How to Write a Reflective Essay Using Gibbs' Reflective Cycle (With a Worked Example)

October 30, 2026 · Essay writing

Reflective writing turns up in more courses than students expect: nursing and teaching placements, business modules with group projects, engineering design logs, even first-year study skills units. It also confuses people, because it breaks two rules they have been taught: it is written in the first person, and it is about your own experience. Yet it is still academic writing, and it is marked against clear criteria. The most common way to meet them is to follow a model, and the most widely taught is Gibbs' Reflective Cycle.

What a reflective essay is (and is not)

A reflective essay asks you to look back at something you did, work out why it went the way it did, and say what you will do differently. It is not a diary entry and not a story with a moral at the end. Markers are not grading how interesting the event was. They are looking for three things:

• Honest evaluation: you can say what went well and what did not, including your own part in it.
• Analysis: you can explain why, ideally with help from your course reading.
• Learning that leads to action: you can say what you will change, specifically enough that someone could check whether you did.

Writing "I" is expected. What changes is not the register but the evidence: some of it comes from your experience, the rest from the literature you use to explain it.

Gibbs' Reflective Cycle in six stages

The cycle comes from Graham Gibbs' 1988 book Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods, published by the Further Education Unit at Oxford Polytechnic. The University of Edinburgh's Reflection Toolkit sets out the six stages with prompt questions for each. In order:

1. Description. What happened? When and where, who was there, what did you and others do, and what was the outcome? What did you want to happen?
2. Feelings. What were you feeling and thinking before, during and after? What do you think others were feeling?
3. Evaluation. What was good and bad about the experience? What went well, what did not, and what did you and others contribute?
4. Analysis. Why did things go well or badly? What sense can you make of the situation, and what knowledge, your own or from the literature, helps you understand it?
5. Conclusion. What did you learn? What else could you have done, and what skills do you need to develop?
6. Action plan. If you faced the same situation again, what would you do differently, and how will you make sure that happens?

Edinburgh's toolkit notes that the model lends itself particularly well to repeated experiences, but that its stages work just as well for a single event. It also stresses that it is one model among several: use the questions that help, not every question mechanically.

How to turn the cycle into an essay

The six stages are a thinking tool, not six headings you must use. Many assignments allow headings; others expect continuous prose. Check the brief. Either way, the cycle gives you a plan:

• Introduction. Name the experience in a sentence, say why it matters to your course or profession, and state the main thing you learned. That last sentence works like a thesis.
• Description and feelings. One short paragraph each. Give only the details the reader needs to follow your analysis. A common mistake is to spend half the word count retelling events, which earns very few marks.
• Evaluation and analysis. The heart of the essay, and where most of your words should go. Take two or three key moments and, for each, say what happened, why, and what the reading says about it.
• Conclusion and action plan. Summarise what you learned, then give specific, realistic actions with a time frame.

Our guide to planning an essay in a week works for reflective pieces too: decode the brief first, then outline before you draft.

A worked example: a group presentation

Imagine a second-year business student reflecting on a group presentation that ran over time and lost marks.

Description (weak): "Our group had to give a presentation. We met several times. On the day, it went badly and we ran out of time."

Description (better): "Our group of four had three weeks to prepare a 15-minute presentation on a market-entry strategy. I volunteered to coordinate. We rehearsed once, the evening before; on the day, the first two sections overran and the final recommendations were cut short."

The better version is still short, but it gives the details the analysis will need: the role, the timeline, the single rehearsal and what was lost.

Feelings: "Taking the coordinator role, I felt confident. During the presentation I felt anxious when I saw the timer, and afterwards frustrated, mostly with myself."

Evaluation: "The research was strong, and the tutor's feedback praised our data. What went badly was time management: we never agreed a time budget for each section, and as coordinator I did not ask for one."

Analysis: this is where you bring in your course reading. If your module covered models of team development or of planning, use one to explain the problem rather than just naming it. "Reading on team development suggests that groups which do not agree roles and standards early tend to avoid conflict later. Looking back, I avoided asking the others to cut their sections because I did not want to create tension, which is exactly that pattern." Cite the source in the style your course uses.

Conclusion: "I learned that coordinating means making decisions others may not like, and that a single late rehearsal hides problems until it is too late to fix them."

Action plan: "In my next group project, due in March, I will propose a time budget per section at the first meeting and schedule two timed rehearsals, the first at least a week before the deadline."

Notice the action plan. "I will manage time better" cannot be checked; "two timed rehearsals, the first a week before the deadline" can.

Language that works in reflective writing

• To evaluate: "This was effective because…", "In hindsight, the weakest part was…".
• To analyse: "One explanation is…", "This is consistent with…", "Reading X helped me see that…".
• To show learning: "I now understand…", "This changed how I approach…".
• To plan: "Next time I will…, by…, so that…".

Be candid without being harsh on yourself or others. Describe behaviour, not personalities, and keep other people anonymous, especially in placement reflections, where confidentiality rules often apply.

Other models you may be asked to use

Gibbs is not the only option. Kolb's experiential learning cycle (1984), from which Gibbs' model developed, has four stages: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. Driscoll's model reduces reflection to three questions: What?, So what? and Now what?, which suits short reflective logs. Schön's distinction between reflection-in-action (while it happens) and reflection-on-action (afterwards), from The Reflective Practitioner (1983), often appears in nursing and education. If your module names a model, use that one.

Common mistakes

• Too much description, too little analysis.
• Feelings without evaluation: saying you were stressed, but not what it changed.
• No reading at all, so the analysis stays at the level of opinion.
• An action plan that is vague or unrealistic.
• Blaming others: a reflection is about what you can learn and change.

Before you submit, check that the introduction states what you learned and the conclusion follows from the analysis (see how to write an introduction and conclusion), then run through our proofreading checklist.

A note on integrity

A reflective essay is, by definition, about your own experience. Having someone else, a paid service or an AI tool write it is not only an integrity breach under almost every university's rules; it also defeats the point of the assignment, which is to show your own learning. Check your institution's policy on AI tools before using one even for brainstorming.

Sources

• University of Edinburgh, Reflection Toolkit, Gibbs' Reflective Cycle.
• Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.
• Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.

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