This dichotomy produces four categories of students learners. These categories are unconscious incompetent, conscious incompetent, conscious competent, unconscious competent. Most students start from a position of unconscious incompetence about a topic and the first task of a trainer is to assist the students to become conscious of their incompetence and then the students are in a position to learn and to gain more confidence about what else they need to know. The Reflective Process Reflection is an internal response of the learner to the new external experience. The reflection process has two major components namely the experience and the reflective activity based upon that experience.
Reflection usually takes place following substantial activity.
Theories of learning To be able to understand the reflective processes it is necessary for trainers to have an understanding of the limitations within both the trainers and the learners that may reduce the effectiveness of any learning process. The personal construct theory of learning highlights the differences in individual perception and responses by both learners and trainers and how this will impact upon the process and the need to focus the reflective activity in line with the learners perceptions and not those of the trainer. The perspective transformation process refers to how a learner becomes critically aware of how and why our assumptions about the world have constrained the way we see ourselves and relationships. Two processes or paths to prespective transformation one is a sudden insight into what has been limiting or distorting our understanding of ourself or our relationships and the other is a much slower process. Surface approach to learning is where tasks are treated as unrelated with an emphases on rope learning, while deep learning is where the reflective processes have been adopted with intergration between formal learning and personal experience.