Extending Boud's Model
Boud’s three stages of reflection
| Stage | What happens |
|---|---|
| Return to experience | Recall the event in detail, non-judgmentally |
| Attend to feelings | Use helpful feelings; remove or contain obstructive ones |
| Re-evaluate experience | Re-examine the event in light of intent and existing knowledge |
Four sub-stages of re-evaluation
- Association : relate new data to what is already known
- Integration : seek new relationships between the data
- Validation : check authenticity; look for inconsistencies
- Appropriation : make the new knowledge or attitude your own
The model’s strength
Addresses emotion directly. Boud is concerned about the role emotion plays in blocking or facilitating reflection.
Issues with the model
- Confines reflection to a retrospective role (reflection-on-action, not reflection-in-action)
- Focus stays on individuals’ mental activity
- Practitioners not encouraged to engage in reflective dialogue with others
Practitioner implications
Mentors and supervisors can give external validation and positive feedback that helps the reflective practitioner persist with the work.
Boud’s triangular representation of reflective learning is one of the most popular and frequently cited models of reflective practice. Its strength is the explicit treatment of emotion, which most other models leave implicit. The chapter on Models in this guide introduced the three stages. The work here goes deeper.
The three stages, in order
Boud’s model has three stages.
Stage 1: returning to the experience
The reflective practitioner first reflects on an experience by mentally replaying it and describing it in a descriptive, non-judgmental way.
The discipline here is to describe before judging. A teacher who walks out of a lesson and starts immediately with “that was a disaster” has skipped the description and moved straight to judgment. The judgment closes off readings of the situation that the description might have surfaced.
Returning to experience means recalling the salient points: what happened, who was there, what was said, what was done, in what order. The teacher is not yet asking why or what it means. They are reconstructing the event.
Stage 2: attending to feelings
The second stage involves attending to feelings, both positive and negative, triggered by the experience. Boud’s instruction is to “discharge” any negative feelings that may obstruct the reflection.
The word discharge is important. The point is not to suppress the feelings or pretend they were not there. The point is to acknowledge them, give them space, and release the grip they have on the thinking.
A teacher who is angry about a class can read the class only through the lens of anger. A teacher who has acknowledged the anger, sat with it, and let it pass can read the class with fresh eyes. The acknowledgment is the work. The release follows from it.
Helpful feelings (curiosity, hope, satisfaction) get to stay and inform the reflection. Obstructive feelings (anger, fear, defensiveness) get acknowledged and contained so they do not steer the thinking off course.
Stage 3: re-evaluating the experience
Once feelings have been attended to, the teacher is ready to re-evaluate the experience. This is the substantive thinking stage. It runs through four sub-stages.
Association. The teacher relates the new data from the experience to what is already known. What does this remind me of? What earlier experience does it connect with? What theory does it bring to mind?
Integration. The teacher seeks new relationships between the data. How do these pieces fit together? What pattern emerges when I look at the new and old data side by side?
Validation. The teacher determines the authenticity of the new ideas and looks for inconsistencies or contradictions. Is what I am thinking actually supported by the data? Where does it not hold?
Appropriation. The teacher makes the new knowledge or attitude their own. What does this mean for how I will work? What part of this becomes a stable part of my practice?
The four sub-stages move the reflection from raw event to integrated learning. A teacher who runs only the first two has produced an interesting interpretation. A teacher who runs all four has changed how they will teach.
The strength of the model: emotion
The strength of Boud’s model is that it addresses emotion directly. Most reflection models talk around emotion. Boud puts it at stage 2 of the cycle, on equal footing with description and re-evaluation.
Boud is concerned about the role emotion plays in blocking or facilitating reflective processes. In his view, reflection is essentially a private process where emotional influences (such as the avoidance of an area of thought) can steer the process more strongly than any other influence.
This claim is worth taking seriously. A teacher who has had a painful experience with a particular kind of student or topic may avoid reflecting on similar experiences in the future, not consciously but by quietly steering away. The steering is hard to see. It happens before the reflection starts.
Boud’s model asks the reflective practitioner to attend to this layer rather than pretend it is not there.
What the model asks of the reflective practitioner
In practice, the model asks four things.
Return to an event, incident, or experience and record it. The recording is part of the work. Memory smooths over the details that matter.
Consider it in detail at an emotional and cognitive level. Both layers, not one without the other.
Re-evaluate the event in light of experience, knowledge, and experimentation. Bring in what you know and what you have tried. Look for new connections.
Plan for what might change. The reflection is incomplete until it produces an idea about what to do differently.
A teacher who runs all four steps has done a piece of Boud-style reflection. A teacher who runs three of four has produced something useful but partial.
Issues with the model
The model has well-known limitations.
It confines reflection to a retrospective role. Boud’s model is reflection-on-action rather than reflection-in-action. The teacher reflects after the lesson, not during it. Schon’s distinction (in earlier chapters) covers both types. Boud only covers one.
The focus stays on individuals’ mental activity. The reflection is essentially private. The model does not push the practitioner to engage in reflective dialogue in a wider social arena. A teacher who follows Boud strictly may produce good private reflections that never get tested in conversation.
The role of community and dialogue is underdeveloped. Other models (Johns, for example) build in supervision and dialogue more explicitly. Boud leaves this implicit.
Boud has countered some of this criticism by highlighting the complexity of the reflective process given how emotion and cognition interact. He points out, for example, that if reflective practitioners feel more positive about themselves, they will be more likely to persist with reflective activities. This insight has been picked up in teacher education.
Mentors, supervisors, and external validation
The implication for teacher development is that mentors and supervisors who understand the importance of giving teachers external validation and positive feedback help the reflective practice stick.
A teacher reflecting alone in a journal may produce sharp insights and then quietly stop, because nothing reinforces the work. A teacher reflecting with a mentor who reads the journal and responds tends to keep going. The validation is not flattery. It is the recognition that the work has been seen.
This is one of the practical adjustments programmes have made on the back of Boud’s model: pair the private reflection with a structured supervisory conversation. The combination tends to be stronger than either piece alone.
Association, integration, validation, appropriation
Association connects new data to what is known. Integration looks for new relationships across the data. Validation checks authenticity and looks for inconsistencies. Appropriation makes the new knowledge or attitude one’s own. Together they move the reflection from raw event to integrated learning that changes practice.
A worked example
A teacher has a difficult parent meeting. Boud’s model would walk through it like this.
Return to experience. Recall the meeting in detail. The parent sat on the left. The conversation began with a complaint about the marking. The teacher’s first response was defensive. The parent escalated. By the end, no agreement was reached.
Attend to feelings. The teacher notices anger and embarrassment. Acknowledges both. Sits with them for a few minutes. Lets the heat dissipate before continuing.
Re-evaluate. Association: this reminds me of two earlier meetings that went the same way. Integration: the pattern is that I get defensive when the complaint is about marking. Validation: yes, my journal supports this, and a colleague has commented on it once. Appropriation: my new working principle is to acknowledge the parent’s concern before defending any decision.
The output is a changed pattern of behaviour the next time a similar meeting happens. That is the model working as intended.