Early learning and childcare: national induction resource

Section Two - Reflective Practice

Introduction

The aim of this section of the National Induction Resource is to encourage you to reflect on the important role you play in a child’s life. It is designed to reinforce your individual responsibility and accountability to help you be the best ELC practitioner possible, to help you to understand how reflecting on your practice can help improve outcomes for children and how your workplace can support you.

Throughout your career you will be encouraged to reflect on your practice. This means learning from your everyday experiences and using this to develop your work with children. The reflective questions in appendix D of this resource should be viewed as a first step in your self-evaluation and personal development process which will continue throughout your career. They are designed to encourage you to reflect on the extent to which you are demonstrating the skills, knowledge and understanding to work with children, young people and families in Scotland.

You should work through these with your mentor who can give you advice and support to help develop your skills and knowledge. They are written to promote discussion about your role in providing quality care and learning for children. Your mentor will work with you and support you in the work place by providing learning opportunities, guidance and role modelling.

Self-evaluation

Self-evaluation for self-improvement underpins the Scottish approach to quality assurance of all aspects of provision in Scottish education and is a key element in reflective practice. Self-evaluation can also improve and develop your leadership skills throughout your career (see the ‘Leadership at all levels’ section of this resource). There are a range of tools and resources to help you to develop your reflective practice:

Realising the Ambition: Being Me is the national practice guidance document for early years provision in Scotland. While it is not a self-evaluation framework, it draws together key messages about children’s learning and development, aspects of important research and effective practice all in one accessible document. Section 5 includes information on pedagogical leadership and Section 7 has a particular focus on ensuring high quality services for children. However, all sections will be useful to you in your work within ELC.

Education Scotland provides advice and guidance to support improvement through partnership working, professional learning and access to resources on their website.

The Care Inspectorate is the regulatory body responsible for inspecting standards and supporting improvement of care in Scotland. The Care Inspectorate has statutory obligations under the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 to carry out inspections of all ELC settings and, where appropriate, provide services with improvement support to ensure the provision of high-quality experiences that support positive outcomes for children and families.

The Quality improvement framework for the early learning and childcare sectors, developed jointly by the Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland/HMIE is a key tool designed to support care services in self-evaluation and will help you, and your team, to reflect on and continuously improve your work. The Quality Improvement Framework is used by the Care Inspectorate and Education Scotland/HMIE during inspection.

The framework includes a range of quality indicators that are designed to support you to look closely at different aspects of your practice. All quality indicators have themes to support your self-evaluation, with illustrations of practice for each theme. By taking time to reflect on and plan for improvements you will be able to understand and celebrate what you do well, and what you could do to improve your practice.

The Care Inspectorate has worked with ELC services and sector-wide bodies to build the capacity for self-evaluation, based on the framework. Self-evaluation is a core part of assuring quality and supporting improvement, that should enable you to develop plans based on effective practice, guidance, research, testing and available improvement support.

Care Inspectorate inspectors will use the framework to evaluate service performance, using the quality illustrations to identify any areas for improvement needed in the experiences and outcomes for children.

The Care Inspectorate also provide bite-sized learning sessions on self-evaluation on the Care Inspectorate Hub.

Note to Mentors

It may take some time to build trusting relationships where the newly recruited team member is able to share thoughts, feelings and progression. Take time at the start to plan how this induction process will work for them. Remember each is an individual and will progress at different rates. You should develop your own timetable for this process, particularly for part time workers, or for those with limited previous experience.

The first month should encourage the newly recruited team member to observe practice, develop confidence in practical skills and get to know procedures within the setting. It is of particular importance that they understand the importance of managing the environment children are in, including how to spot potential - and minimise - risks to children. Take the opportunity to point out safety measures in each area and why these are important. Explain why specific measures are needed as babies grow and develop into toddlers and explore their environments with newfound confidence. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) has some easily accessible information to support understanding of the kinds of accidents children have, which can help the team member begin to identify potential hazards.

An important area to highlight is the need to have an awareness of where children are at all times. New team members need to know the processes in place to ensure children cannot exit the premises unaccompanied, from either indoor or outdoor spaces. It is also important that they are made aware of the ways in which children are kept safe on visits out with the setting. This won’t be the sole responsibility of new team members for some time, but it is important that they recognise that it is everyone’s responsibility to keep children safe, and habits formed now will stand them in good stead as they develop in their career. The Care Inspectorate resource ‘Keeping Children Safe’ highlights some trigger areas where children are more likely to wander off if unobserved or to leave a childcare setting without staff or a parent/carer.

A key aspect of supporting children’s emotional attachment within the setting is to ensure that parents and children are welcomed into the setting together. Having the opportunity to share directly in children’s experiences and building relationships with staff positively supports respectful and trusting relationships. Childcare professionals should be working to actively encourage families into their setting, in addition to any virtual approaches which may have been developed in recent times. New team members will need support and guidance to gain confidence in engaging professionally with families to support these relationships. Me, My Family and My Childcare Setting provides additional resources to support you as you explore the importance of family involvement in their children’s care, learning and development with your new team member.

Encourage the new team member to provide examples from their practice and share your observations of them. Use this induction in conjunction with on the job guidance and support. For each question, encourage the new team member to reflect on how it affects outcomes for children. We have included some suggestions of what may be discussed in order to help you prepare. It is helpful for the new team member to have a copy or link to the following documents to refer to: Realising the Ambition; the Health and Social Care Standards; Supporting Scotland’s Children – Core Knowledge and Values; the Quality improvement framework for the early learning and childcare sectors, the Continuous Learning Framework; and the SSSC Codes of Practice or the GTCS professional standards (for teachers).