What is Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Gibbs’ reflective cycle is a model of reflective practice developed by Graham Gibbs. This guides you through the process of reflection and has various stages. As a student, it is essential to have a deep understanding of the Gibbs reflective cycle to allow you to learn and analyze past experiences.

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Self-reflection is a tool that allows have vital insights into your experiences, enhances your personal growth and development, and helps you make informed decisions. In this article, we will explore what Gibbs’s reflective cycle means, discuss its stages, and the benefits it offers in various aspects of life. Let us get started.

Understanding Gibb’s reflective cycle

What is Gibb’s reflective cycle? It is a standard model that is widely used in the education field and professional development. This model was developed by a British psychologist named Graham Gibbs, to provide a structured approach to analyze and evaluate personal experiences to allow you to gain valuable insight and enhance your learning process.

Gibb’s reflective models give students a strong outline for self-reflection and learning. Examining your experiences, emotions, evaluation, and analysis helps you to have a deeper understanding of your actions and thoughts based on a particular event. The reflective process allows you to promote your personal growth.

Gibbs reflective models

Self-reflection plays a vital role in increasing your knowledge and understanding of your personal experiences to foster your personal growth and development. Many students, search for “reflective model Gibbs” to understand the benefits of its models to unique life aspects. These models guide you in examining your thoughts, feelings, and actions that you need to take.

As we have discussed earlier in this article, Gibb’s reflective cycle is one of the best models that are primarily applicable. Here, we will look at the critical reflective models developed by Gibbs. There are six stages or models of Gibb’s reflection, and they include the following;

• Description

This type of Gibbs reflective model provides a comprehensive account of a particular event or personal experience that you need to reflect on. It is crucial to thoroughly describe the context, settings, and people involved. This makes your reflection grounded in a unique observation.

• Feelings

This reflective model encourages you to explore or delve deep into your emotions and the actions you take during a particular experience. In this stage, you are required to reflect on your feelings at that event and explain how those emotions have influenced your thoughts and attitude towards the event. It is essential to consider negative and positive feelings to provide valuable insights into your response about your personal experiences.

• Evaluation

This is a very crucial model in Gibb’s reflective cycle. This requires you to critically analyze your strengths and weaknesses or areas of improvement based on your performance during a particular event or experience. You must ensure that you assess your outcomes and identify the areas for improvement.

• Analysis

In this model, you are required to explore your experiences by thoroughly examining the significant factors that contributed to a particular event. Make sure that you analyze your context and the impacts of the internal influences on your experience. This model encourages you to identify patterns, explore different perspectives, and gain a comprehensive understanding of a particular event or experience.

• Conclusion

Here, you must conclude your analysis and reflect on the critical insights you gained. Make sure that you summarize the key points and consider both negative and positive impacts and the main areas that need improvement. This stage helps you to have a deep understanding and gain quality practical knowledge that will be applied in future events or experiences.

• Action plan

This is the final model of the Gibbs reflective cycle, which involves the development of an action plan based on your conclusions. You must ensure that you identify specific actions and strategies to improve your performance and enable you to handle potential situations effectively. This reflective model emphasizes the benefits of applying valuable insights to promote your personal growth and professional development.

Benefits of Gibbs model of reflection

You now understand how self-reflection is essential in your daily life. It allows you to gain more profound knowledge and understanding of your actions, emotions, and thoughts to enhance your personal growth and professional development. Gibb’s model of reflection is the most applicable framework aiding the reflection process.

Gibb’s reflective model provides a structured approach to examining your experiences, improving your critical thinking skills, and enhancing the learning outcomes or results. Here, we will delve more profound into the benefits of Gibbs’s reflection and its impact in various aspects. Below are the benefits of Gibb’s reflection, and they include the following;

• It enhances the learning process.

Reflection catalyzes the learning process. The reflective models in nursing Gibbs offer you a systematic approach to our experiences in various events and how you react to the event. As you have read earlier in this blog, you already understand the Gibbs model has six main stages which include description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan respectively.

Following this outline allows you to explore on your personal experiences, evaluate your emotions, analyze the event, and come up with your conclusions. This helps you enhance your learning by providing a deep understanding of your strengths and weaknesses and identifying areas that need improvement.

• It encourages deeper self-awareness.

Self-awareness is essential when it comes to personal and professional development. Gibb’s model of reflection helps you to explore deeper into your emotions and actions to enable you to have a better understanding of yourself.

Examining and acknowledging your thoughts and feelings allows you to identify patterns, biases, and, assumptions that will influence your actions. This helps you in making informed decisions, develop emotional intelligence, and develop a stronger interpersonal relationship.

• It provides improved problem-solving skills.

As discussed earlier, reflection helps improve your skills in critical thinking and allows you to effectively solve problems. In the stages of analysis and evaluation, Gibb’s model of reflection encourages you to assess the results or outcomes of your actions and create an analysis of the factors that led to such developments.

This process allows you to gain valuable insights into any alternative approach, strategy, or perspective that will lead to positive outcomes after a particular action is taken. You must apply these insights for future situations or events, and to allow you to improve your problem-solving skills.

• It enhances professional development.

Gibb’s model of reflection has essential implications for professional development and growth. This model of reflection enables you to thoroughly review your professional experience and identify your vital and weak areas that need improvement.

To enhance your professional performance and improve your skills, you must ensure that you examine the impact of your actions on others and the results achieved. The action plan stage of Gibbs’s reflection model encourages you to set goals and develop strategies for development to ensure there is continuous improvement in your professional achievements.

• It enhances empathy and communication.

Gibbs’s model of reflection facilitates empathy and effective communication by promoting understanding and sensitivity to other reflections. This model allows you to delve deeper into the impact of your actions on others, analyze your context, and ensure that you consider the potential or alternative perspectives. The reflective process provides you with a comprehensive understanding of different perspectives, fosters empathy, and improves your communication and collaboration skills with other individuals.

Difference between Gibb’s and John’s reflective models

The Gibbs reflection cycle and Johns reflective model are the most prominent and widely used reflective models. These two methods focus on facilitating reflective thinking but still have significant differences in their approach, structure, and emphasis. Here, we will explore on differences between Gibbs and Johns’s reflective models to help you have a deeper understanding of both models.

The Gibbs reflective cycle, developed by British psychologist Graham Gibbs, is a cyclical model consisting of six main stages. This stage enables you to examine and learn from your experiences to devise practical actions on various occasions and events. These stages include; description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan. The Gibbs model of reflection focuses on a systematic approach to self-reflection, providing a framework to explore various experiences and gain valuable insights for personal growth and professional development.

On the other hand, John’s reflective model is developed by Christopher Johns. This alternative reflective method aims to uncover the underlying meaning and values of particular experiences. This model consists of five essential questions that guide you through the entire reflective process. These questions include; what? So what? Now what? Insights learning, and integration.

The contrasting approaches between Gibb’s and John’s reflective models

Now you understand the underlying difference between Gibbs’s and Johns’s reflective methods. We must also look at their practices and how they differ. The main difference between Gibb’s and John’s reflective models is based on their approaches to reflection.

The Gibbs model of reflection follows a systematic and well-structured approach and emphasizes the benefits of critically analyzing experiences and drawing conclusions for future actions. While Johns’s reflective model adopts a holistic and subjective process, focusing on uncovering the underlying meaning and importance of experience by exploring on your values, beliefs, and emotions. The Gibbs reflective cycle is more useful in problem-solving, and making informed decisions but Johns’s model is only effective in exploring personal and emotional aspects.

To wrap up

Gibbs reflective cycle is a model of reflective practice that was developed by Graham Gibbs and it consists of six main stages. As a student, it is essential to have a deep understanding of the Gibbs reflective cycle to allow you to reflect and analyze particular experiences. In this blog, we have discussed more about Gibbs’s reflective cycle and its benefits on the life aspects.

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