DAVID KOLB’S THEORY OF REFLECTION
Learning Cycle
Kolb's learning cycle consists in following four steps of learning cycle every time we teach children new songs or games, it will help practitioners to reflect on their skills, improve their practice by doing self-evaluation.
‘Concrete Experience’ is the first step when we put our effort in realising teaching task and make it happen. This is the real experience we have done. This can be singing the new nursery song ‘Peter rabbit’ to toddlers, the one they didn’t hear it before at the circle time.
The second stage is called
‘Reflective Observation’ where we reflect in distance what we did, how did singing go, what did we do right and wrong, did it succeed, did the children like it, which part of the song they were engaged more, did they follow our instruction, should we sing it again, does it need improvements and how?
The third stage is
‘Abstract conceptualization’ where we evolve new and extend ideas about the nursery song, we started to evolve new thoughts, how to do it next time, what to add or should we do it in the same way? Planning for next time and forming new experience.
The last stage is called
Active Experimentation’ where we are active and we put in realisation our plan and our new ideas such as the nursery rhyme needs more hand gestures or maybe present soft toy to children before we start with the song to give a hint and make them guess what song is next, this will make ‘Peter rabbit’ song visually attractive and will help children develop their thinking. The learning cycle can be repeated in cycle.
GRAHAM GIBBS’ CYCLE OF REFLECTION
Gibb’s six stage cycle model was created base on Kolb’s theory of reflection. While Kolb’s theory can be categorised as an experimental model of learning through experiences, whereas Gibbs’ model can be categorised as learning through repetition of experiences.
Gibb’s reflective cycle help us to challenge our negative feelings and attitude, assumption, prejudice and helps us improve positive thinking and positive way of doing things, overall promotes self- improvement.
The first stage of Gibbs’ cycle is
‘Description’ of what happened, example; when a child bites another child, we describe the event in descriptive way, no bias no adding just the clear event.
The
‘Feelings’ stage we reflect what were we thinking when we saw the child biting the other child, how did we react, how did we feel, what emotions we showed towards children when the incident occurred, what behaviour we modelled to children, how did we feel after the incident and how made us feel everything what happened? In this aspect, we describe our personal feelings, our actions and thoughts.
In the
‘Evaluation’ stage we evaluate the outcomes of the experience; what went wrong and why the incident of biting occurred, when did we deal with the situation, did we find the right or wrong solution for it, how did it end in a good way or bad way? During this stage, we point to positive and negative sides of the incident which consists in the most relevant points of the experience.
In the stage of
‘Analysing’ the experience (incident) we reconsider what went wrong and right. We write the reason why the child bit the other child, when and how we should have reacted to prevent the incident occurred, were our actions and reactions same as before when we dealt with similar experience? This part is analytic part where we try to find causes and consequences of the event.
The ‘Conclusion’ stage consists in finding what we learn from the whole experience (the incident), what we learnt about ourselves and our reactions, we think what we did wrong during the situation and why. Reflect in our self-practice, if we were more vigilant the incident might have been avoided and children would have been safe now.
The last stage of this model is
‘Action Plan’ where we decide what we’re going to do next time, how to avoid incidents occurring and what will we do, how to change our reaction and behaviour towards children if happens again? In this stage through training, reading and getting informed, we prepare ourselves to be more careful, we set strategies to deal with it and remember the right way of reacting towards children.
References;
Early Years Educator, Level 3, CHACHE, work-based learner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WfnHGq6ztg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxzMH6KFSVU
Threaded Mode
