Reflective learning Essay
INTRODUCTION
The reflective approach refers to the capability of an individual to assess his beliefs and actions for adopting a crucial stance towards learning practices of oneself and others, thereby engaging in a continual learning process. Adopting a suitable reflective learning approach would enable me to assess my understanding of the Business and Management discipline. Likewise, by implementing a reflective learning style, I aim to evaluate my understanding of the Business and Management module. Likewise, the report has enhanced my ability to incorporate feedback and feedforward for the upcoming formative and summative work.
MAIN BODY
The reflective learning approach entails examining the past performance, evaluating the learner’s ability to critically examine the opinions, actions, and events. Applying a reflective learning approach to the discipline of Management and Business would hone my critical thinking and innovative skills. Further, adopting a reflective learning style allows me to align my behavior and action with the knowledge acquired during the Business Management course. Further, applying the reflective learning process assists me in examining the academic literature objectively. Management as a discipline fosters my analytical thinking and decision-making process. As a capable business executive, I would be involved in applying my critical thinking facilities and technical knowledge to evaluate a suitable business strategy. Hence, regularly reflecting on my performance would improve my ability to address the contemporary management challenges in the business scenario. To enhance my learning experience, I would interpret my learning experiences adopting Gibbs Reflective Cycle. Conceptualised by Graham Gibbs in the year 1988, this reflective cycle offers the learner a framework for examining the self-learning experiences and highlight a strategy that would help me to review my poor decisions, and make the necessary amendments to minimize my chances of repeating the mistakes Tanaka et al (2018). Gibb's model has specified six steps to enhance the individual’s learning experience. During my undergraduate years, I learned the significance of reward strategy to inspire the students to enhance their performance. Describing this incident has helped me to articulate my feelings regarding the significance of this strategy in the business scenario. In my opinion, it is imperative to identify the key motivators and desires of the employees before applying the reward strategy. For instance, at an entry-stage, an employee could be motivated through monetary rewards. However, at a later stage, the employee could be inspired by non-financial benefits such as flexible working periods, extra leaves, etc. Therefore, evaluating the rewards strategy helped me understand that individual works towards achieving a goal when he is expected a positive outcome and would gain a reward that he deems worthy. Lastly, analysing my classroom experience, and aligning it to the workplace situation has helped me to understand the importance of implementing a suitable reward strategy for enhancing the performance of the individuals. I believe, to effectively apply a reward technique `it would be advisable to apply Vroom theory of motivation Kumar and Prabhakar (2018). Hence, the course of Business and management has enabled me to understand the relevance of different reward techniques for motivating individuals at various stages. Further, as a future HR executive, I would apply the SMART framework to execute a reward and recognition strategy at the workplace.
In the modern world scenario, feedback and feedforward occupy a pivotal role in shaping individual growth. The feedback helps the person understand his past performance, and evaluate the room for improvement. In a business scenario, offering the employees constructive feedback through mechanisms like 360-degree feedback, helps them to review their work performance. Hence, an individual relies on the feedback mechanism to gauge if their performance aligns with their outlined objectives and target Fleenor et al (2020). Feedback facilitates the individual to reflect on their experiences and understand their problem areas. The feedback may be provided by educators, workplace supervisors, or peers. With an absence of appropriate feedback, the person may feel confused or uninspired which would hamper his progress. Likewise, Feedforward serves the opposite purpose of feedback. While feedback is used to gauge the individual’s past or present work, feedforward helps the person to offer suggestions and recommendations to effectively undertake future responsibilities. Therefore, the feedforward assessment helps the learners to adapt ideas or actions that would help them to achieve the desired objectives. The feedback and feedforward approach is an integral aspect of reflective learning. The relevance of feedback and feedforward could be better understood through the Gibbs reflective cycle. My college professor has always offered constructive feedback to every student after exams. Providing detailed feedback on our performance has helped each student to recognize their mistakes. Likewise, a lecturer began providing feedforward to the entire batch a month before the commencement of the exam. Describing this experience has helped me to reflect on the importance of feedback and feedforward for the holistic growth of the learner. I feel constructive feedback provides the person an opportunity to critically assess his ideas, actions, and beliefs that influence his outcome. Likewise, a feedforward would help the individual to gain an insight into how to approach a specific situation to gain a favorable result. Moreover, evaluating the reflective method to feedback and feedforward has helped me understand its importance in the modern workplace situation. For instance, some oragnisations offer 360-degree feedback to the workforce. This feedback process allows the employee to gain a comprehensive understanding of his performance. A feedforward, on the other hand, could enable the employee to create a future-oriented plan for enhancing his productivity. The analysis of feedback and feedforward has helped me appreciate their significance in the management discipline. While feedback provides a personalized suggestion for improvement, a feedforward contains an element of objectivity. A feedforward guides a person to achieve set goals neutrally. Hence, I have realized that both feedforward and feedback would help the person to reflect on their overall beliefs and decision-making process. In my opinion, an individual should conduct a Continuous development plan, through which he could effectively implement the inputs obtained from the feedforward and feedback.
The goal of a formative assessment help in regulating the learner’s performance and offer continuous feedback to the employees and the learners. Formative learning helps the student/employee to recognize the learners to monitor their self-regulatory skills. Likewise, it would help the instructors to reflect on their teachings and the students to evaluate their learnings. The formative assessment could be student-driven, peer-led, or self-evaluated. Moreover, formative assessment could help the students to understand how they gain relevant experience. A summative assessment allows the learner to examine their experiences and outcomes. Therefore, formative assessment uses the student’s / learner’s ongoing learning process. As the person’s evaluation occurs during the learning process, it helps the learner obtain feedback multiple times, thereby facilitating them in constantly monitoring their performance. Therefore, a feedforward could provided during the formative learning phase. Offering feedback or feedforward would facilitate the learner to evaluate their performance regularly. Formative feedback would be most efficient when tailored to the individual learner’s needs. Examples of formative learning would be presentations, class discussions, surveys, conferences, and peer reviews. Since the summative assessment would be delivered at the end of the entire process, the learner could measure their previous and present performance, along with the necessary skills acquired during the entire educational period. Likewise, the feedback would help in effectively implementing the learning outcomes acquired during the modules. Summative feedback would usually evaluate the accomplishments of the student/learner by grading their performance. Moreover, summative feedback would facilitate the learner to gauge his level of understanding of the topic. While the formative feedback would consider the learner’s evaluation as an ongoing process, a summative approach regards feedback or grading as an outcome. A few examples of summative assessments would be classroom tests, portfolios, written reports, and projects. The formative feedback would therefore help the individual to examine the learning gaps by approaches that support the student’s personal needs. Similarly, reviews the learner’s performance by obtaining knowledge of the student’s knowledge, skills, and subject expertise during the coursework through cumulative learning assignments Mahshanian et al (2019).
Conclusion
The abovementioned study has examined the significance of reflective learning in the discipline of business and management. A reflective learning approach would help the person better understand their knowledge, studying process, and outcomes and adapt the learning process by examining a suitable reflective learning technique. Further, applying Gibbs’ reflective model would has allowed me to apply the theoretical knowledge acquired during the management course to the business scenario. Likewise, understanding the significance of feedback and feedforward has helped me to implement these techniques in my learnings. Moreover, effectively adopting a formative or summative assessment would foster the continued learning and developing process of the individual.
REFERENCES
Agricola, B.T., Prins, F.J. and Sluijsmans, D.M. (2020) Impact of feedback request forms and verbal feedback on higher education students’ feedback perception, self-efficacy, and motivation. Assessment in education: principles, policy & practice, 27(1), pp.6-25.
Fleenor, J.W., Taylor, S. and Chappelow, C. (2020) Leveraging the impact of 360-degree feedback. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Incorporated.
Kumar, P.C.P. and Prabhakar, P.V, (2018). Personality and work motivation: A decisive assessment of Vroom’s expectancy theory of employee motivation’. Asia Pacific Journal of Research, 1(86), pp.174-179.
Mahshanian, A., Shoghi, R. and Bahrami, M. (2019) Investigating the Differential Effects of Formative and Summative Assessment on EFL Learners' End-of-term Achievement. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 10(5), pp.1055-1066.
Tanaka, M., Okamoto, R. and Koide, K. (2018) Relationship between Reflective Practice Skills and Volume of Writing in a Reflective Journal. Health, 10(3), pp.283-288.
