A Reflective Account of a Teaching and Learning Session Using Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle

Introduction

Reflective practice sits at the heart of effective teaching. The capacity to look back on a session, interrogate what happened, and translate that scrutiny into improved practice is widely regarded as a defining feature of the skilled educator rather than an optional extra (Schon, 1983). For trainee and early-career teachers in particular, structured reflection offers a means of converting the often overwhelming immediacy of the classroom into ordered, actionable learning. This account uses Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (Gibbs, 1988) to examine a single teaching and learning session. The model was selected because its six stages move deliberately from the descriptive to the analytical and finally to the future-oriented, discouraging the superficial “it went fine” judgement that can characterise less disciplined reflection.

The session discussed below is hypothetical, constructed for the purposes of this coursework to illustrate how the cycle can be applied. It does not describe a real class, learners, or institution, and no genuine grades or individuals are referenced. Even so, the scenario has been designed to be realistic and to raise the kinds of pedagogical tensions that practitioners routinely encounter, so that the reflection remains meaningful. Throughout, the discussion is linked to established educational theory, most notably the work of Vygotsky (1978) on the social nature of learning and Petty (2009) on evidence-informed classroom method.

The Teaching and Learning Session: Context

The hypothetical session was a fifty-minute lesson delivered to a mixed-ability group of approximately twenty-four learners at Key Stage 4 level, forming part of a scheme of work on persuasive writing in an English course. The intended learning outcome was that, by the end of the session, learners would be able to identify three rhetorical devices, ethos, pathos and logos, and use at least two of them in a short piece of their own writing. The lesson followed a fairly conventional structure: a starter activity to activate prior knowledge, a period of teacher exposition supported by modelled examples, a paired analysis task, an independent writing task, and a plenary to consolidate learning. As the teacher, I planned the session, prepared the resources, and delivered it alone, with a teaching assistant present to support two learners identified on the group’s provision map. The reflection that follows treats this session as the unit of analysis.

Description

The lesson began on schedule with a starter task in which learners were asked to rank three short advertisements according to how persuasive they found them, and to note one reason for their top choice. This generated a reasonable level of talk, and most pairs were able to offer a justification when invited to share. I then moved to a period of direct instruction, introducing the three rhetorical appeals with a visual glossary and two worked examples projected on the board. I modelled the analysis of the first example aloud, thinking through why a particular sentence appealed to emotion, before asking learners to attempt the second example in pairs.

At this point the pacing began to slip. The paired analysis took noticeably longer than the ten minutes I had allocated, partly because several pairs were unsure what counted as pathos as opposed to ethos. I circulated and offered clarification, but I was conscious of the clock and eventually brought the task to a close before all pairs had finished. The independent writing task that followed was therefore compressed into roughly eight minutes rather than the fifteen I had planned. In the plenary, I asked a small number of learners to read a sentence they had written and to name the device they had used. Several could do so confidently; others had not progressed far enough to have a sentence ready. The lesson ended a couple of minutes late as I hurried the final instructions for the homework task.

Feelings

Before the lesson I felt reasonably confident, having prepared the resources carefully and rehearsed the modelled examples. During the early phase this confidence held; the starter had gone well and I sensed that the class was engaged. As the paired task overran, however, my confidence gave way to a growing anxiety about time. I became aware of a tension between wanting to let learners work through their genuine confusion and needing to cover the planned content. My internal response was to prioritise the timetable, and I recall a distinct sense of frustration, directed largely at myself, when I realised the independent task would have to be curtailed.

By the plenary I felt somewhat deflated. Seeing that a proportion of the class had not produced a written sentence undermined my sense that the learning outcome had been met, even though other learners had clearly grasped the concepts. There was also a quieter, more uncomfortable feeling that I had, in the interests of getting through the material, effectively left some learners behind, and that this ran counter to the inclusive values I hold as a teacher. After the lesson I felt a mixture of disappointment and curiosity: disappointment at the uneven finish, but also a genuine interest in understanding why the paired task had absorbed so much more time than anticipated. Acknowledging these feelings honestly matters, because, as Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985) argue, attending to the emotional dimension of an experience is not self-indulgence but a necessary route into deeper learning; unexamined negative feelings can otherwise distort judgement or discourage future risk-taking.

Evaluation

Weighing the session as a whole, there were clear strengths alongside the evident weakness of poor time management. The starter activity was a definite success: it was accessible, it activated prior knowledge, and it created a low-stakes entry point that drew in a wide range of learners. The modelling of analysis was also effective, in that several learners in the plenary were able to reproduce the reasoning I had demonstrated, suggesting that the “thinking aloud” strategy had communicated the underlying process and not merely the answer.

The principal weakness was the collapse of the lesson’s timing, which in turn meant the independent writing task, arguably the point at which the intended outcome was to be evidenced, was too rushed for some learners to succeed. It would be too simple, though, to file this purely under “ran out of time”. A more searching evaluation suggests the overrun was a symptom rather than the cause. The paired task overran because a significant number of learners lacked the secure conceptual grounding to complete it at the pace I had assumed. In that sense the difficulty was diagnostic: it revealed that my exposition, though clear to me, had not yet produced secure understanding in a portion of the class. Evaluated positively, the session generated valuable formative information; evaluated critically, I did not respond to that information flexibly enough in the moment.

Analysis

Making sense of these events requires moving beyond the description to the theory that explains them. The most illuminating lens is Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the zone of proximal development, the distance between what a learner can achieve independently and what they can achieve with appropriate support. The paired analysis task was, in effect, an attempt to have learners operate within this zone, using peer collaboration as the scaffold. The overrun suggests that for many learners the task sat beyond the zone rather than within it: without sufficient guided practice, the gap between the modelled example and independent application was too wide to be bridged by peer talk alone. Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976), who coined the term scaffolding, emphasise that support must be calibrated and then gradually withdrawn. My lesson moved from heavy support (teacher modelling) to light support (unstructured pair work) too abruptly, omitting an intermediate stage of guided practice in which I might have worked through a further example with the whole class before releasing responsibility.

This maps closely onto the gradual release of responsibility model, often summarised as “I do, we do, you do” (Fisher and Frey, 2013). My lesson contained a strong “I do” phase and a “you do” phase, but the crucial “we do” phase was underdeveloped. Petty (2009) makes a compatible point in arguing that effective teaching depends on checking understanding continually and adjusting accordingly, rather than delivering content and hoping it has landed. Had I embedded a quick check of understanding, a targeted question or a mini-whiteboard response, after the modelling, I would have gathered the diagnostic information earlier, when there was still time to act on it, rather than discovering the gap only as the paired task stalled.

There is also a metacognitive dimension worth analysing. The confident learners in the plenary were, in effect, demonstrating that they could not only use the devices but articulate why they worked, a form of the self-regulated awareness that the wider literature associates with durable learning. Prompting learners to verbalise their reasoning in this way appears, on the evidence of this session, to have helped consolidate their grasp of the concepts, whereas those who worked in silence had less opportunity to test and refine their thinking. The learners who struggled may have needed more explicit modelling of the thinking process, not simply more time. Finally, Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning theory reminds me that learning proceeds through a cycle of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. My learners were pushed towards active experimentation (writing their own persuasive sentences) before they had adequately completed the reflective and conceptual stages. The analysis therefore consistently points to the same underlying issue: an imbalance in the structure of support, rather than a simple failure of clock-watching.

Conclusion

Drawing these threads together, the central lesson of this reflection is that time management in the classroom is frequently a downstream consequence of instructional design rather than an independent skill to be improved in isolation. The session did not overrun because I was careless with the clock; it overran because the sequence of activities asked learners to work independently before they were ready, so that the shortfall in understanding surfaced as lost time. Where the lesson succeeded, through an accessible starter and clear modelling, it did so because those elements were well matched to what learners could do. Where it faltered, it did so because the scaffolding was withdrawn too quickly, leaving a portion of the class outside their zone of proximal development.

I have also concluded that the affective and analytical dimensions of reflection are connected. My in-the-moment frustration nudged me towards a rigid decision, pressing on with the plan, precisely when a more responsive, formative approach was called for. Recognising that pattern is itself a professional gain. Had I not used a structured model such as Gibbs’ cycle, I might have concluded only that I “needed to watch the time”, a superficial and largely unhelpful resolution. The disciplined progression through description, feelings, evaluation and analysis has instead surfaced a more precise and more useful understanding of what actually needs to change.

Action Plan

Should a comparable situation arise, I would make several concrete changes, each tied directly to the analysis above. First, I would restructure the lesson to include an explicit “we do” phase: after modelling the analysis of the first example, I would work through a second example collaboratively with the whole class, inviting contributions and correcting misconceptions in real time, before releasing learners into paired work. This addresses the abrupt withdrawal of support identified through Fisher and Frey (2013) and Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976).

Second, I would build in a brief, formative check of understanding immediately after the exposition, for example a single mini-whiteboard task requiring each learner to label a sentence with the correct rhetorical device. Following Petty (2009), this would give me the diagnostic information early enough to adapt the lesson, whether by reteaching, by regrouping, or by adjusting the demands of the subsequent task. Third, I would plan the lesson with flexible timing in mind, designating the paired analysis as an activity that can expand or contract and preparing an optional extension for pairs who finish quickly, so that pacing decisions are anticipated rather than improvised under pressure.

Finally, at the level of my own development, I intend to continue using a structured reflective model after teaching, and to seek feedback from a colleague or mentor observing the “we do” phase specifically, since peer observation offers a perspective on my practice that self-reflection alone cannot. I will review the impact of these changes after the next comparable session, thereby closing Gibbs’ cycle by feeding this action plan back into a fresh round of experience and reflection. In this way the reflection becomes not a retrospective exercise but a genuine engine of ongoing professional improvement.

References

Boud, D., Keogh, R. and Walker, D. (1985) Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. London: Kogan Page.

Fisher, D. and Frey, N. (2013) Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility. 2nd edn. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods. Oxford: Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.

Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Petty, G. (2009) Teaching Today: A Practical Guide. 4th edn. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes.

Schon, D.A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wood, D., Bruner, J.S. and Ross, G. (1976) ‘The role of tutoring in problem solving’, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(2), pp. 89-100.