My Reflective Practice Mission Statement

This post was inspired by a couple of people: Ann Loseva, Anne Hendler and John Pfordresher. To cut a long story short, everything is nicely summarized in this blog post by Anne Hendler. Now, let's get down to work.

As I initially had no idea what this was all about (I thought the people were speaking a new language I'd never heard of) and I'm still not sure I got it, I have to proceed slowly, thoroughly and with caution. I love untangling things. I love all sorts of riddles and puzzles, and I'm happy to figure things out on my own. I'm a holistic type of person but sometimes it's necessary to analyze. So let me think aloud. Let me dissect the whole chunk Reflective Practice Mission Statement, step by step. I'm doing it for me and those who've never heard of the term.

1) As I understand it, a mission statement is supposed to help me set forth my goals. It's here to show others what to expect from me. In other words, by providing a mission statement, I'm making my purposes clear. It should be designed to clearly communicate what I do in such a way that people can remember it and communicate this to others. So good mission statements should be clear, memorable and concise. Mission statements can be quite lengthy, or they can be a simple sentence or two. The shortest mission statements are only two words long, such as this one: Spreading Ideas (by TED). A personal mission statement can start very simply:

I plan to ...
I pledge to .....
My goal is to ...
I will .....
My mission is to ...
I'd like to focus my attention ....
I'm dedicated to ...

2) Now what about the expression reflective practice? Reflective can be defined as 'of, relating to, produced by, or resulting from reflection'. Reflective practice then refers to reflection throughout your practice. It means that individuals learn from their own professional experiences, rather than from formal teaching or knowledge transfer.

After this analytical workout, I can carry on to synthesize, evaluate and finally create my actual reflective practice mission statement. This is going to be tough, I can feel it in my bones....

So, I'll choose a phrase to start with. I like the one 'I pledge to' because it sounds quite poetic to me, and a little bit archaic too.


I pledge to continuously share my successes as well as my failures in teaching and education in general. My goal is to listen closely to my intuition and common sense, as well as to the voices of other educators and professionals in the field of education and to hear what they have to say. My mission is to reflect on what I maintain is right or wrong but also to take into consideration what others contend based on their personal experience.
 
 
I suppose that's it. Conclusion. Full stop. It was rather painful but enjoyable in the end.