samples of reflective writing paper

samples of reflective writing paper

Reflective Writing: Exploring Personal Experiences and Insights

1. Introduction

There are a few common answers as to why people might write reflectively. One reason is that it helps the writer to relive an event which, while writing, they can feel the emotions that they did at the time of the event. This act can help find repressed or forgotten emotions when the event was originally happening. A second reason is to try to understand why an event happened the way it did. People always want to make sense of their world and their place within it. Trying to explain an event can help the writer understand the event in a different light. Finally, reflective writing can greatly help people make sense of what could otherwise be a traumatic or confusing experience.

The act of writing often causes writers to explore and focus more on the meaning of their writing rather than the event itself. Reflective writing enables the writer to make a deeper connection with a piece of writing, the event that is being described, and the writer himself or herself. Reflective writing encapsulates and explores the meaning of an experience, as well as helping the writer to consider what was learned from the experience. It is not simply describing an event. Reflective writing is an analytical practice in which the writer describes a real or imaginary scene, event, interaction, passing thought, memory, form, adding a personal statement of what is new and what draws the most attention about the experience.

2. The Importance of Reflective Writing

It is difficult to bring about change in the absence of awareness. This is particularly true when we are trying to implement some form of change to create tenderness or a more inclusive approach to a given situation. It is often only when we are aware of the potentially hurtful consequences of our actions that we are motivated to change. Reflective writing provides an opportunity for you to gain further insights from your work through deeper reflection on your experiences. This might be done through the process of questioning: What have I learned from this experience? What were the implications of this? Were there moral, ethical, emotional issues that I need to reflect on? What are my strengths in dealing with this? What are my weaknesses? How can I build on my strengths and improve my weaknesses? What were the consequences of my actions for myself and others? These are the sorts of questions you might be asking yourself in your reflective writing. Reflective writing can enable you to make connections between theory and practice. It can facilitate the process of working back through an event, examining all the important factors and their influence on the situation. With theory, you can identify a clear framework to base your future actions, and you take a more informed approach to similar situations in the future. This takes us back to the original question of change. A greater understanding of our experiences can inform and create a change in our actions. Reflective writing is a great way to shore up what you have learned; it enables a focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the work. This is particularly important in placement and will help when you are compiling evidence of learning to present to future employers. Periods of reflection can be stressful, particularly when we are thinking critically about a negative experience, but the increased self-awareness it offers can lead to a reassessment of goals or a changed practice. This compares desired future actions or outcomes with what has been done in the past. The transition can be explained as forms of unlearning and relearning. Self-awareness changes our actions via self-regulation of behaviors, motivation, and affect.

3. Techniques for Effective Reflection

Simulation can also be used as a teaching method to show a person areas where their behavior is not effective. But since this is a higher-order learning skill, it is likely that the person will not be using this in practice until they have mastered it. This means that it is essential to encourage the use of reflective learning for practice.

In order to teach a person how to fish, you must use the following: “Give a person a fish for a day = teach a person one task. Teach them how to fish = teach them Attainment behavior, which is a plan for success.” But to find a way to continue to help them, you must teach evaluation and planning.

It is especially important to encourage William Glasser’s Control theory, which states that behavior is best understood as the person’s best attempt to meet a need. This causes the behavior to be either effective or ineffective. Quality reflective practice is a skill that allows a person to increase the effectiveness of their behavior.

Effective reflection requires that facilitators: 1. Value the process 2. Create the opportunity and support for the process to occur 3. Encourage the use of a reflective process strategy 4. Provide positive reinforcement for the use of the strategy.

Reflection is a mental process that we can use to take purposeful thoughts about things that have happened around us, to decode the meaning within and to learn from the knowledge so it can be useful in changing situations. This process is both a way of learning and a process that defines the meaning of a thing to be learned. It is important to clarify that reflection is not just a recollection of events, it is an explorative learning process. Knowledge and productive change are brought about through this process (Rolfe, 1998).

4. Applying Reflection to Personal Growth

Currently, reflection (Pearce, 2001) is seen as a fashionable activity and has been identified as a key factor within many learning models which underpin clinical and continuing professional development. However, reflection is more than a tool to link learning with practice; it is also a way to achieve personal and professional growth. Reflection can be used to make sense of situations, by thinking them through during quiet time, although there remains a challenge with applying the practice of reflection within clinical practice. However, there are considerable benefits if this can be achieved. Firstly, reflection can protect against the hardening of attitudes as over time, professionals may have a plethora of experiences which build on their confidence with their decisions, but not necessarily on the benefit of their patients. If these decisions are based on negative past experiences the result may well be to the detriment of patients. Reflection can help the professional to learn from an experience and could in the short and long-term enhance confidence and self-esteem. It is known that the doctor-patient relationship is central to the quality of patient care and health outcomes. Despite evidence that a good relationship can positively influence both the patient and the doctor, it also remains a complex matter. During an interview with patients and doctors, it was discovered that doctors held incongruent views to patients concerning the management of emotions and the involvement of patients in treatment decisions. It was concluded by the research that when exploring areas of disagreement or dissatisfaction, furthering the understanding of each other’s perspective, the patient’s situation, and the implications of decisions make for much improved patient care and doctor satisfaction. The application of reflection in exploring challenging or unsatisfactory situations with patients and taking time to think through an experience could uncover important learning. This would be essential as the fast-paced nature of today’s healthcare coupled with the complexity of communication exchanges means these experiences could easily be overlooked. Reflection of positive experiences can also heighten self-awareness and the awareness of others, and can seduce the practitioner into repeating the act with better effect next time. A study exploring the use of conscious, reflective methods in learning from experience, changing behaviour, and the impact on patients revealed a sequence of learning process that has same out with reflection of personal qualities for improvement and ended with further action and review. The concept of developing competence through concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation has been termed the experiential learning cycle and reflection is considered on the fulcrum between the two opposing forms of learning of hunch and trial/error on one hand and learning from reasoned analysis on the other. This cycle suggests that reflection is underused tool in learning from experience and may well be most pertinent in imaginatively replaying an event from memory and exploring it with a view to changing personal or shared understanding of what occurred, with the end of desirable changes in action.

5. Conclusion

Reflecting on issues and happenings can be emotional, whether the feelings are good or bad. Taking time to consider and delve deep into exactly what occurred and why it affected you in this way can often point to a shift in understanding and potentially a lesson learned. Gibbs (1988) uses cyclical reflection learning, which is one of the most popular models used due to its clear framework. It has its limits in that not all situations would require all stages in the cycle to be completed. It is emphasized that reflection should be an ongoing process, continuously enhancing and upgrading what it is that we know, how we have learned it, and what can we change for the better. His book will help learners of all levels to develop a deeper understanding of what has happened through the reflection process and ways to change or enhance knowledge and ongoing practice. A very simple reflective tool is to take one of these instances, walk through it step by step, and write down what occurred, how you felt, what you were thinking, and what this event means to you. Gibbs’ reflective cycle is often formally taught in professional education, social work, healthcare, and counseling fields for those to learn a clear framework on the reflective process and how to review and change events for the better to enhance their practice.

Drawing on personal experiences and reflecting about these, as a process, often involves more than discussing what occurred. This can often be the focus when reflecting on what happened in order to learn from an experience or to consider what worked and what did not. For example, Chiera (2004) discusses how his core practice as a teacher changed after a particular event at work. He describes actions taken, then moves to exactly how he felt about the event and then reflects on why he felt that way. He then considered other previous similar incidents. This considered reflection in practice ultimately led to changes in attitude and perceptions, which is at the heart of reflective practice. This deeper reflection is likely to fuel changes in actions, with the understanding and perception changes, altering what one knows and understands and therefore resulting in changes of knowing leading to potential changes in future actions. This deeper thinking and understanding of changing methods and reasoning underpinning knowledge and practice is a complex and often non-linear process. It contrasts with reflection on action, where understanding of any change usually explicit is surface level and swift is to think, “ah next time x happens I’ll do this instead!”