past problem-solving to developmental conversations that creates a self-awareness and strategic growth.
Reflective Peer Dialogues – Engage in Brookfield type peer discussions to explore multiple perspectives on challenging situations.
Scenario-Based or Case Study Learning – Use Schön’s approach to analyse and adapt responses in real-time youth work contexts.
Emotional Mapping – Can be used to identify any potential or actual emotional triggers and source patterns in responses to young people. To lead to better emotional regulation and empathy.
The group of youth workers were brilliant and captured the notion that the professional youth work toolkit should have many tools around reflection and that a synergy of coaching, supervision, and structured reflection enables youth workers to access enhanced self-awareness and adaptability needed to support young people.
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