Unit 30 Reflective Professional Practice Report, June 2020, DGC

This report provides a comprehensive overview of reflective practice, exploring its definition, significance, and practical applications within a professional environment. It justifies the use of reflective practice, emphasizing its role in continuous professional development for individuals in various fields, including healthcare and teaching. The report delves into the purpose of reflective practice, highlighting its contribution to achieving career objectives by enhancing self-awareness and skill improvement. Furthermore, it examines different models of reflection, specifically Borton's model and Gibbs' Reflective Cycle, providing insights into their frameworks and how they facilitate personal and professional growth. The report concludes by emphasizing the critical importance of reflective practice for individuals to learn from past experiences, identify areas for improvement, and foster continuous growth, ultimately leading to enhanced professional development and career advancement.

Unit 30 Reflective
Professional Practice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Meaning of Reflective Practice....................................................................................................3
Justification of Using Reflective Practice in a Professional Environment..................................4
Purpose of Reflective Practice and its Contribution Towards Achieving Career Objectives......5
Models of Reflection....................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Reflection or reflective practice is a form of personal response to the situations, new
information or events that is experienced by an individual. Reflection or reflective practice can
also be a form of processing phase in which an individual learns and thinks about what he has
experienced in the past in order to develop themselves both personally and professionally
(Johnston, 2017). This report evaluates the concept of reflective practice and assesses its
importance and significance towards an individual's personal and professional development.
MAIN BODY
Meaning of Reflective Practice
In layman's terms, reflective practice is the act of thinking about or reflecting back on
what an individual has done in order to improve or enhance their future personal and
professional interactions. Reflective practice is the ability of an individual to reflect back on their
past action, skills, experiences or events in order to assess their progress and adequacy of their
skills and identify their personal skills or aspects of knowledge base which need to be further
improved or enhanced in order for them to develop themselves both personally and
professionally. Reflective practice is an important tool to be used in practice based professional
learning setting, through which individuals can learn from their past experiences or skills rather
than learning from a sort of formal base or knowledge transfer (Knott and Scragg, 2016).
Reflective practice can take the form of both reflective writing and reflective thinking, where in
individual thinks back or documents his thoughts about their past experiences, events, situations
or skills in order to improve them in the future. Reflective writing includes the following key
attributes:
 Reflective writing is a personalised documentation of an individual's opinions,
experiences, events or new information.
 Reflective writing communicates an individual's response to their feelings and thoughts.
 Reflective writing is a way for an individual to explore their learning capabilities.
 Reflective writing presents an individual with opportunity to gain and assess their self
knowledge.
 Reflective writing provides an individual with a better and clearer understanding of what
it is that they are learning and their progress in relation to learning.

The “raison d'etre” or the reason for existence of reflective practice for an individual is to
help and enable them to develop themselves continuously, in their professional or even personal
environment. This is called as continuous professional development and it is of immense
importance and significance to the overall growth and development of an individual both in their
personal and professional lives (Zwozdiak-Myers, 2018). Reflective practice facilitates
continuous professional development for an individual because through reflective practice, an
individual can consistently assess which skills and experiences of his past were positive and
adequate and which skills need to be improved in order for them to grow and develop personally
and professionally.
Justification of Using Reflective Practice in a Professional Environment
Reflective practice is of immense significance to individuals within a professional
environment in order for them to develop themselves personally and professionally, in a
continuous manner. The ability of reflective practice to encourage continuous professional
development within individuals is one of the primary reasons as to why it is such an important
aspect within a professional environment. From teachers, to healthcare providers or professional,
to just about any individual in any professional business can immensely benefit from the
numerous advantages that a reflective practice provides to their personal and professional
development.
As reflective practice encourages continuous professional development within
individuals, it is most effectively made use of in professional settings and environments where
individuals are required to consistently develop their skills and knowledge base. This is why
healthcare professionals make effective use of the reflective practice in order to continuous grow
and develop their skills and knowledge base in a professional environment. This is because
healthcare is an ever evolving and ever changing landscape, where new infections, afflictions
and diseases and consistently being discovered in addition to the cures for ever increasing
afflictions (Howatson-Jones, 2016). This is why healthcare professionals are always required in
their professional environment to engage in continuous development process which is facilitated
effectively through the use of reflective practice. Reflection practice is of immense significance
particularly in healthcare industries as it results in the constant growth and development of
healthcare professionals and enhances their ability to cure as many individuals within a
population as is possible.

The use of reflective practice by teaching professionals in a professional learning
environment is also justified as teachers are also required to consistently engage in their
continuous professional development in order to enhance their efforts and operations towards
teaching and guiding their students in an more effective and efficient manner (Horton-Deutsch
and Sherwood, 2017). Not only does reflective practice allow for teaching professionals to
effectively and continuously develop their personal and professional skills in an ever changing
and ever evolving learning environment, it also makes them better teachers in their operations to
their students the benefits and significance of reflective practice to a students learning operations
as a teacher who is effective and competent with reflective practice themselves can better teach
their students the importance and benefits of reflective practice in their own learning endeavours
than a teacher who is not so experienced with making use of reflective practice in a professional
learning environment.
Purpose of Reflective Practice and its Contribution Towards Achieving Career Objectives
The primary purpose of an individual towards undertaking or engaging in the act of
reflective practice is to examine their past experiences, events, situations or skill set, identify
which experiences or skills were positive or negative towards their personal or professional
development and find ways to improve their skills and experiences in the future, which would
effectively result in their continuous professional development and allow for them to grow as a
person and a professional. In addition reflective practice can also be used by individuals in order
to gain a better and deeper understanding of their own skill set, knowledge base and past
experiences, enabling them to assess which of their personal or professional attributes are
sufficiently adequate and which need to be effectively improved or enhanced for their
professional development (Sellars, 2017). The reflective practice also enables an individual to
focus their efforts on particular skills and knowledge that have been showcased to them as being
inadequate through the reflective practice, which would be an arduous task without the use of
reflective practice by the individual. In addition, a reflective practice also consists of an
individual's personal emotions and feelings within their professional environment, and this
reflection can also help them better control their negative or hindering emotions that they might
have felt priorly in their professional environment in order to become more capable of
controlling their emotions in the same professional environment situations in the future

(Hendricks, 2017). Reflective practice can also showcase to an individual why their prior
experiences may have been negative and what they should address in order for the same
experience to be a positive one in the future. Overall the main purpose of reflective practice is to
grow and develop an individual both in their personal and professional life.
Models of Reflection
There are various strategic frameworks and models developed, in order to facilitate
individuals towards correctly and accurately engaging in the reflective practice with the intention
to enable them to develop and grow themselves professionally in a continuous manner. This
report evaluates two of such models of reflective practice, which are as follows:
Borton's Model of Reflection:
The Borton's model of reflection can be understood by making use of the figure above.
This model of reflection involves three elements and is designed to be made use of by students
and professionals who wish to develop their reflection writing skills. This model is suited to
reflections of less than 500 words and this model does not focus itself on any single experience
or skill of the reflection writer, instead focuses on the learning and development of an individual
for the past year (Cushion, 2018). The three elements of the Borton's model of reflection are as
follows:
What: This element of the reflective model is its descriptive aspect and involves the writer to
describe what exactly happened to them and others in a succinct manner. This includes
information such as what happened, what did the writer do, what did others do, what is the main
purpose of reflecting back on this incident etc.
Illustration 1: Borton's Model of
Reflection

So What: This element of the model helps the writer analyse their past experiences in order to
make sense of the situation described in the previous element. This element asks the individual to
reflect on which aspects of the past experience were positive or negative and why were they so.
Now What: This is the final element of the Borton's reflective model and this element proposes
the writer, some actions in order for their future experiences to be better than their previous ones.
This element engages the writer to reflect on what is required to be done from them now and the
consequences of their future actions.
By making use of the Borton's model of reflection I personally have been able to conduct
a lot of short sized reflective essays and reports in order to analyse my past experiences, evaluate
the positives and negatives of the experience and why they occurred and then through the final
element evaluate ways through which any future experiences of the sort can be improved by me.
I made use of this reflective model after undergoing a professional internship, and through the
model I was able to identify which experiences were negative and how I can address them in the
future.
Gibbs Reflective Cycle:
Illustration 2: Gibbs Reflective Cycle

This reflection model was developed by Graham Gibbs and is one of the most popular
models used for the purposes of engaging in reflective practice by individuals. This reflection
model provides a strategic structure to individuals learning from their experiences (Kearney,
2019). This model has 6 stages through which an individual can effectively reflect on their
experiences. These are as follows:
Description: This first stage requires the individual taking part in the reflective practice to
describe his past situation or experience in detail in relation to what happened, who was involved
what was the outcome etc.
Feelings: This stage requires the individual to detail his feelings during the past situation or
experience.
Evaluation: In this stage, the individual evaluates what was positive about their experience and
what was negative, being as honest as possible.
Analysis: During this stage, the individual makes sense of their experience by analysing why
some experiences were positive and why some experiences were negative for them.
Conclusion: At this stage, the individual summarises the findings of his analysis.
Action Plan: Finally, the individual analyses measures or actions through which future similar
experience can be comparatively better than the past ones.
I too have made use of the Gibbs reflective cycle for my own professional development
in order to assess past experiences in detail. I made use of the model during my job in order to
evaluate my own experiences and effectiveness of skills. Through the reflection I was able to
analyse which of my professional skills were competent enough and which skills I need to
improve, through the action plan phase of the reflection in order to further develop myself
professionally.
CONCLUSION
Based on the findings of the report, it can effectively be concluded that reflective practice
is of immense importance for an individual to grow and develop themselves both personally and
professionally as reflective pratice critically demonstrates to them what they have learned in the
past, which experiences were positive and which skills or knowledge base needs to be further
developed in the future. This report examines the raison d'etre along with the meaning of a
professional reflective practise. The report also justifies the use of professional reflective practise

in a professional environment. Further the report analyses the goals of undertaking a reflective
practice and its importance towards an individual achieving their career ambitions and
objectives. Finally, the report assesses two strategic reflection models and justifies their impact
on an individual's personal and professional development.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Cushion, C.J., 2018. Reflection and reflective practice discourses in coaching: A critical
analysis. Sport, education and society. 23(1). pp.82-94.
Hendricks, C.C., 2017. Improving schools through action research: A reflective practice
approach. Pearson. One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458.
Horton-Deutsch, S. and Sherwood, G.D., 2017. Reflective practice: Transforming education and
improving outcomes(Vol. 2). Sigma Theta Tau.
Howatson-Jones, L., 2016. Reflective practice in nursing. Learning Matters.
Johnston, C., 2017. Reflective practice. Teaching Business & Economics. 21(1). pp.19-21.
Kearney, C.P., 2019. Reflective practice: A process of discovery. Modern English
Teacher. 28(3). pp.9-10.
Knott, C. and Scragg, T. eds., 2016. Reflective practice in social work. Learning Matters.
Sellars, M., 2017. Reflective practice for teachers. Sage.
Zwozdiak-Myers, P., 2018. The teacher's reflective practice handbook: Becoming an extended
professional through capturing evidence-informed practice. Routledge.
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