In overwhelming and frightening moments, stress can be prevented or managed by self-disciplined contemplation of core values and goals. Cognitive psychology research shows that one of the most effective methods for reducing stress is to engage in self-reflection directed toward appraising it as a challenge rather than a threat. Recent neuroimaging research shows that self-reflection lights up the brain’s anterior and posterior cingulate cortex (ACC), which is linked to regions that mediate emotion and decision-making. While this ancient wisdom hardly requires validation from empirical science, contemporary cognitive psychology and neuroscience research interestingly reveal how self-reflection manifests itself in our brains and behaviors. Management of complexity and stress in the Socratic and Confucian traditions depends heavily upon self-awareness, an ethical value system, and a capacity to act on core values (such as kindness and humility) in social relations. Confucius similarly urged the individual to engage in self-disciplined reflection upon one’s values, followed by action steps to implement those values in interpersonal settings. The exhortation from Socrates to “Know Thyself” reverberates across the history of philosophy, as a reminder to reflect on our life’s mission and the strategies we use to attain it. The value of self-reflection and self-awareness is well known in both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions. But relatively little has been written recently on the benefits of self-disciplined articulation of a philosophical worldview and core values that help us weather the storms and devastations that inevitably rock our lives and careers. We believe these have advantages over previous models in terms of helping to guide the further study, learning, assessment and teaching of reflection.Much has been written about “stress management” techniques that are primarily behavioral in nature - such as getting adequate sleep, regular exercise, and mental downtime taking vacation doing controlled breathing practicing yoga or mindfulness meditation or getting acupuncture treatments. This article presents a new theory-informed, five-component definition and model of reflection. Our conceptual model consists of the defining core components, supplemented with the extrinsic elements that influence reflection. Reflection is defined as the process of engaging the self (S) in attentive, critical, exploratory and iterative (ACEI) interactions with one's thoughts and actions (TA), and their underlying conceptual frame (CF), with a view to changing them and a view on the change itself (VC). 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.įollowing our review and analysis, five core components of reflection and two extrinsic elements were identified as characteristics of the reflective thinking process. An exploratory thematic analysis was carried out and identified seven initial categories. The authors' definitions and models were extracted. 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.Ī systematic review was conducted to identify the 15 most cited authors in papers on reflection published during the period from 2008 to 2012. A standard definition and model are needed to improve the development of practical applications of reflection. Because reflection has taken on multiple meanings, it remains difficult to operationalise. Although reflection is considered a significant component of medical education and practice, the literature does not provide a consensual definition or model for it.
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