Reflective writing
Reflective writing tasks allow you to review and think critically about a personal experience related to your course.
Reflective writing as an assessment is a great way for your marker to see your thoughts progress. You can ask questions, add suggestions, argue with the material and question your own experiences or previous understanding. It demonstrates you’re taking your understanding of your subject deeper.
—Ari Moore, Senior Student Writing Mentor
Reflective writing tasks at university are a way of asking you to critically evaluate and make connections between the theories and practice you are engaging with in your unit. They can also guide you to become more aware of your personal thoughts about your life experiences in relation to those theories. In some disciplines, for example, education, reflection is often used to build upon existing knowledge and to help improve professional practice.
Reflective writing is not just a description or summary of something that you have observed. Instead, reflective writing requires you to describe, analyse and evaluate. Describing, analysing and evaluating experiences enables you to develop new insights and perspectives. The quality of your analysis is improved by reading widely and thinking critically about what you are learning in your course.
Some examples of reflective writing assignments include:
- Analysing your experience of working on a group task.
- Critiquing a teaching or learning activity (self-review or peer review activities).
- Critiquing your experiences on a placement or internship.
- Describing a critical experience in your life that has shaped your view of the world.
- Keeping a reflective journal or log on a work placement.
There are various reflective writing models and this guide will discuss two used at Deakin. However, you should always check your unit assessment instructions for specific directions or preferred reflection models.
The language and style used in reflective writing tasks will depend on the assignment instructions and your discipline. However, in most reflections, the reader will expect to learn about your personal experience, feelings, ideas and opinions. You may also reflect on and cite sources from your coursework. It is acceptable to refer to yourself and use personal pronouns when writing reflectively (I, my, me). The use of action verbs to express feelings and opinions can also be useful (‘I felt…’, ‘I think…’, ‘I agree…’).
The ideas and phrases listed below are commonly used in reflective writing.
| Type of reflection | Example phrases |
|---|---|
| Reflecting on an experience |
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| Engaging with theory while reflecting |
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Reflecting on performance and how you might improve on future performance |
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The ‘What? So what? Now what?’ model can guide your reflection on an experience and the actions that follow. Use the suggested prompts under each heading to help you get started.
| What? | What happened? Establish a context by describing the experience with enough detail to support the following “So what?” section. For example, you can describe who, what, why, when, where. |
|---|---|
| So what? | What have you learnt from this? Why does it matter? This is the sense-making section where you can discuss what resonated with you or those things that challenged your opinions/beliefs.
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| Now what? | What are you going to do as a result of your experience? This section is where you make connections from the experience and link it to further actions.
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The 4R's reflection model
The 4R's of reflection model can be applied to suit many different contexts and provides you with a general idea of how to organise the information in your reflection.
| Report/respond |
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|---|---|
| Relate |
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| Reason |
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| Reconstruct |
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References
Bain J, Ballantyne R, Packer J and Mills C (1999) ‘Using journal writing to enhance student teachers' reflectivity during field experience placements’, Teachers and Teaching, 5(1):51-73.