Writing Reflectively

Reflective Thinking

Reflective practice is used in many disciplines, and reflective writing is a process of documenting your reflective thinking. It involves thinking about your actions and experiences, analysing and assessing what you have done and using these insights to enhance your learning and development. In practice, this can mean:

describing what happened
explaining how you felt about it
identifying what you have learned
considering what you could have done differently
and planning how to act in the future.

Reflective Models

Using a reflective framework or cycle to guide your reflection can help you identify the significance of your experience and its impact on your learning. Reflective writing is a formalised version of our reflective thinking, so any piece of reflective writing needs to be underpinned by reflective thought.

Reflective thinking is not just about looking back and stating what you have learned from an experience; it is equally about looking forward, imagining future events and considering how the lessons you have learned could be applied.

Reflective practice is an active part of continual learning. You will use your reflective skills :

during group work
on placement,
for reflective assessments,
in job interviews,
and while self-assessing.

Reflective Writing

Writing reflectively involves critically analysing an experience, recording how it has impacted you and outlining what you plan to do with your new knowledge. While your reflection will have a personal tone, it is important that your writing remains academic and professional. Use evidence from the literature to enhance your learning experience. The use of personal pronouns are acceptable in reflective writing, however all other writing conventions remain in place.

Weak reflective writing fails to go beyond the personal and as a result misses the learning opportunity. Ensure that you analyse your experience and reveal its significance. Your writing should be insightful. In addition to describing your role in the event, you should demonstrate an awareness of the connections between actions, events and your knowledge.

Reflective Questions and Language

Reflective Thinking and Writing

Reflective writing aims to produce a connective narrative where your experiences, interpretations, evaluations and plans are presented in a cohesive manner.

Reflective practice is important for the following reasons.

It develops self-awareness
It promotes self-evaluation
It develops self-sufficiency.
It prompts critical thinking
It connects theory to practice

By focusing on a theme rather than the entire experience you will be able to go into more depth in your reflection and dedicate more effort to your perspective and insights.

Reflective assignments come in many formats, including a journal, a diary or a reflective essay. Regardless of the assignment format, the reflective cycle allows us to formalise our thinking, and produces many outcome.

By looking back in the context of our learning or events (with hindsight), we analyse how the learning can be projected in to the future.

This allows us to:

improve our own practice to gain better outcomes in the future
increase/improve our performance, confidence and skills
increases our ability and attributes
develops and expands our employability skills
evaluates the quality of our action plans
helps us to apply theoretical knowledge or frameworks to real experiences

There are many reflective questions that you can pose to activate your reflective thinking.

Here are some suggestions.

Reflective Questions to Consider
Reflective Questions
What did I learn? What do I need to learn more about? Why did I feel the way I did?
What was easy? What went well? What was difficult? What went badly?
How can I improve? What would happen if I ...?
What were your expectations before the experience? How did you approach it? What did you learn as a result?
How did your knowledge and understanding change? What would you do differently next time? Consider how you might use your learning next time.
How might you put into practice what you have learnt? What challenges might you face? How will you deal with these?

Common Errors in Reflective Writing

Reflective writing is a valuable skill, and one that improves with practice. It balances the informal, personal experience, with academic analysis and implications for practice. See the table below for some common errors and how best to avoid them:

Common Errors in Reflective Writing
Common Errors
1. Reflective thinking and writing requires honesty. If you embellish your experiences just for the purpose of completing an assignment or gaining a good mark, you're not really getting any of the benefits of true reflective practice.
2. The mistake some students make with reflective writing is producing work that is simply descriptive and emotive. Your writing needs to contain adequate description, examples, evidence, and analysis so that you can critically evaluate your experience and reach useful conclusions. The analysis and evaluation of your experience should out weigh your description of the experience. 3. Take time to organise and structure your writing. Try to focus on what was most significant about the experience, and relate it to aspects of your course and future career. Ensure your writing stays focused.
4. You should avoid writing too informally. Just because reflective writing is based on your own experience does not mean you can ignore academic style of writing.
5. Similarly try to describe events accurately and objectively, and avoid moralising about people's behaviour. Critique does not mean only detailing the negative aspects of an experience.
6. Reflective writing is as formal as any other piece of academic writing, and so should be structured in a clear and coherent manner. Remember, reflective frameworks can help you structure your writing.
7. To demonstrate you are learning and developing, you need to illustrate how theories and concepts in your subject area apply to your experience and practice. Your lecturers want to see that you can apply what you have learned into practice, not just read about theories.
8. Be selective and identify challenging or successful experiences. Reflect deeply about a few of the significant experiences or learning points. Discuss your reflections with others to gain a deeper understanding, enhance your communication skills and facilitate the exploration of different perspectives. When you have a theme in mind, you are ready to write utilising a reflective model.

Reflective Models
There are many disciplinary reflective models that can help guide your reflection:
- Gibb
- Kolb,
- Driscoll
- ERA
- DIEP and many more.
Select one that best suits your needs and your discipline.
All models are cyclical in nature, and have components that include a reflection, an interpretation and an action.

Reflective Language

While reflective writing should be personal, you must try and limit the use of personal pronouns, and instead use inclusive and neutral language.

Alternative ways to describe yourself in the reflective process
	Technique	Example
1	Place a phrase in front of your 'I'	At first, I... In retrospect I … In future I will.... Initially I … On further reflection I.....
2	Start with 'it' or 'this'	It is not clear to me... It became apparent to me... It is important not to assume... This made me question... This was a challenging experience...
3	Use an -ing phrase	After reflecting on this incident... After noting that... Looking back... After discussing this incident...
4	Start with an idea that interests you	The starting point was... The exercise was... A key finding of this study was... The author's purpose was...

Examples of common phrases in the reflective process
Description	Analysis	Evaluation	Projection
It is not yet clear that...	An aspect of... An element of... An example of...	Most importantly Crucially	Having read...
I do not fully understand...	A key feature of the task was...	Imperative Significantly	Having completed...
It is not yet fully clear...	The task was multi-faceted...	The principal lesson was..	I analysed... I applied... I learned...
It appears to be the case that...	There were several experiences	Irrelevant	I experienced... I reflected...
I gained XXX skills... I developed... I achieved... I found... I learned...	X is related to Y	Inconsequential Insignificant	If I completed a similar task in future, I would... Having learned through this process...
The experience taught me.. The task taught me... The process taught me...	Analysis by perspective I thought... I learned... I felt... I considered...	Fundamental	I will need time to develop... Next time my response would be....