reflective writing format

reflective writing format

The Importance of Reflective Writing

1. Introduction

The section introduces the importance of reflective writing by connecting it to personal and/or professional development of the individual. An example of a student who doesn’t learn from mistakes and the student who learns from past mistakes would be used as a guideline in order to prove that reflective writing significantly improves the learning process. What comes across from this student is their ability to reflect on what they have done in order to either change it or do something different next time. This example can resonate with many individuals who all have different ideas and practices on how they learn and develop. (schema) It is thus stated that reflection is to do with conscious thinking and learning something in depth. Learning something in depth will most definitely benefit an individual rather than someone who learns something for the short term so that they can forget about it later on. Learning something in depth has a more permanent effect, in turn altering attitudes and increasing knowledge and skill at a particular task. (Ryan 1-1) Depth is the stage where Chandler believes that students should be active learners, and reflection is a key way of doing this. An active learner is someone who alters, manipulates, and elaborates on information that they receive, as opposed to someone who is passive and simply receives information without a clear goal or sense to understand it. (1-1) Depth, as well as considering that there are many different types of reflection, is the most important of all points in the importance of reflective writing.

2. Benefits of Reflective Writing

Reflective writing used in this way can help students acquire the second set of skills. It helps students become more aware of their own learning process, which helps them to learn more effectively. By better understanding how they learn, students can take more control over their learning (Boud et al., 1999). This in turn can help students become more self-directed, effective learners. The reasons for this are closely connected with the benefits of being a more effective learner, but placing a greater emphasis on the development of students’ self-management. Students who are more self-regulated, and who have a better understanding of the learning process are more likely to acquire the long-term knowledge and understanding that is our goal for students at university. They are more likely to use deep learning approaches, and to persist with learning tasks that are challenging and uninteresting, and are more likely to become life-long learners. Self-regulation of this sort also brings associated benefits for a student’s general well-being and mental health. Being an effective learner is a significant source of confidence and satisfaction that can help students in all aspects of their life. In this, it is a desirable disposition for students to gain from higher education which means reflective writing can be considered a worthwhile endeavor from this perspective. It is clear that reflective writing can be a potent source of enhanced learning with a wide range of positive follow-on effects for students’ lifelong learning and personal and professional development. So it is highly relevant to any program whose aims include the fostering of such learning dispositions, but how can we help students to use it effectively? This is a question that I have been considering both in my own practice with students and in discussions with Teaching and Learning Centre colleagues and it is one to which I feel more light needs to be shed. As a consequence, I am starting a series of posts on the most effective ways of using reflective writing as a learning and development tool, and would welcome comments from students and other educators.

3. Steps to Follow for Reflective Writing

2. Identify the experience. The experience has to be something that has previously happened. Do not reflect on a future event, as the purpose is to look back and learn from past experiences. The experience can be something that is in your mind or it may be something which is reflected later. Jahangir (2012) explains that reflections are often more vivid when the event is fresh in the mind, and this is an advantage in some respects, but the depth of the reflection may go unnoticed and it may be harder to identify the key points from the experience without some form of external clue or resorting to ‘reflection in action’. This is where you have realized something in the midst of an experience and have to stop and think about what it is that has been realized. This is still reflective thinking and a most common method of identification, although it may still be too late to reflect properly on what has been realized and may serve only to ponder what might have been.

1. Identify the event or topic. Information is the key to making a successful reflection. For this reason, the first step is to identify the event or topic to be reflected upon. It is not enough to have an experience in order to learn from it. Without realizing the significance of the event, it can often be forgotten or dismissed, and this crucial understanding is often derived through reflecting upon the experience, which in turn leads to an understanding of the event (Boud et al., 1985).

4. Examples of Reflective Writing

Some examples of reflective writing include: a summary/analysis of a course book, article, or lecture, a summary/analysis of a life situation; or a diary entry. They are assigned in all areas of study and at all levels of university. You will be required to arrange this type of writing as a process in order to learn about the subject, a situation or your own learning journey. Here is an example from a student’s reflective journal in a clinical placement, regarding a patient with a long-term condition: “The patient was a 62-year-old man, appearing younger than his years. He looked well and healthy at first glance, of slim build. He wore a hearing aid in his left ear and made a point of telling me, ‘it’s no good speaking to me from the right side, because I won’t hear you’. I had a sense from the beginning that this man was not the typical sufferer of a long-term illness with resultant hearing loss.” This type of reflective writing is important because it will help the writer to make deeper sense of an experience that may initially seem to be just a simple occurrence, and to find link it in with other life experiences, thus broadening the understanding of the situation. Reflective writing can help you to improve your analytical skills because it requires you to express what you think, and it is a way of discovering, borrowing an idea from a writer Arthur Miller, in that “I think I know until I try to write it down.”

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, the use of reflective writing can be a tool used to promote student thinking and learning. This is done through the application of learning to real-world experiences, where students are able to self-evaluate their learning and understanding, identify any areas of weakness, and consider ways in which they can improve. By doing this, students will be able to achieve deep-level learning and higher-order thinking, thus expanding their knowledge, intellectual capacity, and personal growth. Reflective writing can be implemented in various learning settings, but is most effective in higher education where cognitive learning is the emphasis. As a tool which provides integration between personal skills development and cognitive learning, this is a method that lecturers should encourage students to practice. In order for reflective writing to become an effective tool, students need to have an opportunity for feedback from their lecturers and peers. This is essential to their learning, as it identifies points that they may not have noticed and offers perspectives from others which may influence their future actions.