6 Reflective practice

When you learn new information, it is important to think about applying it to your work, studies or personal life, rather than just learning passively. The reflective cycle developed by Graham Gibbs (Gibbs, 1988) provides a structure for learning from experiences. His framework has six stages to help you consider how you reacted to different situations by thinking about what went well or did not go well, and how you might plan for the future.

Show description|Hide description

A person with their hand on their chin, looking intently.

Here are Gibbs’ stages:

1. Description of the experience.
2. Feelings and thoughts that you had about the experience.
3. Evaluation of the experience, to identify positive and negative things about it.
4. Analysis to make sense of the situation.
5. Conclusion about what you learned and what you could have done differently.
6. Action plan for how you would deal with similar situations in the future or changes you might find appropriate when you consider what you have learned.