The DOI matches its Crossref record; 50 of the 50 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
What is reflection? A conceptual analysis of major definitions and a proposal of a five‐component model
Abstract
Context: Although reflection is considered a significant component of medical education and practice, the literature does not provide a consensual definition or model for it. Because reflection has taken on multiple meanings, it remains difficult to operationalise. A standard definition and model are needed to improve the development of practical applications of reflection. Objectives: This study was conducted in order to identify, explore and analyse the most influential conceptualisations of reflection, and to develop a new theory‐informed and unified definition and model of reflection. Methods: A systematic review was conducted to identify the 15 most cited authors in papers on reflection published during the period from 2008 to 2012. The authors’ definitions and models were extracted. An exploratory thematic analysis was carried out and identified seven initial categories. Categories were clustered and reworded to develop an integrative definition and model of reflection, which feature core components that define reflection and extrinsic elements that influence instances of reflection. Results: Following our review and analysis, five core components of reflection and two extrinsic elements were identified as characteristics of the reflective thinking process. Reflection is defined as the process of engaging the s elf (S) in a ttentive, c ritical, e xploratory and i terative ( ACEI ) interactions with one's t houghts and a ctions ( TA ), and their underlying c onceptual f rame ( CF ), with a view to changing them and a v iew on the c hange itself ( VC ). Our conceptual model consists of the defining core components, supplemented with the extrinsic elements that influence reflection. Conclusions: This article presents a new theory‐informed, five‐component definition and model of reflection. We believe these have advantages over previous models in terms of helping to guide the further study, learning, assessment and teaching of reflection.
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Citations
Cites
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Cited by
Lee, H.-P. (., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025) · Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3706598.3713778 · Cited by 490
“Critical thinking skills can be developed in sequential stages [70, 98, 104].”
Chatbots in Healthcare Curricula: The Case of a Conversational Virtual Patient
Dolianiti, F., Tsoupouroglou, I., Antoniou, P., Konstantinidis, S., Anastasiades, S., & Bamidis, P. (2020) · Lecture Notes in Computer Science · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-60735-7_15 · Cited by 37
Exploring the use of regular reflections in student collaboration: a case study in higher education
Schürmann, V., Bodemer, D., & Marquardt, N. (2025) · Frontiers in Education · doi:10.3389/feduc.2025.1526487 · Cited by 12
Metadata
- Authors
- Nguyen, Q. D., Fernandez, N., Karsenti, T., & Charlin, B.
- Venue
- Medical Education
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2014-11-20
- Volume
- 48
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 1176-1189
- ISSN
- 0308-0110 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-2923
- OpenAlex
- W2065075905
- Cited by
- 305
- References
- 50
- FWCI
- 44.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Nguyen, Q. D., Fernandez, N., Karsenti, T., & Charlin, B. (2014). What is reflection? A conceptual analysis of major definitions and a proposal of a five‐component model. Medical Education. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.12583
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
