Reflective practice

What is Reflective Practice in a Portfolio?

Reflection is a helpful strategy in development as practitioners and especially with regard to reasoning processes. It involves describing, analysing and evaluating our thoughts, assumptions, beliefs, and actions. It includes:

• Looking forward
• Looking at what we are doing now
• Looking back 

Critical reflection takes place in many areas of professional development and practice, including health care education, teaching, management, and research, as it encourages practitioners to gain insight into their own professionalism through their experiences.

The process of reflection increases competency and enhances professional growth leading to expanded employability.

A portfolio is an important space to reflect upon personal and professional identity with a goal of creating an online representation of the narratives around these.

Gibbs Reflective Cycle

The reflective cycle according to Gibbs (1998) is based on several stages, during which you are required to answer questions in order to go as deep as possible with your reflections.

The Reflective Cycle is a six-step structured process where you:

• describe what happened
• discuss feelings
• evaluate and analyse the experience
• draw conclusions and
• develop an action plan if faced with the same situation in the future.