Writing Reflectively

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

• 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:

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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

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.

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

The Manchester Phrase Bank is a great resource for common academic phrases.

These phrases are considered standard in academic writing and their use is not considered plagiaristic.