Reflection - Looking back on my journal



I have been reading back through my Journal and I can see from my very first piece of writing that my reflection was inadequate, only describing what happened throughout the day. Looking and reading back I can now see this has no value to me, alls I take from it is a memory from my day whereas I should be learning and finding things out from my journal entries. The further I read on into my journal I can see I am starting to develop a more in depth way of reflection and I am now using these reflections from my journal to continue to improve.

Finding a complete model of reflection online provided by Gibbs (1988) a week after starting my journal gave me an insight on how I should be thoroughly reflecting on my practices.

Description – What happened? Don’t make judgements yet or try to draw conclusions; simply describe.

Feelings - What were your reactions and feelings? Again, don’t move on to analysing these yet.

Evaluation – What was good or bad about the experience? Make value judgements.

Analysis – What sense can you make of the situation? Bring in ideas from outside the experience to help you. What was really going on? Were different people’s experiences similar or different in important ways?

Conclusions – What can be concluded?  In a general sense, from these experiences and the analyses you have undertaken. What can be concluded about your own specific, unique, personal situation or way of working? What are you going to do differently in this type of situation or way of working? What steps are you going to take on the basis of what you have learnt?

Using this model as a template helped me to start reflecting with true meaning and purpose. I can now look back at certain entries in my journal and use them for my future learning. An example being before I taught this week I read my journal from my previous lesson and it reminded me of what I wanted to change or do differently, things to avoid and my aims and objectives for the lesson.

All my entries are completely different ways of writing; I am yet to find a preferred way as I have had positive and negative experiences with all. I want to continue to reflect in different ways until I find my personal most beneficial way of reflection.