Gibbs Reflective Cycle
Gibbs in one page
Six stages, in order:
| Stage | Question |
|---|---|
| Description | What happened? |
| Feelings | What were you thinking and feeling? |
| Evaluation | What was good and bad about the experience? |
| Analysis | What sense can you make of the situation? |
| Conclusion | What else could you have done? |
| Action plan | If it arose again, what would you do? |
Distinct features
- Names feelings as a stage in their own right
- Separates evaluation (judgement) from analysis (sense-making)
- Ends with an action plan that closes the cycle
The most widely used reflective cycle in teacher training is Graham Gibbs’s. Published in 1988, it has six stages where Kolb has four and Greenaway has three. The added stages do real work. Feelings get a stage of their own. Evaluation and analysis are kept separate. And the cycle ends with a concrete action plan that closes the loop.
What the model is for
Gibbs’s reflective cycle helps a teacher think about different aspects of a given situation, evaluate what happened, and put together an action plan for handling the situation if it arises again. It produces insight into both the teaching and the teacher.
The cycle is structured so that each stage asks a different question. Running through all six stages keeps the reflection from collapsing into either pure description or pure judgement.
The six stages
Stage 1: Description
The first stage answers the question: what happened?
The teacher describes the event in detail. Where she was. Who else was there. Why she was there. What she was doing. What other people were doing. The context of the event. Her own part in what happened. What others contributed. What the result was.
Description sits at the start because everything else depends on it. A weak description produces weak analysis. The discipline at this stage is to stay with the facts and not slip into interpretation yet.
Stage 2: Feelings
The second stage answers the question: what were you thinking and feeling?
The teacher recalls and explores what was going on inside her head during the event. How she was feeling when the event started. What she was thinking about at the time. How the event made her feel. How she felt about the outcome. What she thinks about it now.
Gibbs’s decision to give feelings a stage of their own is one of the model’s key contributions. Most other cycles fold emotion into a single sentence in the analysis. Gibbs treats it as substantial enough to deserve its own stage. Teachers working through emotionally loaded situations (a difficult parent, a grieving student, a class that turned hostile) find this stage useful in a way other models do not provide.
Stage 3: Evaluation
The third stage answers the question: what was good and bad about the experience?
The teacher evaluates or makes a judgement about what has happened. Not everything was bad; not everything was good. The evaluation stage holds the teacher to naming both.
This is where the cycle distinguishes itself from venting. A teacher who only names the bad parts of a difficult lesson misses what worked. A teacher who only names the good parts misses what failed. Evaluation requires both.
Stage 4: Analysis
The fourth stage answers the question: what sense can you make of the situation?
The teacher breaks the event down into its component parts so that they can be explored separately. What went well? What did the teacher do well? What did others do well? What went wrong, or did not turn out as it should have?
Analysis is different from evaluation. Evaluation is judgement: this was good, that was bad. Analysis is sense-making: why did the good parts work, and why did the bad parts not?
The separation is small on paper and large in practice. A teacher who only evaluates produces a list of likes and dislikes. A teacher who analyses produces an explanation that transfers to other situations.
Stage 5: Conclusion
The fifth stage answers the question: what else could you have done?
The conclusion stage differs from evaluation because the teacher has now explored the issue from different angles and has a lot of information to base her judgement on. The detailed analysis in the previous stage means valuable opportunities for learning are not missed.
The teacher asks what she could have done differently. The answers are usually richer at this stage than they would have been at the evaluation stage, because the analysis has surfaced explanations that suggest specific alternatives.
Stage 6: Action plan
The sixth stage answers the question: if it arose again, what would you do?
The teacher thinks forward to encountering a similar event in the future. Would she act differently? Would she do the same thing, with adjustments? The action plan turns the reflection into a tested commitment.
A useful action plan is specific. “I will be more patient with the group” is not an action plan. “I will add a five-minute private writing stage before any group discussion, and I will name two students at random to speak before opening the floor” is.
The action plan closes the cycle. The next time the situation arises, the teacher has a tested response, which becomes the description of a new round of reflection.
Why the six stages work together
The six stages produce more than a longer journal entry. Each stage catches something the others miss.
| If a stage is skipped | What goes wrong |
|---|---|
| Description | The reflection works on a smoothed-out version of events |
| Feelings | The emotional response stays as a hidden pressure on the analysis |
| Evaluation | The teacher cannot name what worked, only what did not |
| Analysis | The reflection produces opinions but no explanations |
| Conclusion | The teacher knows what happened but not what else was possible |
| Action plan | The reflection ends with insight but no commitment |
A teacher running Gibbs’s full cycle once a fortnight, on a chosen incident, tends to develop faster than one running a shorter cycle every day.
Emotion as data, and explanation as separate from judgement
Kolb’s cycle has reflective observation but does not give feelings a stage of their own. Gibbs does. Gibbs also separates evaluation (this was good or bad) from analysis (why it worked or did not). The two distinctions produce reflection that is both emotionally honest and explanatorily sharper than simpler cycles.
When to use the full cycle
Gibbs’s cycle takes longer than the simpler models. A full pass through all six stages can take 30-60 minutes of focused work. This is too long for daily use.
The cycle works best in three situations.
Significant incidents
When something out of the ordinary has happened, a difficult class, a strong reaction from a student, an unexpected outcome, the full Gibbs cycle is worth the time. The longer process produces a richer understanding that a quick journal entry would miss.
Recurring patterns
When a problem keeps appearing across lessons, a full Gibbs cycle on a recent example often surfaces the underlying pattern. The analysis stage in particular helps to move from “this lesson failed” to “this kind of lesson keeps failing for these reasons.”
End-of-term reviews
A longer Gibbs cycle on a key event from the term often produces the most useful planning for the next term.
For routine reflection, a shorter model like Greenaway’s plan-do-review or Rolfe’s What model fits better. Gibbs is the tool to reach for when the situation deserves more careful work.