Firstly, it is important to establish what is meant by ‘reflection’ in learning. This term essentially refers to considering various solutions to problems and in education, this can be done through evaluation of one’s work and adopting a critical approach towards it. Reflection is often portrayed as a process with multiple stages in which the learner begins by establishing what the task was and what was expected from it. The process then continues and forces the person who is reflecting to consider their feelings towards the task, the positive and negative areas, and what they could have done to improve. This model of reflection is called “The Gibbs Reflective Cycle”, which is adapted from Gibbs, 1988, P.47. One of the most important stages of this process, for us as learners, is developing an ‘Action Plan’, which is essentially a strategy for dealing with this task if it happened again. This is beneficial to learners as it forces them to analyse their own actions during this task and create a new method of approaching it that is constructed of their previous strengths and new revised methods based upon poorer experiences.

There are many ways in which you can reflect on your own work, for example discussing the end product of a task set with a tutor and allowing them to criticise your work and provide feedback on poorer areas and ways in which you could improve them. Learners could also work within a group to analyse their own work and allow their peers to suggest areas for improvement as well as strong areas that can be applied to future work and tasks.

One of the most important things to keep in consideration when reflecting upon your learning is to be honest and critical. If one fails to adopt a truly critical mindset then reflection can be useless and have absolutely no benefit to one’s learning. It is important to admit to weak areas within your work and not blatantly ignore them. If a task is not completed particularly well and the learner fails to identify the areas whereby it did not go well, then there can be no improvement made. It is also important to be open to criticism from different outlooks and not merely ignore them. Criticism from external viewpoints can have a massive effect on the way in which you try to improve your learning and they can also help to introduce areas for improvement that perhaps you did not notice. However, it is also important to pay attention to strong areas within your work as these skills can be applied in future tasks to ensure that the learner produces a high standard of work.

Reflection is a critical process in which the learner is able to take control of their own learning and plan new ways to achieve a higher standard of working.