Reflective Essay: Communication, Performance and Driscoll's Model

This essay, prepared for the FY026 module 'Preparing for Success at University,' delves into reflective thinking, writing, and the concept of reflection. Part A examines the author's educational background and how it improved their communication skills, incorporating Driscoll's Model of Reflection ('What? So what? Now what?'). The essay uses the learning cycle (exploration, concept development, and application) to illustrate how experience and reflection impact learning. Part B analyzes how the academic context influenced individual performance and communication abilities. The author reflects on seminar participation, teamwork, and deadline management, highlighting skills developed through professional and academic interactions. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of reflective practice and its impact on personal and professional growth. The essay includes references to relevant books and journals.

REFLECTIVE
THINKING,
WRITING, DEFINE
REFLECTION

Table of Contents
PART A.................................................................................................................................................3
1. Experience and background of education filed & how it improves the communication skill.........3
PART B.................................................................................................................................................5
2. How academic context influenced individual performance, add a reflection.................................5
CONCLUSION.....................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES......................................................................................................................................8
Books & Journal................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Reflective thinking is defined as past experience of individual and accessing
knowledge at depth. It is dynamic process which makes person to evolve with situation as
new learning, thinking or experience is developed. In other words, it is the way through
which evaluation as well as interpretation is done of overall experience. Whereas reflective
practice refers to dynamic & active set of skill. In this, what person does and what has being
learnt from experience. In this essay, reflective thinking, writing and concept of reflection
has been discussed.
PART A
1. Experience and background of education filed & how it improves the communication skill
Experience matter a lot in both professional and personal field. After completion of
my Bachelor’s I decided to opt for Masters in Business Administration for improving my
communication and personality skills. When I looked into my experience of my education I
founded that my learning ideology, perception, were improved a lot. This was all done via
attending seminars, sessions, live seminar of leadership and development of leaders, giving
presentation about the marketing related concepts, preparation of reports and thesis etc. Such
processes help me to develop as well as improve my overall personality development &
communication. It is crucial to have effective communication because it depicts individual
background/ characteristics. Also, during the course I learned about how to deal with people
as professional by adopting reflective thinking & practice (Choy, 2017).
Another process through which communication was developed was by adopting
learning cycle during my education through which I analysed and examined how to learn
&apply that task into practical. This cycle involves exploration, concept development and
concept application. Further, through attending each session they assist me to focus on how
important it is to learn as well as use that knowledge into real life.

Learning life cycle-
Exploration- In this, learner learns about topic & solve the assigned problem with
individual or work group (Bunt, 2020).
Concept development- Once the task was assigned, necessary interventions were
presented by person who was giving learning to students.
Concept application- Further at last, opportunities were given to learners what they
have learnt and apply that learning in other concepts.
So, the above phases of learning cycle depict how the learning cycle affected the
reflective thinking in life. Most of people fail to learn because many factors such as lack of
motivation fear of results etc.
Driscoll Model of Reflection
This is model through which individual analyse person own reflection & experience.
In this, mainly three questions revolve around which are what, so what and now what. By
interpreting these questions, they were interrelated with learning cycle phases.
What- In this, main event of the situation is reflected such as during my education
experience faced many challenges such as I met with new people every week & during this
phase it was not possible for me to manage all the things equally. To deal with this, I
communicated with every in proper manner (Citraningrum, 2019).
So what- This comprises of examining & analysis of events. It includes what is troublesome,
what is the feeling or reaction now etc. At time of my learning process, main issue was that
everyone speaks native language and I wanted to improve my communication skills so I used
to communicate like professional with people. Currently, I am able to deal with people
effectively and negotiate with them with my abilities (Rahmat, 2019).
Now, what- It comprises of impact of actions during the process & involves questions
like what are the effects for person, what is required information is needed to face same
situation again in future etc. So, if such type of events occurs than I will face them with
proper understanding & recalling my experience what measures did I took at that time.
Through this model, it becomes easy to understand the concept of reflective thinking,
writing as well as practice. Learning cycle is crucial for learners because it guides them to
take proper decisions regarding knowledge as well as experience. Moreover, facing
hypothetical questions developed my critical thinking broadly. This results in facing
challenges and problems in life appropriately.

PART B
2. How academic context influenced individual performance, add a reflection
The above explained academic context affected my communication level at wider
scale. This is because if examine the reflection, I met with many people during my course and
education field some people were having good communication skills and some were average.
I learned from both the people because they were carrying different knowledge as well as
experience which was beneficial for me. At the time of seminars various types of questions
were asked by people through whom I learned how to speak in public & make them convince
by using over communication skills. Also, analysed that it is essential to be aware when to
speak or not, managing work in team etc. In my education field, completing the give task on
deadline, handling multi-tasking functions, how to take decisions effectively are some of the
skills which have positive impact on performance as individual.
With help of professors and teachers, they assist me to focus on reflective practice as
well as to improve my critical thinking at depth. This helps me to overcome with my fear and
weakness that were needed to be developed. Also, working in team & groups enhanced my
way working as well as how to work with people having different way of perception. This
increases understanding level, internal capabilities and catching power (Patterson, 2019).
After a brief analysis of above matter it is examined that reflection thinking and
experience have deep impact on individual performance. To prove this reflection has been
added in the above paragraph which states that how I improved my performance through
academic context (Ordóñez, 2019).

CONCLUSION
After a brief analysis of above report, it is analysed that reflective thinking as well as
practice play vital role in individual life. Reflective thinking & practice are two different,
wider and broader concepts which require deep credential in the process. Further, life cycle
and Driscoll model of reflection has been discussed briefly. By going through these two
frameworks it becomes easy to understand the concept of learning, reflective thinking as well
as experience.

REFERENCES
Books & Journal:
Choy, 2017. Reflective thinking among preservice teachers: A Malaysian perspective.Issues
in Educational Research,27(2), p.234.
Bunt, 2020. Using an artificial life simulation to enhance reflective critical thinking among
student teachers.Smart Learning Environments,7(1), pp.1-19.
Citraningrum, 2019, July. Education Development Based On Practicum To Develop
Reflective Thinking Students Of Biology Teachers. InJournal of Physics: Conference
Series(Vol. 1179, No. 1, p. 012081). IOP Publishing.
Rahmat, 2019, June. Reflective Thinking Profile for Junior High School Students in Service
Learning-based Science. InJournal of Physics: Conference Series(Vol. 1233, No. 1, p.
012093). IOP Publishing.
Ordóñez, 2019. The thinking styles of the university teacher.CULTURA EDUCACIÓN Y
SOCIEDAD,10(1), pp.125-148.
Patterson, C., 2019.Enacted Personal Professional Learning: Re-thinking Teacher Expertise
with Story-telling and Problematics. Springer.
Sloan, 2019.Learning to think strategically. Routledge.
Säljö, 2019. Materiality, learning, and cognitive practices: Artifacts as instruments of
thinking. InEmergent practices and material conditions in learning and teaching with
technologies(pp. 21-32). Springer, Cham.
Hunt, E.C., 2019. Life-cycle Horizon Learning, Social Security Reform, and Policy
Uncertainty.
Miao, H., Li, A., Davis, L.S. and Deshpande, A., 2017, April. Modelhub: Deep learning
lifecycle management. In2017 IEEE 33rd International Conference on Data
Engineering (ICDE)(pp. 1393-1394). IEEE.

Sanchez, 2019.Cognitive learning lifecycle. U.S. Patent 10,445,648.
Ng, 2020. Critically reflective practice and its sources: A qualitative exploration.Medical
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Lee, 2020. Public Health Code of Ethics: Deliberative Decision-Making and Reflective
Practice.
Cendon, 2020. From Reflective Practice to Critical Thinking: The Reflective Practitioner in
Higher Education. InHandbook of Research on Operational Quality Assurance in
Higher Education for Life-Long Learning(pp. 189-211). IGI Global.
O'Reilly, 2020. Impact of Technology-based Reflective Practice Tools on Student Skill
Development.International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction
(IJTHI),16(1), pp.77-93.