Lifelong learning and reflective practice : learning from practice and practising learning using future tools

Performance review of supervised staff involves reflective practice. As a genuine strategy to facilitate lifelong learning, reflective practices can incorporate a futures orientation in order to assess, plan, and implement improvements to an individual’s near- and far-future life, learning goals, and workplace performance. This can all be achieved within formal and informal mechanisms for reviewing and reporting on previous performance and planning for the immediate future workload and, where necessary, mechanisms for managing performance improvement can be introduced. Inherently, the short term nature of formalised performance review mechanisms do not facilitate good lifelong learning practice. It is through the more dynamic process of using a range of futures tools that formalised performance review mechanisms can promote a dialogue to explore the diverse potential of meeting current and near-future individual and organizational goals. This can be accomplished by understanding the past-present-future continuum; the nature of the plurality of the future – preferred, plausible, probable, or possible; and the exploration of the manner in which to achieve convergence to an achievable future. In this manner the incorporation of a futures orientation provides greater opportunity for staff and supervisor to explore and articulate organizational and individual goals and how to go about achieving them.