Schon's Reflective Model - A Complete Guide
23 April 2025 Views: 253

Learn Schon's Reflective Model - A Complete Guide

Learn Schon's Reflective Model - A Complete Guide

Today's academic and professional environment demands reflection on one's experience and growth for development. One of the most effective techniques professionals can use is Schon's Reflective model. It encourages them to learn from past and real-time experiences. Students also benefit from clearing their subject doubts. Moreover, it also helps in preparing assignments that satisfy their academic needs. For further details, continue your readings.

What Is Schön's Reflective Model?

Schon's reflective model is very famous, and it was developed by Donald Schon. The model mainly emphasises the importance of reflection in learning and actions. It is specially used in real-time situations for the professional development of individuals. It is widely used in areas like education and healthcare as it helps people in these fields by improving their practices through their experience. If you want to have complete details about this model, then you can continue reading with us.

Components Of The Model

Schon's reflective model has different components, each one of which holds its own importance and effectiveness. To understand them easily, a detailed explanation is provided component-wise.

  • Problem framing: The very first component or step of Schon's Reflective Model is problem framing. In this component, a thorough evaluation involves recognising and understanding the problem within your context.
  • Action: After a thorough analysis of the problem, an action plan needs to be developed. While developing the action plan, all the relevant skills need to be applied. Along with that, correct and impactful decisions are taken in accordance with the situation.
  • Reflection: The incorporation of the reflection is done into existing tasks. In this, the tasks are considered, and then assessing and responding to them is done in real time. Also, involves thinking back on parts of the task to derive outcomes.
  • Reframing: The modification of initial understanding is done in the last component of Schon's reflective model. And the changes are done with the help of introspection. It gives an opportunity to potentially develop new approaches through leading new insights.

How To Use ‘Reflection' Mentioned In The Model

Among the four components, reflection is the one which have supplemental subdivisions. These subdivisions have their own values and are used in different situations for analysis. To have more details, read further.

  • Reflection in action: This reflective component involves knowing or analysing the action and their consequences when you are in the middle of the situation. For example, if you are working on a business case study, then when you are preparing the plan at that point of time when you analyse the problem and take action, that is reflection in action.
  • Reflection on action: This is a situation in which you look back at your previous conduct and experiences to analyse the problem. Once you are done with your action plan, analyse the situation and then detect all the issues. It is completely about the learnings from your experience and identifying areas that need to be improved.

Schön's Reflection Types: A Comparative Overview

The table gives you an overview of the subdivision of one of the major components of Schon's Reflective Model, that is, reflection. Furthermore, a comparison is made to make it easier to understand.

Aspect Reflection-in-Action Reflection-on-Action
Timing Happens during the activity or task Happens after the activity or task is completed
Focus Focuses on real-time decision-making and adjustments Focuses on evaluating past actions and outcomes
Purpose To adapt immediately and improve current performance To analyse and learn for future improvement
Nature Spontaneous and intuitive Planned and thoughtful
Example A teacher changes their explanation mid-lesson A teacher reviews what worked after the class ends
Learning Style Experiential, based on immediate feedback Analytical, based on reflection and memory
Use in Assignments Helps in real-time writing/editing decisions Helps in structuring reflective essays or conclusions

A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective On Schön's Reflective Practice Model

Schon's Reflective Model is used in different disciplines and professions due to its effectiveness. Out of varied disciplines, some fields are discussed here in which this model is being used. Also, how this model helps in this field for the betterment is stated.

  • Teaching: This model helps the teacher with analysing the situations and problems involved. After every lecture or lesson, it gives an opportunity to go through what went well and what did not. This allows them to develop more thoughtful and engaging lessons. It also gives an opportunity to improve their behaviour and adapt to a student-friendly nature.
  • Nursing: Schon's reflective model helps nurses connect theory with experience. This also helps them to apply their insights to future clinical situations. It enables nurses to assess their interactions with their patients and colleagues. Moreover, it helps to boost their confidence and make them capable of handling unfamiliar and complex situations.
  • Design: The model helps the designers to pause and evaluate their ideas. It also promotes innovation and creativness in their work through iterative thinking. Furthermore, it makes them take a step back and consider how the real users see their work. Schon's reflective model also helps to make better designs for critique and to articulate their processes.

Real-Time Example of Schon's Reflective Model

Business Management: The project manager of a company realised that all the members of the department were confused during a meeting. So, to resolve the problem, he considered the component reflection in action. Among those, he also considered two options.

  • Pausing the meeting, reassign the tasks clearly for more clarity.
  • Or provide a visual workflow on the shared screen to provide a better understanding.

Among these, the manager decided to provide the workflow digitally. This will help to clarify the responsibilities more clearly and accurately. It is possible that the reassigning of tasks may again create confusion, so to avoid this, the second technique is used. It will digitally assign all tasks to the members, leaving no area for doubt and making it easy to remember.

Advantages of Schon's Reflective Model

The model developed by Donald Schon is very beneficial and helpful for professionals and students. So, to deeply understand how it is advantageous for them, some of its benefits are listed below.

  • Flexibility: One of the benefits of this model is that it's really flexible. It is not overly structured. Moreover, it is not rigid and can be adapted to different fields, professions, and situations. You can easily apply this model according to your specific context and needs.
  • Deeper learning: Through situation analysis and problem framing, an individual learn through their experience. Also, they develop a strong understanding through their past actions and decisions. This promotes solid critical thinking power, which builds and develops valuable insights and knowledge.
  • Real-time reflection: One of the components of Schon's reflective model, that is, reflection in action, helps the individual to analyse the problem and think or adapt to the situation when they are working on it. This makes an individual a quick problem-solver. Moreover, it also gives an area for improvement in their practices.
  • Support continuous learning: The process of Schon's model is ongoing. From analysing the problem while working on the task to reviewing it once you are done with the task, the procedure is never-ending. That's the reason it always encourages individuals to seek ways to improve their performance in the future. It makes the continuous cycle of learning and promotes long-term growth for the future.

Disadvantages of Schon's Reflective Model

Along with its incomparable advantages, Schon's Reflective model has some disadvantages that reduce its effectiveness.

  • Subjectivity: The model is purely developed on personal thoughts and interpretation, which vary from person to person. Every individual has different feelings, which creates a gap between thoughts. This makes the reflection inconsistent. Moreover, it also makes the decision emotionally biased.
  • Lack of structure: Unlike other models like Gibbs, Schon's Reflective Model does not have a clear structure or steps. This creates confusion among those who are looking forward to using the model in their professions. It makes it difficult to figure out where to start and how to go ahead with the process.
  • Difficulty for beginners:The model is quite complex. So, the students who are new to this model may find difficulty in understanding its abstract nature. Moreover, it does not offer clear instructions on how to perform introspection and reflection. So, that's all left to students' critical thinking and knowledge of the topic, which in most cases makes the model impractical.
  • Limited guidance and implementation: The model does not offer any specific tool or technique for guidance. It makes it harder for the ones who use it, especially the students and professionals. This makes it tougher to use continuously and evaluate its effectiveness.

How Students Can Use This Model In Assignment Completion

Schon's Model is extremely beneficial for students. It helps to enhance their knowledge and deepen their understanding. We know that an assignment is a complicated task to complete, and it is very important to complete it with extreme knowledge. This model helps you with this. For a better understanding of how students use this model in assignment completion, some points are mentioned here.

  • During assignment: Students can use this model in preparing their assignments that are completely error-free. By using different components of this method, they can clearly assess their decisions to improve their writing.
  • For future work: Through using the technique of reflection in action, students can analyse the situation and can conclude what was done better and what had areas of improvement. This will save them from repeating the same mistakes in their future assignments.
  • Deepening subject understanding: This model helps to develop a connection between theoretical knowledge and real-time application. It leads to a more meaningful understanding of the topics and the concepts that are being used in assignments.
  • Enhancing critical thinking: This model encourages questioning oneself for understanding the problem. The assumptions help in fostering critical thinking. Also, it encourages skill development, which strengthens the foundation of the topic.

Conclusion

With the help of the above blog, you must have understood Schon's Reflective Model and its components. The above blog also explains the advantages and disadvantages of the model. Moreover, with the help of this blog, students can understand how they can use this model to complete their assignments easily.

But even after all this, if you feel that you are not able to complete the assignment that meets your academic standards, then you can rely on us. New Assignment Help UK is a platform that helps students complete assignments through expert guidance. Our professional provides high-quality content before the approaching deadline. So, don't wait anymore and take advantage of our top-notch services to get the best assignments.

Author Bio

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Serena Rogers   rating 8 years | PhD

Greetings students. My name is Serena Rogers. I have a strong command of business case studies and marketing research. I have been using Schon's Reflective Model while preparing assignments for years. This model has helped me to provide high-quality content with clear intent. That's why I have crafted this blog for students so they can also benefit from this model. If you have any further queries, you can connect with me.

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