Reporting:What happened? What issue or incident was involved?

You need to respond by making observations, expressing opinion, or asking questions.

When you report, you are assessing the situation, breaking it down into segments, seeing what happened, giving the facts.

Relating: Make connections between the issue and your own skills, professional experience or knowledge. Have you seen this before? Were the conditions the same or different? Do you have the skills and knowledge to deal with this?

When you are relating, you are suggesting a more personal side. Your are coming at it with your experience, knowledge, and past references. This is when you have to relate back to yourself, and the subject at hand.

Reasoning: Highlight significant factors underlying the incident or issue. Explain and show importance in understanding the issue. Refer to relevant theory and literature to support your reasoning. Consider different perspectives. How would a knowledgeable person handle or perceive this? What are the ethics involved?

This is where you have to include various underlying factors apart from your personal views. You have to bring in sources of information that relate to the specific subject, but now you have to justify it. You have to explain your reporting and relating.

Reconstructing: Reframe or reconstruct future practice or professional understanding. How would I deal with this next time? What might work and why? Are there different options? What might happen if … ? Are my ideas supported by theory? Can I make changes to benefit others?

This is the stage where you build on from the previous factors of reflective thinking. You have deconstructed, analysed, reasoned and related, now it is time to rebuild on the ideas and subject, and create something bigger and better.