Reflective Practice

Thing 5 for cpd23 is reflective practice and comes just a week after I found out I passed my Chartership! Whoop! I find reflecting comes easily to me especially as I am a bit of a perfectionist but I know this is not the case for everyone so here are my Top Tips for Reflecting & Chartering:

Reflection Tips!

• Be honest with yourself about how something worked.
• Ask yourself questions like what worked well, what didn't, how could I make it better next time, how is this relevant to the service as a whole, what was it's impact.
• If you need a kick start ask a colleague to peer review your activity or service.
• Get feedback from your users.
• Use best practice in other Libraries to inform and improve your service.
• Reflecting quickly by using a tool such as a Log can help you cut down on the time it takes and make it easier to refer back to.

Chartership Tips!

• Keep a CPD Log! If you don't have time to write everything up this is a perfect way of keeping track of everything you have done. Mine is a table with 4 columns: Date, Activity, What have you learned from this activity?, How have you applied it to the work place? This is one thing I will be keeping up post Chartership just in case I revalidate in the future...
• Visits are a great way of widening your knowledge of different sectors. You don't need to write up up lots use photos with short relevant reflections as evidence.
• Go to a conference! It's a great experience and fantastic for networking!
• Get involved and advocate the profession. Join a local group it's a great experience.
• Remember aanything can be evidence!
• Professional reading includes blogs :)
• And lastly remember to link your reflections back to the service as a whole.
• Blogging is a great way to record evidence... I wish I had go into it sooner :)

I hope these tips are useful and good luck if you are chartering at the moment!

Hannah