Atkins and Murphy Model
The four stages
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1. Awareness | Awareness of uncomfortable feelings (often from new, unfamiliar, or negative situations) |
| 2. Examine | Examine the components of the situation |
| 3. Analyse | Analyse the components of the situation |
| 4. Summarise | Summarise the outcomes of the reflection |
Underlying skills
- Self-awareness (mindfulness): insight into personal sensations, emotions, thoughts, actions
- Description: comprehensive account of the situation
- Critical analysis: identify schema, biases, assumptions; explore alternatives
- Synthesis: integrate new understanding; predict consequences
Limit
The model addresses reflection after action well, but does not handle reflection before action (planning out before doing).
A reflective practice model is most useful when it names a trigger that actually starts reflection in real working life. Atkins and Murphy (1993) gave their model that kind of trigger: the moment a teacher becomes aware of uncomfortable feelings. Most reflection that produces real change starts with discomfort, not with a planned intention to reflect.
Where the model comes from
Atkins and Murphy’s cyclical model was developed in part to address criticisms of earlier reflective practice models. Where simpler cycles like Boud’s named the equation but said little about what triggers reflection or how to deepen it, Atkins and Murphy made both more explicit.
Their starting move is to name the affective trigger. Reflection often begins not with a calm decision but with a feeling that something is off. The four stages of the cycle work outward from that feeling.
The four stages
Stage 1: Awareness of uncomfortable feelings
The first stage is the trigger. The teacher becomes aware of feelings that are uncomfortable. The discomfort usually comes from:
- New situations (a class she has not taught before)
- Unfamiliar situations (a student behaviour she has not encountered)
- Negative situations (something has gone wrong)
The discomfort is the data. A teacher who pushes the feeling away returns to autopilot and the chance for reflection passes. A teacher who pauses on the discomfort has the start of a reflective process.
This first stage is in tension with most teacher training, which can suggest that good teachers do not feel uncomfortable. Atkins and Murphy treat the discomfort as something to lean into rather than to suppress.
Stage 2: Examine the components of the situation
Once the feeling is named, the teacher examines what the situation involved. What happened. Who was there. What was said. What the teacher did and what others did. Examination is broader than description; it includes the teacher’s own role and response, not just the external events.
Stage 3: Analyse the components
The third stage turns examination into sense-making. The teacher analyses why the situation unfolded as it did. What assumptions were in play. What underlying patterns the situation reveals. What alternative explanations might fit.
This stage explicitly supports deeper reflection. The model expects the teacher to do critical, questioning, and challenging work here, not just to summarise.
Stage 4: Summarise outcomes
The fourth stage closes the cycle. The teacher summarises what the reflection has produced. What was learned. What will change. What will be tested next time.
What the model adds
Atkins and Murphy’s cycle is similar to Gibbs and to Kolb in shape. Its specific contributions are two.
The affective trigger
Stage 1 names the discomfort that starts reflection. Most other cycles assume the teacher has decided to reflect. Atkins and Murphy describe what actually pushes a teacher into reflection in working life.
The explicit critical stance
The model expects critical, questioning, and challenging reflection. It is alert to the risk of superficial responses. Other models leave the depth of reflection to the teacher’s choice; Atkins and Murphy build the expectation of depth into the model itself.
A note: this is not to say other models are not useful. The point is that without an explicit critical, questioning stance, reflective work can stay at the surface. Atkins and Murphy make the depth requirement visible.
Underlying skills
Atkins and Murphy named four skills that the cycle draws on. These run alongside the four stages and shape the quality of the work at each stage.
Self-awareness (mindfulness)
Self-awareness covers four working capacities.
- Insight into personal sensations, emotions, thoughts, and actions
- Acceptance and ownership of one’s responses
- Recognition and acceptance of emotions, sensations, and thoughts in others involved
- Honest examination of how the situation has affected the teacher and how the teacher has affected the situation
Mindfulness here is not a meditation technique. It is the working ability to notice what is happening, in oneself and in others, and to take responsibility for it.
Description
Description involves a comprehensive account of the situation, given verbally or in writing. The skill is the ability to recognise and recollect accurately the salient events and key features of an experience. A teacher who describes a situation thinly weakens every later stage.
Critical analysis
Critical analysis involves:
- Examining the components of a situation
- Identifying personal cognitive and emotional schema
- Identifying existing knowledge
- Identifying biases and assumptions
- Exploring alternative readings
This is the most demanding skill. It asks the teacher to examine not only the situation but also her own way of seeing the situation.
Synthesis
Synthesis involves integrating new understanding and predicting the likely consequences of any action that follows from it. Without synthesis, the analysis stays as an interesting account that does not change practice.
It is the working capacity that lets the cycle start and run honestly
Self-awareness is insight into one’s own sensations, emotions, thoughts, and actions, with acceptance of one’s responses and the ability to recognise the same in others. Without it, stage 1 does not happen because the discomfort gets pushed away. Without it, the analysis at stage 3 stays at the surface because the teacher’s own assumptions go unexamined.
A limit: reflection before action
Atkins and Murphy’s model handles reflection after action well. The cycle starts with awareness of feelings produced by something that has happened. The model does not address reflection before action: the planning stage where the teacher works out what she wants to do before doing it.
This limit matters. A reflective practice that only runs after the lesson misses the chance to use reflection in design. A teacher who reflects only retrospectively can refine practice slowly. A teacher who reflects in planning can avoid problems before they happen.
The fix is to pair Atkins and Murphy with a planning-oriented model. Greenaway’s plan-do-review covers the planning stage explicitly. Used together, the two models cover the full cycle.
When the model fits
Atkins and Murphy’s cycle fits situations where:
- Something has gone wrong or felt off
- The teacher needs to push past surface response to underlying assumptions
- Self-awareness is part of the work, not optional
- The reflection is about something that has already happened
For routine planning, simpler models fit better. For deep critical work on a specific incident with an emotional charge, this model is one of the strongest available.