Dr Iain Wilson C.Psychol SFHEA
Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences (Teaching and Learning)
School of Social Sciences
Nottingham Trent University
Over several years of teaching and leading on employability-focused modules and assessing learners using Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (1988), I have noticed a number of recurring issues. I was surprised that these issues have been reported in the literature for over 20 years too. Common issues included reflections being descriptive, superficial and limited evidence of applying knowledge or learning (e.g., Thompson and Pascal 2012). Furthermore, experiences were chosen ad-hoc and written to please the marker (e.g., Maguire, Evans and Dyans 2001), appearing to be approached as a tick-box exercise and not an assessment for learning (e.g., William 2011). Frequently, reflections were too focused on the past, with limited plans for future application considered (e.g., Corker and Holland 2015). I therefore decided to redesign the assessment on the undergraduate module I was leading at the time, as a pilot, because increasing the teaching and learning support around reflection was having a limited effect. What I came up with was the Synthesised Model of Reflection (SMoR; Wilson 2023).
The SMoR is designed to be a proactive approach to reflection where learners set goals and choose their experiences, which they will reflect upon before completing them. In addition, the model allows for multiple experiences to be reflected upon in a single cycle. Each experience is evaluated individually, followed by a synthesised evaluation. Finally, learners can revisit their self-evaluation which informed the goals at the start. There are four stages to completing the SMoR. These are:
- Self-evaluation: Identify strengths and development needs in relation to a future direction and state development aims/goals.
- Experiences: Engage in multiple (specified by the assessment) experiences which address the development aims/goals. Write a short reflection on each experience.
- Synthesised evaluation: Evaluate the experiences to draw conclusions by synthesising the learning across situations. This involves capturing what is learnt about the self, as well as critically evaluating the context of the experiences.
- Re-evaluation: Link learning to self-evaluation to assess progress made, identify new strengths, development needs and set new development aims/goals.
Fig. 1: The four stages of the SMoR
Unlike other models of reflection (e.g., Gibbs 1988), the SMoR is focused on the approach to selecting appropriate experiences, as opposed to how to make sense of individual experiences. Below is a (not exhaustive) list of potential benefits:
- The SMoR is atheoretical in terms of a frame for what to include in the self-evaluation. I have applied The Employability Redefined Taxonomy (Cole and Eade 2020) to guide my learners. Personally, I used the SMoR to map and evidence meeting the professional standards in my Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy application. Therefore, what is reflected about in the self-evaluation can be tailored to the needs of the assessment, course or professional qualification.
- Supporting learners to understand what their baseline is through their self-evaluation allows for learners to reflect upon the progress in a more meaningful and evidence-based way, as they can monitor their development compared to their baseline.
- The proactive approach enables learners to select their experiences in a purposeful manner, meaning that these will be more meaningful to them, as opposed to selecting experiences ad-hoc or ‘to please the assessor’.
- This longitudinal approach, incorporating multiple experiences, allows for learning from one experience to be applied in a follow-up experience, to assess how effectively learning has been transferred and applied.
Learning does not occur in a single experience. Additionally, it is rarely explicitly taught how different experiences connect and complement each other to contribute to someone’s overall development and identity. The SMoR offers a robust and systematic approach to the reflective process, incorporating multiple experiences. It is early in development but showing promise from feedback so far. I will continue my evaluation of the SMoR, however, I welcome feedback and opportunities to collaborate and evaluate this new model of reflection which is definitely not reinventing the wheel.
If you have feedback, comments, questions or would be interested in collaborating, please do get in touch with me on iain.wilson@ntu.ac.uk or @Dr_Iain_Wilson on X. You can find the learning and teaching resources that I have shared in my National Teaching Repository profile: Iain Wilson PhD SFHEA.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to NTU Psychology for funding this scholarship sabbatical project, my research mentors Prof. Julie Hulme, Dr Richard Remedios and Prof. Maria Karanika-Murray, and my collaborators at NTU.
Dr Iain Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences (Teaching and Learning) at Nottingham Trent University, SFHEA and Critical Friend of the National Teaching Repository. He is passionate about the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, with particular interests in employability learning and written assessments. Iain completed a Scholarship Sabbatical, in the 2022-23 academic year, which was evaluating a new model for assessing reflective writing; the Synthesised Model of Reflection, as well as developing resources to support the teaching, learning and assessment of reflection. His other areas of activity include leading on staff development in Teaching and Learning across Social Sciences. Iain has previous experience as Course Leader for the MSc/PGDip Psychology Conversion Course (BPS accredited) and contributes to specialist teaching on employability-focused modules as well as Occupational Psychology modules.
References
Cole, D., and Eade, D., 2020. Employability redefined taxonomy: An internal briefing paper, Unpublished. Nottingham Trent University. In Cole, D., and Coulson, B., 2022. Through and Beyond COVID-19, Promoting Whole Person, Lifelong and Life Wide Learning. Journal of Innovation in Polytechnic Education, 4(1), pp.45-50.
Corker, C. and Holland, S., 2015. Introducing students to employability, skills and reflection: A case study from history. Student Engagement and Experience Journal, 4(1), pp.1-16.
Gibbs, G., 1988. Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford
Maguire, S., Evans, S. E., and Dyans, L., 2001. Approaches to learning: A study of first year geography undergraduates. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 25(1), pp.95-107.
Thompson, N. and Pascal, J., 2012. Developing critically reflective practice. Reflective Practice, 13(2), pp.311-325.
Wiliam, D., 2011. What is assessment for learning?. Studies in educational evaluation, 37(1), pp.3-14.
Wilson, I. (2023). The Synthesised Model of Reflection in a 2 minute video (Version 1). National Teaching Repository. https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.23642247.v1
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