LLB (Hons) PSiP

LLB PROFESSIONAL SKILLS IN

PRACTICE

THE ART OF REFLECTION –

INFORMATION SHEET
LLB (Hons) Programme

Being able to reflect on yourself is a very necessary skill in terms of personal

development. By reviewing your actions, study, work you will be able to assess your
effectiveness and learn how to improve your skill set.

Here is a good explanation of what this skill means:

“Reflection is part of learning and thinking. We reflect in order to learn something, or

we learn as a result of reflecting, and the term ‘reflective learning’ emphasises the
intention to learn from current or prior experience”

Moon, J., 2004. A handbook of reflective and experiential learning. London:

RoutledgeFalmer

Reflection helps you become a more active learner. It will teach you to accept
responsibility for your own personal growth by constantly reviewing your actions.

How to reflect effectively:

Adapted from Gibbs G (1988) Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods.
Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford.

Law School 1
LLB (Hons) PSiP

How do you self-reflect properly? To start, you need the descriptive piece, you need to
think about something you have done (eg, completed your first public presentation).
Now think about what happened during that presentation.

Then move through the remaining questions (refer to the circle of questions above)
which will ensure you reflect on your experiences.

1. You need to think about how you felt during that experience (this is the
start of the reflection process)

2. Then you should evaluate your experience. Identify the positives – it is

good to know what you can do, then you will know you can do that next
time. It also means that you can focus on those areas which did not go so
well and will need improving for the next time. It is never pleasant to dwell
on such things and can often be difficult to know what to do. By forcing
yourself to self - reflect, rather than ignore/miss these weaker areas, you
will learn to do something about them.

3. That is done by analysing your experience. This is real reflection work.

Having identified the negatives you need to think about and understand
why you had the problems you had. This will help you to actually
improve/move forward from the poorer parts of your performance. Ask
yourself why you had these problems? Did others have these problems?
Also use feedback to help you assess this (both tutor feedback and peer
review)

4. You finish this reflection process by concluding what this all means.
Identifying what you have you learnt from the experience having
effectively reflected on it and what more you could have done.

Once you have taken into account what you have found out from
this process, you must then plan/work out how student will improve
for future

There are many positives to take from such experiences. It helps you:

 See what went well and focus on the positive side of an event as well as
the more negative. Essentially, this skill helps you develop a problem-
solving approach

 Clarify your thoughts: Writing things down helps clarify thoughts, emotions
and work out areas for development. This will encourage you to seek out
help and feedback.

 See value in your efforts: Reflection helps you to see a clear link between
the effort you put into your development and the benefits you get out of it. It
enables you to help see more value in each learning experience, by
knowing why you are doing things and what is in it for you.

This will help you improve your performance and study more effectively.

Law School 2