Reflection in Literature

INTRODUCTION

Three purposes of reflection as found in literature are-first to re-think our own
understanding of professional knowledge; second to develop personal knowledge and
third to evaluate the appropriateness of our actions. Hence reflection becomes a process
that invites the practitioner to become a thinker first and use reflection as a bridge from
tacit knowledge to conscious efforts of enhance the quality of action . Reflection also
becomes the source of increased accountability and to enable us to question established
professional knowledge by our predecessors in the field. As teachers unless we learn to
engage in critical reflection and ongoing discovery, we shall remain trapped in the status
quo, predetermined interpretations, assumptions and expectations. Gibbs’ reflective cycle
is a theoretical model that is extensively used by teachers and students as a framework
wherever they require reflective writing.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of this unit the prospective you will be able to:

1. work and practice according to the Gibb’s Reflective Cycle
2. use the six stages of this cycle effectively to manage their own reflective practices
for the purpose of teaching and learning

5.1 GIBB'S REFLECTIVE CYCLE

Gibbs' reflective cycle is found very useful in making people think through all the phases
of an experience or activity. Professor Graham Gibbs published his Reflective Cycle in
his book titled "Learning by Doing"(1988). It is a guide book for the teachers for teaching
methods and techniques. The reflective learning cycle presented in the book models how
learners can link theory and practice through engaging in a cyclical sequence of activities
named as: describing, feeling, evaluating, analysing, concluding and action planning.
This model known as the Gibbs’ Cycle has been particularly influential in teacher
education programs. Generally speaking the Gibb's Cycle has its basic utility and benefit
is for the people who learn from different situations from which they go through, most
probably when they are unable to go about with their plans. Hence the reflective
practitioners tend to follow similar patterns of reflection and reflective writing
(Reflective Cycle, 2015).

Gibbs’ (1988) reflective cycle includes six phases of reflection and is presented below. Gibb's Cycle of Reflective Cycle (Reflective Cycle, 2015)

To Understand the cycle it is important to ensure that you learn about each section; for
example each section should limit you to write and think only about one aspect at a time
and nothing more.

Description: briefly describe the event; this should be one of the smallest sections of your
reflection. Include important details to indicate what happened; such as the reason for
your involvement, what you did and who was there and what they did (if appropriate).
Whilst it is important that you include information that is necessary to make sense of the
event, the key point here is on keeping it brief.

Feelings: give you the opportunity to explore any thoughts or feelings that you were
having at the time of the event in isolation from the other components. In order to achieve
this, it is important that you do not include any further description and do not try to
evaluate them. An important component in this section is that you expand to tell how the
thoughts and feelings that you were having have impacted on the event.

 
Evaluation: The evaluation section gives you the opportunity to explore what was good
about the event and what did not go well. It is important that you try to consider both the
good and the bad, even if the incident seemed totally negative or positive.

Please note, that the previous components of this cycle all concern what happened, the
components that follow relate to making sense of the incident and how you could
improve on the situation if it happened again.

Description Stage II: is where you make sense of the event and should be the largest
section of your reflection. It is useful to take all the issues that you have highlighted
previously in the reflection and consider them separately. It is important in this section
that you consult relevant academic literature to help you make sense of the incident

Conclusion: includes being honest about your contribution and feelings; you bring them
all together so that you can sensibly conclude from examining the incident and consulting
the relevant literature, how what you did led up to the incident. From this, you should be
able to make a logical alternative about how you can overcome such situations.

Action plan: is where taking into account the previous elements of the cycle, you suggest
a plan for if this event (or similar) were to happen again. What would you do differently
or keep the same? This is the final section of the cycle and the end of this particular
reflection.

Now let’s practice

5.1.1 Description (Stage I): This is the first step of reflection. Remember that everyone
reflects in different ways, styles and means. According to Gibbs first of all you need to
explain what you are reflecting on to. You may include background information, such as

what it is you’re reflecting on and tell explicitly who, what, where, questions. It’s
important to remember to keep the information provided relevant and to-the-point. Do
not drivel on about details that aren’t required in the description such as guessing the
causes, and consequences. Keep the description as simple as possible.

Now let’s practice this. Think of what made you happy, excited, or disturbed during a
school day. This can be an event that happened in the school last week, or even today. If
you think you don’t have anything to write about then wait for a couple of days until you
find something really interesting to write about during the day. Make use of the following
questions while writing your first stage description:

1. When did this happen?

2. Where did it happen?

3. Why were you there?

 
4. Who else was there?
5. What happened?

6. What did you do?

7. What did others do?

8. What was the result?

5.1.2 Feelings:

You are bound to have feelings about what happened. You may have felt anxious,
especially if what happened was new to you. The important thing is to show how you
managed to do what was expected of you despite your anxiety. Try to describe/explain
your feelings. Whenever we are involved in particular situation, after narrating it the next
step is to ask ourselves about the feeling. This particular stage is the analytical stage in
the Bloom's Taxonomy. This will help in the development of cognitive abilities,
communication skills and expression of thoughts. This also brings the inside out.

Let’s practice how to write our feelings

1. What were your initial feelings when the incident happened?

2. Did your feelings change during the event?

3. Did your feelings affect the situation?

4. What are your feelings now as you are thinking back?

5.1.3 Evaluation:

The third and the higher level job for the you now is to evaluate. What was good? and
what was bad? –these are two umbrella questions. It all depends what you count as good
and what as bad. Your values, ideological background, context and the environment as
well as situation influences your evaluative judgments. For a conscious effort to evaluate
an incident practice to answer the following questions:

1. What do you think went well in the situation?

2. Did you learn anything useful as a result of what went on?

3. Did anything give you cause for concern – either in what others did or what you did?

4. Was there something which you would not wish to experience again?

5.1.4 Description (Stage II): This stage is more of synthesis of the above three stages
and in the light of knowledge. Here it is suggested that you may re-write the description
of the event but this time you may make use of your knowledge regarding this. You have
the knowledge of child psychology, you have the knowledge of teachers professional
development, you have the knowledge of school management and supervision; etc. Using
the specific knowledge you now need to re-write the whole description.

5.1.5 Conclusion: Human being are the best of all creations on the basis of their thinking
abilities and choosing the best options out of the available options. The quality of the
option that they choose, tell us the quality of thinking of that particular person. Now the
big question to answer at this stage is What else could be done? Let’s exercise to write
alternative options. You might not be able to fill in all the boxes but try to fill as many as
possible:

5.1.6 Action Plan: Then it is expected that
you will use the best option along with the reason of choosing it and also its pros and
cons. So draft an action plan what will you do if this situation arises again.

 
Do not forget!!!

Gibb's cycle is not only limited to the curriculum, it is not confined in teaching only; It is
actually the preparation for life. You should go through extensive thinking process. Think
and re-think. Then take decision, discuss the matter, rehash the decision, feel the situation
and then come up to some conclusion. Be open to talk to someone and doubt your own

judgments. During this process you should learn to argue peacefully; justify your own
selected option at the first place and then through a process of reflective thinking come
up with alternatives. So this all hectic mental process prepare you for life, which brings
an individual to different situations, jobs and environment. Feeling, thinking and
rethinking practice will surely help you in making decisions later in personal and
professional life.

5.2 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

Q.1 How practical is the Gibb's Cycle for the perspective teachers?

Q.2 How will you relate the Gibb's cycle with Bloom's Taxonomy? How are they same
and what are the differences in them.

Q.3 How the Gibb's Reflective Cycle can develop the blocked mental faculties?

5.3 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Learning for Skills. (2015, Feb 5). Retrieved from Leeds Beckett University Web Site:
http://skillsforlearning.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/preview/content/models/03.shtml

Reflective Cycle. (2015, October 21). Retrieved from Mind Tools:
http://www.mindtools.com

5.4 WEB REFERENCES

1. https://hhs.hud.ac.uk/lqsu/Sessionsforall/supp/Gibbs%201988%20reflective%20cycle.pdf
2. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/campuslife/services/disability/service/Using-Gibbs-
Reflective-Cycle-in-Coursework.pdf
3. http://www.cumbria.ac.uk/Public/LISS/Documents/skillsatcumbria/ReflectiveCycleGibbs.pdf