REFLECTION FOR MENTORS
REFLECTION FOR MENTORS
This presentation provides information and tips to support
you in the process of reflecting on practice with your
students.
It includes:
 Descriptions of reflection and the process of reflection
 Why reflection is relevant to you and your students
 Skills for reflection
 Reflective frameworks
 Helping your students to get started with reflection
 Ideas for how you could use this as part of your annual
mentor update
WE WANT TO ENCOURAGE YOU TO:
• Get into reflective dialogue with
your students.
• Use reflective frameworks to help
you with this.
• Help your students to think about
developing their skills for reflection.
• Enthuse you to continue to develop
as reflective practitioners
yourselves.
WHAT IS REFLECTION?
 Reflection involves reviewing experience from practice so
that it can be described, analysed and evaluated. We can
then use this to inform and change future practice
(Bulman 2008)
 Reflection also involves sharing one’s practice with
others; this takes courage and open-mindedness and
means that we need to be willing to take on board and act
on constructive criticism (Dewey 1933)
 Simply put - Reflection is a process of making sense of
experience in order to move on and do better as a
practitioner. (Bulman et al 2012)
WHAT DOES THE PROCESS OF
REFLECTION INVOLVE?
By engaging in reflection people are usually engaging in a
period of thinking in order to examine often complex
experiences or situations.
The period of thinking (reflection) allows the individual to
make sense of an experience, perhaps to liken the
experience to other similar experiences and to place it in
context.
Faced with complex decisions, thinking it through (reflecting)
allows the individual to separate out the various
influencing factors and to come to a reasoned decision
or course of action
Clarke and Graham (1996:26)
REFLECTION IS SIGNIFICANT BECAUSE…
• It can help us to challenge
practice rather than
‘working on automatic
pilot’.
• This matters because
people matter!
• We need to deliver AND
constructively consider the
care we give to our clients.
WE NEED TO SUPPORT OUR
STUDENTS TO DO THIS.
WE WANT TO ENCOURAGE YOU
AND YOUR STUDENTS TO:
• Critically think about your
practice
• Learn from your experiences
• Make sense of your
experiences
• Come to understand the
effects of your practice
IN ORDER TO:
• Learn from your mistakes,
because they matter to
people.
• Move on and do better next
time.
• Build up a repertoire of
practice experiences that are
useful to you.
• Keep on improving and
challenging practice.
SKILLS FOR REFLECTION
• Developing skills for reflection
is essential.
• You will have developed these
skills as part of your
practitioner and mentor
education and as you have
progressed in your practice
career.
• They are skills that you can
continue to develop and that
you can nurture in your
students.
•
•
•
•
•
Self-awareness
Description
Critical Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation
SKILLS FOR REFLECTION
Self awareness
 enables a person to analyse feelings. It involves an
honest examination of how a situation has affected
the individual and how the individual has affected the
situation.
Description
 involves the ability to recognise and recollect
accurately significant events and key features of an
experience and to give an account of the situation
(TIP: Keep focused with this bit.)
SKILLS FOR REFLECTION
Critical Analysis
 involves examining the components of a situation,
identifying existing knowledge, challenging
assumptions and imagining and exploring alternatives.
A critical analysis of knowledge is undertaken which involves
examining how relevant knowledge is to an individual
situation.
Synthesis
 The integration of new knowledge with previous
knowledge. It can be used in a creative way to solve
problems and to predict likely consequences of actions.
Evaluation
 Enables a judgment to be made about the value of
something. Synthesis and evaluation are crucial in the
development of a new perspective
MORE ON CRITICAL ANALYSIS
• Separation of a whole into its
component parts, detailed
examination of those parts. To make
judgements about the strengths and
weaknesses of the different parts as
well as the whole.
• Identifying existing knowledge
relevant to the situation, exploring
feelings about the situation.
Identifying and challenging
assumptions, imagining and
exploring other courses of action.
SYNTHESIS
• Building up ideas into a
connected and coherent whole
• Original thinking
• Creativity
• Building on our knowledge,
skills and attitudes leads to
fresh insights/new perspectives
on practice
REFLECTIVE FRAMEWORKS
 Reflective frameworks are really useful for novices.
 The new PAD has some useful frameworks for students
to use as well as other tips to help them with their
reflection.
 We want to encourage you to use these frameworks with
students in order to develop and deepen their reflection.
 Gibbs Reflective Cycle is most popular amongst our
undergraduates and has been updated for you below.
 You can encourage your students to use this cycle in
their written reflection and also use it to give you a useful
structure when you reflect with them.
REFLECTIVE FRAMEWORKS
GIBBS (1998) UPDATED BY BULMAN 2012
DescriptionWhat
Happened?
Final
Evaluation and
Action Plan –
What would
you do
differently?
Conclusion –
What have you
learnt from
reflecting on
this
experience?
What were
your Feelings
and how did
you react?
Critical
Analysis –
What sense
did you make
of the
experience?
Initial
Evaluation of
the
experience –
What was
good and bad
about it?
DESCRIPTION
What happened?
• Describe what happened.
• Keep focused on your
description; don’t make
judgements or draw
conclusions.
FEELINGS
What were your feelings
and how did you react?
• Keep focused on
your emotions, don’t
be tempted to
analyse yet.
INITIAL EVALUATION OF THE EXPERIENCE
What was good and bad about the
experience?
• Evaluate your initial feelings and reactions in
order to get to the heart of what really
concerned you (positive or negative) about
the experience. By doing this, you should be
able to identify and attend to key issue/s
which will allow you to move on to critical
analysis.
NB: It is important to keep focused, so try to
choose just one or two issues. Then you can
move on to develop some in-depth critical
analysis rather than just ‘skim the surface’ of
many.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
What sense did you make of the experience?
• Critically analyse what was going on. Were
people’s experiences similar or different to
yours, and in what ways? What themes seem
to be emerging from your analysis? How do
these compare with your previous
experiences? Can you challenge any
assumptions now?
NB: Make use of knowledge/ideas from outside
your experience to develop and inform your
analysis, e.g. experts, mentors, policy,
research, law and ethics, literature, clinical
papers, reviews, discussion papers. How do
these compare with your experience?
CONCLUSIONS
What have you learnt from
reflecting on this experience?
• What have you learnt about:
yourself, your self-awareness,
your practice?
• What have you learnt that you
would recommend for practice
in general (i.e. social, political,
cultural, ethical issues)?
FINAL EVALUATION AND ACTION PLAN
What would you do
differently?
• What would you do if this type
of situation arose again?
• What steps will you take,
based on what you’ve learnt,
to develop your future
practice?
• How will you decide if your
practice has been improved?
OTHER REFLECTIVE FRAMEWORKS
IN THE STUDENT PAD
You can use these with your students too!
 The What? Model of Structured Reflection and associated
trigger questions (Driscoll 2007)
 Reflective Framework. Stephenson (1994.179) In:
Bulman (2008:230)
 John’s Model of Structured Reflection – 14th edition
(2004) in Johns and Freshwater (2005:3)
HELPING YOU TO GET YOUR STUDENTS
STARTED WITH REFLECTION
 Encourage them to be curious and ask questions about practice –
gets into dialogue.
 Show them that you are willing to ask questions about your own
practice – that you are eager to change and challenge.
 Work on building up a relationship of trust with your students.
 Try using reflective frameworks to scaffold and support your reflection
with students
 Encourage your students to keep a reflective diary (keep one
yourself!)
 Remember there is information on reflection in the students’ PAD
 Use what you have learnt on your mentor course about facilitation –
support and challenge your students as they reflect on their practice
 Get into reflective supervision yourself
YOUR ROLE IN RELATION TO THE STUDENT’S
WRITTEN REFLECTIONS IN THE PAD
Students are encouraged to write at least 2 reflections
during their placement, one for the midway review and
one for the final review.
Your role is to learn about the student and their
experiences from the reflection, it can help inform your
assessment of the student.
You are not being asked to ‘mark’ the student’s reflective
writing; unless you are confident you do not have to
comment on writing skills; link lecturers will suggest
developments to the student
THINGS YOU COULD DO TO USE THIS
PRESENTATION AS PART OF YOUR
ANNUAL MENTOR UPDATE
You could:
 Write your own reflective account about how you have
supported an aspect of student development.
 Consider reading more about reflection or an aspect of
reflection such as critical analysis and then bullet point what
you have learnt.
 Consider learning more about reflection and developing a
presentation (power point or poster or written update) for
colleagues.
 Consider the way you work alongside students and find
ways to introduce reflective practice within your pattern of
working without increasing your workload.
REFERENCES
 Bulman, C. & Schutz, S. (2008) (eds) Reflective Practice in Nursing (4th ed). Blackwell:
Oxford, UK.
 Bulman, C., Lathlean, J. and Gobbi, M. (2012) The concept of reflection in nursing:
Qualitative findings on student and teacher perspectives, Nurse Education Today 32
(2012), pp. e8-e13 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2011.10.007
 Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to
the educative process. DC Heath and Company, Massachusetts.
 Driscoll, J. (2007) (ed.) Practising Clinical Supervision: A Reflective Approach for
Healthcare Professionals Bailliere Tindall: Elsevier, Edinburgh, UK.
 Clarke, D.J. and Graham, M. (1996) Reflective practice, the use of reflective diaries by
experienced registered nurses. Nursing Review. Vol.15, Autumn, No.1, 26 - 29.
 Bulman, C. (2008). Help to Get You Started. In: Bulman,C. and Schutz, S. (2008)
 Johns, C. and Freshwater, D. (2005) Transforming Nursing Through Reflective
Practice. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford.