what does reflective writing mean

what does reflective writing mean

Reflective Writing: Unlocking Self-Discovery and Growth

1. Introduction to Reflective Writing

Engaging with reflective writing is an empowering process. It provides a person with the opportunity to record growth through learning. Reflective writing engages thoughtfulness and rationale – this enables the person to demonstrate the “understanding” and “meaning” related to an experience. The evidence from reflective writing indicates that a person has gone through a significant learning experience.

It is most important to note that reflective writing takes time. Clearly, when an individual writes about the link between what he/she has been taught compared to an actual experience, this writing is bound to take longer. The student is required to explain the situation by analyzing and giving their own input to the idea in order to create a better understanding. This will take more time compared to writing an essay based in class.

2. Benefits of Reflective Writing

For some, the idea of improving abilities or intelligence might seem contradictory to the belief that intelligence is a fixed entity. However, if an individual believes they can improve and develop their abilities and intelligence through hard work, it is described as a growth mindset. This belief has an effect on whether an individual fulfills their potential or not. Those with a growth mindset tend to experience greater academic achievement, and find it easier to deal with failures, as they believe that they can learn from them. Reflection can help promote the growth mindset, providing a greater awareness of how an experience has enhanced knowledge and created new capabilities.

Reflective writing can also help you in a different way. Studies have shown that promoting mental and emotional processing of information can lead to changes in cognitive and emotional structures. This means that our thinking and behaviour can be positively influenced by reflection, resulting in psychological growth and development. During a particularly busy or stressful period of time, reflection can act as a form of stress management, providing a chance to take a step back from the intensity of the situation, and focus on the bigger picture. Thus, reflection can have a positive effect on wellbeing and general mental function.

Thus, the process of reflection can result in learning that is deep and effective, resulting in a positive impact on the quality of your work and life.

The increased learning effectiveness is a great benefit of reflective writing. This means that you get more value for your time and effort. Reflective writing enables you to: – Focus on what you learned and how you learned it – Relate your learning to your existing knowledge and further understanding – Consider the outcomes of your learning – Make plans for the future

3. Techniques for Effective Reflective Writing

It is all very well and good to reflect about events in your life, but is it not more beneficial to plan this process and set yourself achievable goals based on this reflection? This is where the idea of reflective writing comes in. Reflective writing is being used more and more in higher education. In essence, it is an effective way of getting students to think about their learning progress, thinking processes, and experiences and to learn from these. The process of writing these thoughts down in a formal and structured way, though, is the difficult part. This is where a model of reflection is useful. There are several models of reflection and some will be discussed further in the next section. In general, reflective writing is the way you can take something (an experience) and learn from it. This may be self-development, developing critical thinking skills, and/or acquiring knowledge. This is also a goal-driven activity where, through your writing, you have the end point in mind, and that is to develop that understanding or learn from the experience. This idea of reflection is a new concept that revolves around the constructive way of improving learning and the understanding process. Model or not, the process of reflective writing can be summarized into a theoretical framework. The following model (figure 1) describes the fundamental element to effective reflective writing. This is where an individual moves from thinking about what happened, to analysis of what went wrong and right, to implications and what can be done in the future. Models such as this can be very useful tools for an individual to plan what they are going to write.

4. Examples of Reflective Writing

“In the case of Mr Brown I think it was not that I had a great depth of knowledge about heart rhythms and what defines VT, research later showed that he was in VT and it was at that time I confusing it with VF. The realization of this was somewhat of a disappointment as I’d previously thought the best way to help Mr Brown would be to go and talk to the cath lab nurses to find out what course of action he would likely be taking, whether he’d already had his stents and if so if one had collapsed etc., to try and advise him on what to do next. Now that I realize that the best way to help would have been to be able to say what type of VT he was in and its prognosis I have found the ECG tutorials from my nursing degree to try and really get to grips with the differences between various rhythm patterns.”

Kathryn Hutchison is a health care professional working in a busy Accident and Emergency department. In her piece entitled “Trying to mind the gap”, she explores the concept of reflective practice and how it can help to bridge the gap between theory and practice in nursing. She describes how she used the experience of a patient who was admitted to the department with a cardiac arrest as a means of identifying the gap in her knowledge and finding out how she could have best helped this patient.

This section contains two examples of reflective writing; one from a health care professional and another from a student who has recently completed an assignment.

5. Conclusion: Embracing Reflection for Personal Development

So why reflect? Essentially, to become fully self-aware: to notice and understand our own assumptions and to understand what drives our emotions and behaviors. For managers, this is crucial as a great deal of what we do is based on assumption. Often, it is only when things go wrong do we think to examine the validity of our assumptions. For example, with best intentions, a manager may follow a directive only to find later that this is not what the staff member wanted. By exploring this through reflection, it may become clear that the assumption on what the staff member wanted was based on the manager’s own view. Taking time to reflect also provides an opportunity to gain new understanding and knowledge. This is the bread and butter of leadership and management. With many competing priorities, it is too easy to simply continue doing the right things simply through lack of time to stop and think. Building in reflection time can prevent this and help to build a culture of ongoing improvement.