Are you familiar with the term/concept, PDP? It stands for personal development planning. After graduation, it could dramatically improve your child’s employment prospects when combined with reflective learning (reflective practice and reflective thinking).
One of reflective learning’s most important aspects is that it helps individuals learn more about themselves in the process. To help students make more sense of their experiences in learning, there are six stages of reflection identified in the reflective cycle.
The six stages of the reflective cycle are as follows:
- A description of what happened.
- A statement regarding what you were feeling and thinking.
- An evaluation of what was bad and what was good about the experience.
- An analysis about the situation determining what else you can make of it.
- In conclusion, what else might you have done?
- If the situation arose again, what kind of action plan could you or would you put in place?
The Basis Of Reflective Learning
The concept of reflective learning is based on the following: “In order to learn, it is insufficient to simply have an experience. The experience may quickly be forgotten without reflecting upon it. It’s learning potential could be lost. It is from the thoughts and feelings which emerge as a result of this reflection that generates concepts or generalizations. New situations are more effectively tackled due to these generalizations.”
The Reflective Learner
In graduate employment and higher education, high value is placed on being a reflective learner and the skills involved in such. What does this mean? Reflective learning students can do the following:
- Make themselves more independent learners
- Identify areas of their learning which need to be developed further
- Critically evaluate their learning
How Does Reflective Learning Benefit An Individual?
The following are benefits of reflective learning:
- Learn from your mistakes
- Articulate your learning/skills to others
- Learn about yourself
- Plan your own development
- Self-awareness development
- Understand how you learn
- Know your weaknesses and strengths
- Record your development
How Does the Reflective Learning Cycle Work?
Remember that, after one rotation, the cycle doesn’t stop. This iterative cycle works best when you apply what you learn and then develop further, also taking time to reflect. Here’s how the cycle works:
- Plan
- Act
- Observe
- Reflect
- Plan again
- Act again…. etc.
What is an iterative model or cycle? This applies to a cycle that focuses on a simplified, initial implementation which progressively gains a broader feature set and more complexity, until the final system is complete.
Can Someone’s Reflective Learning Capacity Improve?
In a nutshell, the answer is “yes”. Regarding things that happen to us, from time to time, we will naturally reflect on them. This process simply becomes more formal with PDP. In the form of a reflective report or blog, regarding their reflections, students are frequently required to write about them. Why?
The technique is said to assist students in becoming more reflective learners. Identifying a critical incident is a useful starting point for reflection. It need not be a dramatic event. Ideally, however, it was an opportunity for a student to learn something about themselves because a series of thoughts was triggered.
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