Reflective Practice Task 2

The Reflective Practitioner - the 1st steps

Reader 2

Various types of journals

Professional capacity.  My journal over the years contained short written accounts of my travels to various destinations throughout the world.  Notes on resources, contacts, lots of photographic evidence capturing those moments or reminders of that event.  I would use the journal to seek out new ideas and inspiration for dance projects.  It was a form of database.

Personal life.  I have written about personal events that have caused life changing experiences and about how I was feeling at that time and about the process of resolution.

For this task, I have started a different style of journal as I find myself in a completely different place and time and am confused.  I’ve firstly had to find out if there was a difference between reflection-on-action and introspection as I know that I can be pilosiphical in my writting and yes, there is. Introspection is personal, self analysis and has a philosophical aspect. When reflecting you have facts available to you, within your environment and you are trying to understand why they have turned out a certain way.  I found an analogy that helps clarify; ‘For instance if one of our car tires got punctured, reflection would make us conclude that the puncture probably occurred as a result of driving over a nail. Introspection on the other hand would cause us to believe that the puncture no doubt occurred because of the fact that one drove over a nail, but it was as much a result of not being careful and making no attempt to avoid driving over that nail!’
Thus we see that two seemingly similar terms which are so often used in place of each other, have entirely different connotation both in terms of the actual meanings and connotations. Moreover the close similarity and subtle differences between the two terms occur in the IT domain as well where the two terms denote similar yet differing properties.
Summary:
1.The term reflection denotes the act or state of being reflected while introspection has to do with the observation or examination of one’s own mental and emotional state of mind.
2.Reflection implies a fixing of thoughts on something or a thought while in introspection the whole tendency is to self evaluate and measure.
3.In reflection one looks at the facts while in introspection one looks at the philosophical aspects also.

If the above is correct, I think I will find it difficult not to include an introspection aspect. Would this be the  right thing to do?. I will be looking at other reflective journals for inspiration and ideas and also to see if there is an introspective aspect included. Has anyone else found this a confusing task to start?