What is a reflective 'framework'?
What does the word ‘framework’ conjure up? A picture frame? Plain black or with twirly corners? A tent-like structure? A pair of glasses? Not bad images for what is meant here. The picture frame makes the picture look special, different to how it was just on the paper. Tent poles form a frame to keep the fabric of the tent in place … different glasses provide different lenses that change the appearance of what you are looking at.
In the caring professions it can be hard to make sense of your daily encounters, which may be quick, upsetting, or puzzling. When you look at a situation, you just see the actions, the scene, you see it as you see it. You don’t know how other people have seen it.
A framework can help you interpret and understand what you have experienced. Other people have been there, experienced this, reflected on the meaning of an experience, and set out the process in an organised way. A framework can help you make sense of your experience – and compare your experience with other people’s. You look at an experience through the lenses of others who have analysed and reflected on similar experiences, and you begin to reflect on how your experience resembles or differs from other people’s.
This is how you become a reflective practitioner.
