Reflection is defined as either “serious thought or consideration” or “an idea about something, especially one that is written down or expressed” by the Oxford dictionary but I believe reflection has a deeper meaning than that. Reflection, to me, is being able to look at your actions or writing critically with no bias and I believe that this is very difficult to do as it is nearly impossible to look at your own work with no bias. Reflection also involves being able to look at your actions from different perspectives so as to gain better understanding of their impact. I often find myself trying to look at things I have done from the perspective of others and usually find it interesting to try and get inside someone else’s mind. I also believe that reflection can also be important before you act by considering all the different ways your action can be construed.

I do not think that it is a natural thing for a human to reflect, especially in a critical way, about their doings but I believe that reflection is more of a learned behaviour in a sense. However, i feel it is important that we learn how to reflect especially due to the impact an ability has to reflect on learning. Reflection greatly increases the quality of writing someone is able to produce as it enables them to polish pieces of work without the aid of a teacher before handing it in. It may be a good idea to educate those in primary school on how to reflect so they know how to for when they have to produce work of a higher standard. As a primary school student, I never would have thought about my work critically or even have thought about ways of improving or bettering my work. The only times I would think about that would be when I had my work given back to me with penned in teacher’s comments in the margin. I firmly believe that if I was taught how to reflect on myself before this stage, it would have prepared me better for later study.