What is REFLECT
REFLECT co-mentoring is a dynamic, collaborative learning process for people across sectors. People taking part in REFLECT pause, reflect, reconnect, and reappraise their professional practice from a new perspective. The co-mentoring relationship is time limited with a clear, shared focus supported by a learning agreement.
Co-mentoring conversations are non-judgmental, based on empathy and mutual respect. Personal and professional learning which takes place across sectors has outcomes with the potential to transform practice. The co-mentoring process is not target driven and the outcomes are clear, tangible, and pragmatic for individuals and their organisations.
REFLECT co-mentoring enriches practice and offers valuable time and space for creative thinking. Co-mentors taking part in the pilot programme shared values, explored different points of view, and re-focused their work with children and young people as a direct consequence of exploring their own creative practice. Co-mentors have taken their learning back into their organisations and businesses creating new partnerships, strengthening creative learning, developing new approaches to leadership and establishing their own co-mentoring programmes.
Context to REFLECT
In November 2006 The Sage Gateshead was awarded Creative Partnerships funding to conduct a national programme in co-mentoring between emerging leaders in creative and cultural organisations and schools. The REFLECT pilot programme adds a cross-sector dimension to recent developments in professional learning that have been promoted by Creative Partnerships and other national agencies and programmes. Strategic initiatives in education have increasingly been underpinned by different models of mentoring and coaching but the shift towards collaborative practice is now acknowledged as central to the delivery of the Government’s creativity agenda. The REFLECT programme has been built on findings and recommendations from:
- National Advisory Committee on Creativity and Cultural Education report: All Our Futures
- Centre for Use of Research and Evidence in Education’s (CUREE) key characteristics of collaborative learning
- Paul Roberts’ Nurturing Creativity for Young People report to Government
- Creative Partnerships’ Creativity Action Research Awards (CARA)
- Teacher Artist Partnership Programme
- Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s Learning Links programme
- Previous Creative Partnerships funded mentoring programmes run by Arts Inform in London and East Midlands
- Cultural Leadership Programme
- Training Development Agency’s National Mentoring and Coaching Framework designed by CUREE
- The principles identified by the National Mentoring Network
The values and principles underlying REFLECT have been embedded in the DNA of the Practitioner Development Programme at The Sage Gateshead since its inception in 2001.
REFLECT in practice
The REFLECT Framework defines the co-mentoring process, the way the programme is structured and the way that co-mentors work together.
“ A scheme that offers time for people to explore ideas and creativity with no fixed outcome is liberating and rare. ”
REFLECT co-mentoring has:
“ We were staggered when we first met and spoke about how much we had in common in terms of my specialist area and her personal interest. ”
“ It was a meeting of minds and so valuable – people were open about sharing ideas, knowledge and experience. All had ideas to contribute and I think all felt that we had a valid viewpoint as we were all equals in this situation. ”
“ The group meetings were enabling and fascinating, as it was so interesting to meet others from different spheres of working life – facing their own constraints. Activities – including discussion - helped to crystallise and cement ideas – sometimes about creativity in school and sometimes about the REFLECT process. ”
“ I have now thought deeply about where I am at and where I am going. REFLECT gave me permission. My co-mentor encouraged. ”
REFLECT co-mentoring offers shared reflective enquiry without prescribed outcomes.
Co-mentors’ shared focus’ in the pilot programme included:
- Managing times of transition for the individual, their organisation or for those they work with
- Leadership qualities
- Working better with colleagues
- Exploring why we do what we do?
- Deep exploration into areas of joint interest i.e. specific age groups
of children and young people; engaging particular groups in the
community; areas of the curriculum
“ Although we had identified an area to explore we were not bound by externally imposed expected outcomes and I believe that this is a strength of the programme. The luxury of having uninterrupted time and space to share our thoughts, feelings, and possibilities without the expectation of producing measurable outcomes at the end of the process was totally liberating and in itself promoted creative thinking. ”
“ Taking part in the REFLECT programme has had an impact on my own personal and professional development in ways which I could not have predicted. It gave me permission to say what if…… and to imagine a whole range of possibilities. Through my co-mentoring partnership I was able to take risks in my thinking because I felt supported in a relationship that offered unconditional positive regard. The nature of the relationship was fundamental to the process in that neither of us took the role of the expert or took overall control of the relationship – it was a true partnership.
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