Unit 5

Reflective Cycle

COURSE COORDINATOR
DR. AFSHAN HUMA
DEPARTMENT OF EPPSL, AIOU
 Gibb’s Reflective

Professor Graham Gibbs published his Reflective

Cycle in his book titled "Learning by Doing"(1988).
This model known as the Gibbs’ Cycle has been
particularly influential in teacher education
programs.
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.
 Description
Stage I
What
Happened
Action Plan Feelings
If arose What were
again, what you thinking
would you and feeling
do

Conclusion Evaluation
What else
could you have What was good
done and bad

Description
Stage II
What sense can
you make of the
situation

Gibb's Cycle of Reflective Cycle (Reflective Cycle, 2015)

 Stage 1- Description

This is the stage of “mindfulness”. According to

Gibbs first of all you need to explain what you are
reflecting on to.
To begin with reflective cycle, step 1 is to describe
the whole event
The reason for your involvement in this event
Include important details to indicate what happened
The description should be as you perceived it
therefore it should be written or recorded as soon as
possible
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.
Make use of the following questions while writing your
first stage description:
When did this happen?
 Where did it happen?
 Why were you there?
 Who else was there?
 What happened?
 What did you do?
 What did others do?
 What was the result?
 Stage II- Feelings

While describing an event you simply write/record

what happened
Second step is to explore any thoughts or feelings that
you were having at the time of the event in isolation
from the other components.
What you need to exercise and learn is that at this
stage you do not include any further description and
do not try to evaluate them.
Here you expand to tell how the thoughts and feelings
that you were having have impacted on the event.
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.
 Stage III- Evaluation

This section should be written / recorded at least 6

hours after the event but not later than 24 hours.
Evaluation is the stage of judgment- you need to
bring out the positive and negative features
You need to evaluate your actions as well as other’s
actions
 For instance in a classroom situation you will evaluate your
own instructional practice and learners’ behavior
It is important that you try to consider both the good
and the bad even if the event was negative or positive
 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:

 What do you think went well in the situation?

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

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

 Was there something which you would not wish to experience again?
REFLECTION Lynn Fendler is one of key
IN THE HALL professor in critical pedagogy
OF MIRROR She explained how the reflection
in isolation can make this process
useless
I (Afshan Huma) further suggest
two important steps after stage III
and before stage IV
 Talk to experts
 Read literature
Doing so will help you make the
next 3 stages more meaningful
and useful
 Stage IV-Description -2

Once you have written/ recorded first 3 stages

Now begins the formal reflection process
Read everything again and think through
Now write the how you make sense of the whole
event and this 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. (make subheadings and sections)
Refer to useful examples of others
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.
If you feel you need to learn more then study and seek
guidance for…
 child psychology,
 knowledge of teachers professional development,
 knowledge of school management and supervision; etc.
Using the specific knowledge you now need to re-write the
whole description.
 Stage V- Conclusion

 This section asks for 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/expert opinion, 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.
 Human being have the best mental faculty 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?
Questions Answers of Description 1 Alternate 1 Alternate 2

1. When did this happen?

1. Where did it happen?

1. Why were you there?

1. Who else was there?

1. What happened?

1. What did you do?

1. What did others do?

1. What was the result?

 Stage VI- Action Plan

This is the last step of cycle before we go into the

practice again
After going through the above reflective exercise; it is
expected that you will use the best option along with
the reason of choosing it and also its pros and cons.
This 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.
Gibbs' (1998) reflective cycle guides us through six stages of reflection which can be
better understood with this chart given below

What, where and when? Who did/said what, what did you
1. Description: what happened do/read/see hear? In what order did things happen? What
were the circumstances? What were you responsible for?

What was your initial gut reaction, and what does this tell
2. Feelings: what were you thinking about?
you? Did your feelings change? What were you thinking?

What pleased, interested or was important to you? What

3. Evaluation: what was good or bad about the made you unhappy? What difficulties were there?
experience? Who/what was unhelpful? Why? What needs
improvement?

Compare theory and practice. What similarities or

4. Stage II Description: what sense can you differences are there between this experience and other
make of the situation? experiences? Think about what actually happened. What
choices did you make and what effect did they have?

What have you learnt for the future? What else could you
5. Conclusion: what else could you have done?
have done?

6. Action Plan: what will you do next time? If a similar situation arose again, what would you do?
 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.
 Thank You

Dr. Afshan Huma

(afshan.huma@aiou.edu.pk)