Different ways to reflect

The most important thing isn’t how you reflect. What matters is taking time to think about what you’ve learnt, how it relates to your role and how it can improve your practice.

Choose the approach that best suits your learning and the level of reflection you need.

The best approach will depend on:

• the learning activity or experience
• how much detail you need
• the purpose of your reflection
• your own preferred way of reflecting.

Whichever approach you choose, reflection should help you understand your learning, use it in practice and improve outcomes for the people you support.

This approach has been developed to support reflection following any type of continuing professional development (CPD).

It encourages you to think about:

• what you have learnt
• why it’s important
• how it relates to your role
• how you’ll apply your learning in practice
• the difference it could make for the people you support.

This approach suits most learning activities and only takes a few minutes to complete. You can use it after training, webinars, reading, supervision, team discussions and other everyday learning experiences.

This approach is useful when you want to:

• reflect quickly after learning
• prepare for supervision
• record informal CPD
• identify actions to improve your practice.

A simple structure for thinking about learning and experience

This reflection model uses three straightforward questions to help you make sense of learning or an experience.

It encourages you to:

• describe what happened
• consider why it’s important
• decide what you’ll do next.

This approach is quick, practical and easy to use. It helps you identify how learning can improve your practice without writing a detailed reflective account.

This approach is useful when you want to:

• reflect after a meeting or training session
• think about an everyday experience
• prepare for supervision
• identify actions after learning.

A structured approach to reflecting in more depth

Gibbs' reflective cycle helps you explore an experience by working through a series of stages.

It encourages you to think about:

• what happened
• how you felt
• what went well
• what could’ve been improved
• what you learnt
• what you would do in a similar situation in the future.

By exploring an experience from different perspectives, this approach helps you gain a deeper understanding of your practice and identify opportunities for future development.

This approach is useful when you want to:

• complete a qualification or reflective account
• explore a complex situation
• learn from challenging experiences
• analyse your practice in more detail.

Learning through experience

Kolb's learning cycle focuses on how learning develops through experience.

The model encourages you to:

• have an experience
• reflect on what happened
• identify what you’ve learnt
• apply that learning in future situations.

Instead of focusing on just what happened, this approach encourages you to use your learning to improve future practice.

It’s particularly useful when developing new skills or trying different ways of working.

This approach is useful when you want to:

• learn from workplace experiences
• develop new skills
• improve your practice over time
• apply learning in different situations.

The examples below show how you can reflect on the same learning activity in different ways.

There’s no single right way to reflect. Choose the approach that best meets your needs and supports your professional development.

Learning activity: attended a webinar on strengths-based practice

The webinar showed how focusing on a person's strengths, abilities and outcomes can give them more choice and control over their lives. It also highlighted the importance of working in partnership with people to identify what matters most to them.