16 Reflect ‘n’ learn
“Creative and reflective thinking rarely happens entirely alone. We need peers to bounce ideas off, to ask us productive troublesome questions, to introduce us to new possibilities, and to alert us to omissions in our thinking. Our experience is that when these things happen in face-to-face and online communities learning is galvanized.” (James & Brookfield, 2014, 205-206)
Reflection is an important part of learning, developing and growing. However, we don’t learn from our experiences automatically; instead, we learn through reflecting critically and creatively on our experiences and acting accordingly.
Sharing our reflections with others and engaging in conversations about these will:
- broaden our horizons,
- help us make sense of our experiences from different perspectives,
- reveal our own blind spots and
- help us recognise what has worked well.
A reflective model
Terry Borton’s ‘What? So what? Now what?’ model for group facilitation in the 1970s was later adapted by Rolfe et al. (2001) and Rolfe (2014) in healthcare settings as a tool for reflection. As the name suggests, the framework includes only three questions, as shown in the table below.
| 1. What? | 2. So what? | 3. Now what? |
| … is the challenge/problem/ difficulty I/we experience? | … does this tell me/us about me/us/others/our relationship/? | … do I/we need to do in order to improve/resolve the situation? |
| … was my role/were our roles in the situation? | … did I/we base my/our actions on? | … broader issues need to be considered if this action is to be successful? |
| … was I/were we trying to achieve? | … other knowledge can I/we bring to the situation? | … might be the consequences of this action? |
| … actions did I/we take? | … could/should I/we have done to make it better? | |
| … was the response from others? | … is my/our new understanding of the situation? | |
| were the consequences for myself/our group? Others? | broader issues arise from the situation? | |
| … feelings did the experience generate? |
“I found this framework really helpful not only to complete one of my assessment tasks for this module, but also to reflect on my own professional practice and look for ways to improve on specific routine tasks.” Alexandra Poradowska, previous student on the module
Consider using this framework to critically reflect on each unit and how what you are learning relates to your professional practice and what actions you could take. You may be familiar with another reflective framework. Feel free to use it if it works better for you.
Creative reflection
Your reflection doesn’t need to be captured using text alone – you have the opportunity to be creative. It can really help you express your thoughts with great richness using different media. Use your imagination and consider using a range of approaches to complement your reflections. For example, you could:
Use pictures,
a drawing,
a photograph,
make a model, a collage or
write a poem.
We would like to build a bank of exemplars and are therefor inviting you to share your creative reflection. You may wish to access The Fish in an out of Water collection with examples of creative reflection in the form of poetry (Nerantzi et al. 2025).
Consider also using the following Remixer tool Flourish, a course design tool by TU Delft and developed by Bryan Mathers. We have adapted this to the Module and Skills Learning Outcomes. You can use it as it is or modify it to suit your needs.
You may also use TikTok or Instagram for example or another platform for sharing regularly short video or pictorial reflections. Remember to only share what you really want to share.
The opportunities are endless. We are looking for critical reflection, so depth needs to be evidenced through engaging with and problematising the literature you are reading. You may find Moon’s (2004) resources on reflection useful to further develop your understanding about reflection. Familiarising yourself with the assessment criterion on reflection, which is based on Moon’s reflective framework will further help you in this area.
