Reflection
Reflection is the systematic process of looking back on what you did, thought, and felt during a specific experience, in order to draw concrete lessons for future action. For an ICT student this matters because technical skill alone doesn't make you a competent professional. You also need to notice patterns in how you work and learn from mistakes in projects or collaborations. Otherwise, you keep hitting the same wall instead of growing past it.
Starting Points
- Reflectiemodellen van Korthagen (NJI) explains Korthagen's spiral model and the "onion model," giving you a structured, step-by-step way to move from surface-level behaviour to the beliefs and motivations driving it.
- STARR-methode (Scribbr) walks you through the STARR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result, Reflection), a practical format for describing a concrete experience before you analyze it.
- Gibbs' Reflective Cycle (University of Edinburgh Reflection Toolkit) offers a six-stage cycle that separates how you felt from how you evaluate what happened, and separates evaluation from analyzing why it happened, which helps you avoid blurring those together.
Key Points
- You describe a concrete situation using its actual course of events, not a vague or general impression of "how it went."
- You distinguish between what you observed happening and what you assumed or felt about it, instead of treating the two as the same thing.
- You name specifically what you have learned from the situation, rather than concluding only "it went well" or "it went badly."
- You translate what you learned into a concrete, adjusted action or learning goal for a comparable situation in the future.
- You actively seek feedback from others as input for your reflection, rather than relying only on your own perspective.