Kolb's and Gibb's reflective practices

[Katie1]

Hi my name is Katie and I work in an early years setting in Cumbria. I am nearing the end of my CACHE level 3 Early Years Educator course and have been asked by my tutor to engage in discussions with my peers about the main theoretical perspectives on professional development. Below is description of my current knowledge involving the reflective practices of Kolb and Gibbs. I wondered if there were any other view points or theories on reflective practice that are useful for early years practitioners? Any advice appreciated, thanks in advance :)  

 

The two main theories of professional development are Kolb’s learning cycle and Gibb’s reflective cycle, both of which are based on reflective practice. The EYFS requires practitioners to engage in this style of working and stresses that reflective practice should be continual and not just a one-stage process. This is because children are always changing as they grow, and constant reflection is needed to highlight adaptations to our practice to encourage development. For example, a child that has recently learnt to write their own name should have further learning opportunities planned to support their writing development. 
Kolb’s learning cycle is also called experimental learning theory and is based on people learning from direct experiences. This has benefits over other methods of learning such as reading from a textbook, because practitioners often retain the learning experience better as they perform the physical actvitiy and build muscle memory. The theory is split into four stages:
Concrete experience – during this stage the practitioner is involved directly with the children interacting with them and maintaining a sense of creativity and adaptability toward the situations presented to them. For example, during my practice I played a game of snap with the children that I later adapted to a game of finding matches with all the cards faced up. 
Reflective observation – this is about reflecting on what has happened. Practitioners are aware of what has happened and can take a different, retrospective view on their practice. They can think about what actions seemed to benefit the child and which hindered their learning. This stage depends on being as objective as possible. For example, I observed that some children struggled to concentrate to play the snap game and instead played with their cards during my actvitiy. This may mean that the age and stage of development of the children did not match the activity I planned. 
Abstract conceptualisation – during this stage practitioners develop new ideas to improve their practice. This is based on facts rather than emotions and is aimed at understanding the situation and forming ideas to improve the experience in future. For example, with the above example, I could play snap again with less children and fewer, larger cards and more matches to encourage understanding.  
Active experimentation – this involves the practitioner trying out their new ideas to see the direct results. This is an active learning experience involving doing a physical activity. As an example, I could carry out my above idea and observe the results and again reflect on what I could further improve and what went well. 
Kolb’s learning style is described as a cycle because it is good practice to repeat the cycle to continually learn and improve practice as highlighted in the EYFS. Using this cycle of reflection can highlight areas of practice that need improvement and so is a useful tool to guide professional development plans. For example, after using the cycle several times, it may become apparent that a practitioner struggles to engage children for prolonged periods. This information could be useful in staff appraisals in which a training course on better communication styles with children could be offered. 
Gibb’s reflective cycle is similar to Kolb’s cycle. It contains more stages, two more, and has more structure to guide the practitioner through the process of reflection. It is particularly useful for reflection on events that have already occurred and what practitioners can do differently next time a similar event occurs. The stages are as follows: 
Description – an objective account of what happened describing details such as the event, where and when it happened, who else was there, what actions did I and the people around me take and what was the result of the event. 
Feelings – an account of emotions felt during the event. Helpful questions to ask when exploring feelings including, what did I feel before and after the event? What was I feeling during the event? What were my thoughts before, during and after the event? 
Evaluation – trying to summarise the positive and negative aspect of the event as objectively as possible. Questions to aid this process of reflection include, what worked and what did not work about the event? What did I and others around me contribute to the situation? 
Analysis – this step involves trying to understand what happened. Prior steps have been about the details of the event, this step involves drawing meaning from the situation. During this step, the focus is on the aspects that went well and those that did not and trying to understand why this is. During this stage it is also worth asking who can help me make sense of the situation if I lack the knowledge to fully understand why the situation happened. 
Conclusion – During this stage reasons are decided to explain why the situation went well or not and what can be learnt from the experience. During this stage, changes to working practice are considered to obtain a positive outcome in future and any further skills needed to bring this about highlighted. 
Action plan – this involves planning how I would act differently if presented with the same situation in future and should form part of a professional development plan. Sometimes further skills are needed to help this process and could involve further training or courses. 

[BenTapestrySupport]

If you're interested in reflecting on CPD, this TEC event may be worth a watch: https://tapestry.info/tec/reflecting-on-cpd-in-the-early-years.html

You may also be interested in reading more about Donald Schön's theory of reflective practice

• https://content.iriss.org.uk/reflectivepractice/practitioner.html
• https://early-education.org.uk/reflective-practice/

 

Personally, I think that reflecting on our practice and what we are teaching is really important as it helps keep things relevant and appropriate. It's all too easy in the busy day to day life of teaching to just do what you have always done before because you know what you need to do, possibly have some of the resources available already and don't need to spend time coming up with new ideas. The problem with that is that it may not be what the children need at that time, or where their interests are at that time. 

Reflecting and celebrating what also went well is important too! 

 

Having those conversations with experienced members of staff, as well as with new members of staff will help with the reflective cycle - and your own personal development. 

 

 

[Katie1]

Thank you for your help and the links Ben. Donald Schön's ideas on reflection are interesting and I was surprised to find out that I have done 'reflection-in-action' in the past and not even known! Thinking of this as more of an active 'live' process as well as a retrospective process is useful because I will try to incorporate a more reflective attitude as I am teaching the children and not just after. Reflection-on-action is a practice I would like to improve on to support my developing pedagogy. I like the idea of keeping a written record for reflection-on-action, I may incorporate this into my settings review documents and processes to better keep track of how I develop my teaching styles with the children. Many thanks :) 

[BenTapestrySupport]

I think as educators, we naturally reflect on how things go, adapt quickly, and don't realise that we're doing it. It's only when you take a step back and reflect on things 'properly' you realise that you've been doing it all along! 

That said, I do think that taking that time is an important step at any stage of your career, and having a space for it on planning docs is great - as long as it get reviewed later too (which was where I fell down!) 

[Katie1]

Hi Ben, that's true! Written reflection only works if you come back to look at it again and try and improve your practice as a result. I know what you mean, its not always easy to do this in busy settings! It can be easy to forgot to look back but I realise that I need to set up more of a routine (possibly one that fits in with something I already do often, like staff meeting and room set up time) of looking back on my written practice that week and thinking what I could do better. Consulting with my colleagues helps too and can be fun! 

[BenTapestrySupport]

Definitely! Being able to have those conversations with others can help you understand things from how others have approached a task as well and might give you and them, ideas for next time. It's also useful as some children learn differently with different adults/children around them. 

As always though, time works against us, but if you are able to find that time, the impact can be huge. 

[Lee-Anne80]

 

Hi, I'm also coming to the end of my Cache Level 3 Early Years Workforce (Early Years Educator) course and as part of my final unit I was to research theoretical perspectives in relation to reflection and share my findings on an online forum. If anyone has any further input regarding reflecting on our own practice, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

From my research I have found that two theories have been particularly significant in understanding the reflective process. These are Kolb’s Learning Cycle and Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle.

Kolb’s Learning Cycle:
David Kolb, an American educational theorist, developed the experiential learning cycle, which is widely used today for reflection. His theory suggests that in order to learn effectively, four processes must happen. These are:
1. Concrete experience – This is doing or having an experience that creates a learning experience. In an Early Years setting, this could be carrying out an activity with the children for the first time.
2. Reflective observation – This is where the practitioner would review and reflect on the experience. This could be that the practitioner thinks about the aspects of the task that worked well and the those that were not as successful.
3. Abstract conceptualisation – This is where conclusions are made and the individual learns from the experience. This could be where the practitioner decides on what changes need to be made to the activity for it to work better next time.
4. Active experimentation – This is the stage where the practitioner would apply what they have learned from the experience and put it into practice. This would be trying the task again, but with the changes that had been thought about in the previous stage.

The Kolb’s process is a cycle, because once we have tried out new ideas, we may need to reflect on them again. Many models of reflective practice have been based on Kolb’s Learning Cycle. By practitioners using this process, we are can think about our practice and the elements that need more developing, by reflecting on what we do and then implementing the changes we make to improve, before beginning the cycle again.

Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle:
Graham Gibbs developed his ‘Reflective Cycle’ in 1988, which was adapted from Kolb’s work. Gibbs’ approach gave more structure to the process of learning from experiences. His cycle has six stages. These are:
1. Description – The practitioner first describes the experience to identify what happened. This could be describing a task that was carried out with the children in the setting.
2. Feelings – At this stage, the practitioner identifies and assess how they feel about the experience. This is important, to understand how the emotions that were felt about the experience influenced them.
3. Evaluation – After looking at and assessing their feelings, the practitioner evaluates the experience, considering what the positive and the negatives were and what could have been done differently.
4. Analysis – So that the practitioner understands what happened during the experience and why, they analyse it, trying to make sense of what happened by looking at the reasons why.
5. Conclusion – At this stage, conclusions are made about the experience and through their learning, the practitioner then decides what they will do with that learning in the future.
6. Action plan – This is the stage where the individual would put into practice the points of action decided at the previous stage.
The conclusion stage of Gibbs’ cycle could identify that further training is needed and this would be put into the action plan stage, which links to professional development.

From looking at both of these cycles, it seems the reflection sheets I would fill in after each task I carried out in my settings throughout my studies, is based more so on Kolb's learning cycle. This cycle, I feel is the most straightforward to use and lends itself well to an Early Years Practitioner's reflection cycle. 

Sources:
Tassoni, P. (2021) Cache Level 3 Early Years Educator for the Work-based Learner. Didcot: Hachette
Simply Psychology (2 February 2024) Kolb’s Learning Styles And Experiential Learning Cycle by Saul Mcleod, PhD. Available at: https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html
The University of Edinburgh. Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle. Available at: https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/refl...flective-cycle