What Is Reflective Practice? Gibbs, Kolb, and Schon's Models Explained for Managers

Reflective practice is the single most important academic skill underlying ILM assignments at every level, and yet most candidates have never had it explained to them directly before being asked to apply it. Before working through the ILM-specific guidance on writing a reflective account, it helps to understand what reflective practice actually is as a general concept, why it matters for managers specifically, and what the three most widely taught models — Gibbs, Kolb, and Schon — each contribute.

What Does Reflective Practice Actually Mean?

Reflective practice is the structured process of thinking critically about an experience — usually after it has happened, though sometimes during — in order to genuinely learn from it and change future behaviour as a result. It is distinct from simply recalling or describing what happened: describing an event answers "what happened," while reflecting on it answers "what did this reveal, and what will I do differently." That distinction between description and genuine reflection is the single most common point of confusion for anyone encountering reflective practice for the first time.

Why Reflective Practice Matters for Managers and Leaders

Reflective practice is the foundation of experiential learning in management and leadership development generally — it is not an invention specific to ILM, which is why it appears across CMI, CIPD, coaching, and professions such as nursing, teaching, and social work as well. For managers specifically, reflective practice matters because so much of leadership skill is learned through real experience rather than pure classroom instruction — managing a difficult conversation, leading through a change, motivating a struggling team member — and reflective practice is the structured mechanism for converting that lived experience into genuine, transferable learning rather than letting it pass without lasting development.

Gibbs' Reflective Cycle: The Six-Stage Model Explained

Gibbs' (1988) Reflective Cycle is the most widely taught starting model because of its clear, sequential, six-stage structure. Description: what happened, factually and without judgement. Feelings: what you were thinking and feeling at the time. Evaluation: what was good and bad about the experience. Analysis: what sense can you make of the situation — bringing in relevant ideas or theory to help explain it. Conclusion: what else could you have done, and what have you learned. Action Plan: what will you do differently next time, specifically.

Gibbs' explicit, step-by-step structure makes it the most accessible entry point for someone new to reflective practice, because each stage has a clear, distinct question to answer, reducing the ambiguity that can make reflective writing feel intimidating for a first attempt.

Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle: Reflection as a Continuous Loop

Kolb's (1984) Experiential Learning Cycle frames reflection differently — not as a one-off exercise applied to a single past event, but as a continuous, four-stage loop: Concrete Experience (something happens), Reflective Observation (you think about what happened), Abstract Conceptualisation (you form or apply a general idea or theory based on that reflection), and Active Experimentation (you try out that new idea in practice, which becomes the next Concrete Experience, restarting the cycle). Kolb's key contribution is the emphasis that reflection is not the end point — it exists to feed directly into changed future action, which then generates new experience to reflect on again.

Kolb is particularly useful once a learner already understands the basic mechanics of reflection (as taught by Gibbs) and is ready to see reflection as an ongoing professional development habit rather than an isolated academic task completed once per assignment.

Schon's Reflection-in-Action vs Reflection-on-Action

Schon (1983) introduced a more sophisticated distinction: reflection-in-action, which happens while an experience is still unfolding — noticing in the moment that an approach isn't working and adjusting your behaviour there and then — versus reflection-on-action, which happens afterwards, thinking back over what occurred once it is complete. Most reflective accounts, including the majority of ILM reflective work, are reflection-on-action, since they are written after the event. Reflection-in-action is the harder, more advanced skill: recognising and adapting to a situation as it happens, drawing on tacit, experience-based judgement in real time rather than following a pre-planned response.

Schon's distinction is generally introduced only once a learner is comfortable distinguishing between simply thinking-while-doing (which everyone does to some extent) and genuinely reflective in-the-moment adjustment grounded in professional judgement — it is a harder concept to evidence convincingly than Gibbs' or Kolb's more structured models.

Which Reflective Model Should You Start With?

For a genuine beginner, Gibbs is the most accessible starting point because its explicit six-question structure removes most of the ambiguity about what to write at each stage. Once comfortable with Gibbs, Kolb is a natural next step, because it reframes reflection as an ongoing cycle connected to real behaviour change rather than a single completed exercise. Schon's reflection-in-action versus reflection-on-action distinction is best introduced last, once a learner already has enough reflective vocabulary and confidence to engage with a more subtle, less mechanically structured concept.

From General Reflective Practice to ILM-Specific Reflective Accounts

Understanding these models generally is the foundation — but ILM assessment criteria have specific expectations about how reflective practice should be structured, evidenced, and connected to work-based examples within a formal ILM reflective account, which go beyond the general theory covered here. Our dedicated guide applies these exact models directly to ILM assignment requirements, with level-specific depth expectations and common mistakes to avoid.

Continue to ILM-Specific Reflective Account Guidance

Once you understand what reflective practice is and how Gibbs, Kolb, and Schon each approach it, the next step is applying that understanding to the specific structure and depth ILM assessors expect in a reflective account — including how to move from description to genuine analysis, and how depth expectations change between ILM Level 3, 5, and 7. See also: ILM Reflective Account Writing Help · ILM Assignment Help · ILM Coaching and Mentoring Assignment Help.

What Is Reflective Practice? Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between reflecting and just describing what happened?

Description answers "what happened" — a factual account of events. Reflection goes further, answering "what did this reveal about me, my practice, or the situation, and what will I do differently as a result." A description on its own, however detailed, is not reflective practice until it is followed by genuine evaluation, analysis, and forward-looking learning.

Do I have to pick one reflective model, or can I combine them?

You can combine them, and doing so thoughtfully often produces stronger reflective writing — for example, using Gibbs' structure to organise a single reflective account while drawing on Kolb's cycle to explicitly connect that reflection to a planned change in future behaviour. What matters is that the reflection is genuine and specific, not which single model's label you attach to it.

Is Gibbs' Reflective Cycle too simple for postgraduate-level work?

Gibbs' six-stage structure itself remains appropriate at any level — what changes at postgraduate level is the depth and critical quality of the analysis within each stage, not the structure. A Level 7 reflective account using Gibbs' framework should demonstrate more sophisticated theoretical integration and critical self-evaluation within each stage than a Level 3 account, even though both may follow the same six-stage structure.