When and where does reflection happen during your work?

Armed with a good theoretical understanding of reflection, though this by no means should lead you to think that there is universal agreement as to what reflection is up to the last detail, we were interested in when and where reflection happens to the potential end-users of the Mirror Apps that we want to deliver during the next three and a half years.

We are convinced, that such concrete examples will bring us futher in theoretical discussions, contribute to the ongoing requirements-engineering process, and will help developers of Mirror Apps to have concrete images of end users and their work situation in mind.

Thus, we asked our testbed partners for concrete examples of learning through reflection at work – and that’s what we got: Short stories from real workplaces, in which reflection happens and the actors learn something.

Enjoy the stories – and let us know what you think about them, or whether you know similar reflection stories from your own work experience!

Crowd Control

Challenging Behaviour - Story A

Challenging Behaviour - Story B

Crowd Control

During a football match, professional services such as police, but also volunteers, help run the football match smoothly. This story is about one volunteer, Volunteer A. All volunteers belong to a team of volunteers, and are managed by a team leader. The team plans their actions and tasks before the football match, and discuss the event afterwards.
Volunteer A’s task consists in managing a crowd of football fans close to the entrance before the match and close to the exit after that.

Volunteer A works alone. He has been selected for this work for his self-confidence and authority skills, and even because he is a tough man, and tall enough to be seen from long distance. The only support that he has is a Radio or his voice for interacting with other volunteers or his Team Leader.
Volunteer A meets a very stressful situation when a lot of people want to enter the stadium at one time. He needs him to be cool headed and self-confident in order to control so many people around him.

When the flood of people ebbs, Volunteer A begins to think about how to improve his skills in managing many people. He has some ideas to better manage this huge number of people (e.g., use physical obstacles to control the direction of masses). He also tries to to understand whether this job is the right kind of job at a football match for him. (Informal, individual reflection)

After having completed all duties at the football match, Volunteer A has the opportunity to talk to his colleagues, and discusses the stressful situation, his thoughts on how to improve the handling of masses, and asks for feedback on how he handled the situation.
He considers it very important to share his impressions and ideas with colleagues, especially because he managed most of his duties alone, and did not have a partner in place to give direct feedback to him. (Informal, collaborative reflection)

During the official debriefing, these thoughts are discussed again in a more formal setting, and the Team Leader notes all the team members’ ideas and suggestions.
At this stage, the team leader tries to engage the team members to continue reflecting about their experiences on their own, and to find out whether they would like to keep similar jobs at future events. This is important, as they do not get a formal evaluation of their importance. The team leader also tries to make the team members aware that they can be proud of themselves, to increase their self-confidence, to encourage them to identify any need for training for them, and to motivate them to continue their volunteer work. (Formal, collaborative reflection)

After the official team debriefing, all information gathered from team leaders and from volunteers are organized into documents in order to better organize future intervention, to prepare training courses and protocols, new guidelines and exercises.
At this stage, concrete ideas like Volunteer A’s idea to use physical obstacles for better crowd control are discussed between the professional team leaders. (Organisational reflection)

Challenging Behaviour – Story A

It is customary for physicians in hospitals to talk through the status of all patients in a ward at shift-handover (day and night shift). The physician who is going to leave discusses with the physician on the next shift, what has happened, and what should be done/can be expected during the next shift.

In one instance, patient 3 in a ward showed aggressive behaviour during the night.
Physician A, who has had the night shift, managed to calm the patient down.

However this is an event outside the nightly routine, and physician A therefore discusses this with Physician B, who is going to take over the day shift.
Physician A asks Physician B about his experiences with patient 3, about experiences with aggressive behaviour, and reflects on whether he, physician A, should or could have reacted differently. (Informal, collaborative reflection)

Challenging Behaviour – Story B

A carer at a nursing home for elderly people tells the following story from a night shift:

“I always have a lot of tasks to accomplish on my night shift. One night, a particular new resident got up in the middle of the night. I asked him to go back to bed and when he refused I tried to lead him gently back but he got angry and abusive. I thought he was going to hit me. After my shift was over, I reflected on whether it was really necessary for me to send the resident back to bed, and if so whether I should have spent more time ‘negotiating’ with the resident. [Informal, individual reflection] I decided to also ask co-workers if they had had similar experiences, and if so, how they dealt with it. [Informal, collaborative reflection]”

The carers decided to take notes of the resident’s waking time, as multiple carers experienced similar situations with the resident in question. One month later, the recordings paid off as the carers discovered that the resident regularly got up in the middle of the night. The carers also discovered, from asking the resident as well as the family about his past, that the resident had been a doorstep milk deliverer.

As a result, the carers decided to ask the resident to deliver to the other bedrooms on the corridor when he got up in the middle of the night. After he has finished his work, the resident now tumbles into bed happy and exhausted.