reflective writing qut

reflective writing

Writing reflections in education.

During your course you’ll be expected to complete a range of written assessments. Most people are familiar with essays and reports but writing a reflection for the first time can be a challenge. Reflective writing requires you to draw connections between theory and experience or learning in order to create new understanding.

This sequence of activities from Monash University provides useful explanations of the characteristics of reflective writing for students in the Education discipline.

The process of reflection

This short video from the University of Hull explains the differences between descriptive and reflective writing, and points out the benefits of hindsight in improving future experiences.

Source:   https://youtu.be/b1eEPp5VSIY

Teaching and assessing reflective writing in a large undergraduate core substantive law unit

Cockburn, Tina & Ryan, Mary (2015) Teaching and assessing reflective writing in a large undergraduate core substantive law unit. In Ryan, M (Ed.) Teaching reflective learning in higher education: A systematic approach using pedagogic patterns. Springer International Publishing Switzerland, Switzerland, pp. 93-109.

Free-to-read version at publisher website

Description

The focus of higher education has shifted towards building students’ skills and self-awareness for future employment, in addition to developing substantive discipline knowledge. This means that there is an increasing need for embedding approaches to teaching and learning which provide a context for skills development and opportunities for students to prepare for the transition from legal education to professional practice. This chapter reports on a large (500-600 students) core undergraduate Equity law unit in an Australian University. ePortfolio has been embedded in Equity as a means of enabling students to document their reflections on their skill development in that unit. Students are taught, practice and are assessed on their teamwork and letter writing skills in the context of writing a letter of advice to a fictional client in response to a real world problem. Following submission of the team letter, students are asked to reflect on their skill development and document their reflections in ePortfolio. A scaffolded approach to teaching reflective writing is adopted using a blended model of delivery which combines face to face lectures and online resources, including an online module, facts sheets designed to guide students through the process of reflection by following the TARL model of reflection, and exemplars of reflective writing. Although students have engaged in the process of reflective writing in Equity for some years, in semester one 2011 assessment criteria were developed and the ePortfolio reflections were summatively assessed for the first time. The model of teaching and assessing reflective practice was evaluated in a range of ways by seeking feedback from students and academic staff responsible for implementing the model and asking them to reflect on their experiences. This chapter describes why skill development and reflective writing were embedded in the undergraduate law unit Equity; identify the teaching and learning approaches which were implemented to teach reflective writing to online and internal Equity students; explain the assessment processes; analyse the empirical evidence from evaluations; document the lessons learnt and discuss planned future improvements to the teaching and assessment strategies.

Impact and interest:

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• Writing Reflective Journals

The Problem

Unit coordinators may decide to incorporate some form of ongoing journal writing into a unit as a way of obtaining evidence of their students’ (developing) reflective practice. However, “journal writing” may mean different things to different people, both teaching staff and students. Therefore it is important to clarify the dimensions of the journal-writing component at the outset.

The Context

Journals provide a scaffold for students over time, thus preserving reflections that might otherwise be lost. However, in order for reflective journals to provide sufficient evidence of students’ developing understandings over a period of time, the requirements of journal entries, and the criteria for assessing the journal need to be made explicit before students begin. This is particularly the case where students are being asked to reflect when they are off campus (e.g. during internships, or field or service learning experiences). This pattern assumes that students are already familiar with the 4Rs reflective writing framework of reporting and responding; relating; reasoning; reconstructing.

The Pattern

• Will students use available online tools such as blogs to help structure their journal entries, or will this aspect be at the students’ own discretion?
• If online tools are used, will students’ journal entries be open to comment either by other students or by teaching staff, or will they be private?
• Will the cumulative entries be assessed on their quality (evidence of deep and critical thinking including higher levels of the reflective writing framework)? Note there may be marking workload implications to consider if going down this route.
• Alternatively, individual entries could be used as a source of data for a culminating reflective piece of writing which will be assessed. In this case, regularity of entries might be assessed rather than their content.
• Decide on the period of time for which the journal will be kept and how frequently you expect students to make journal entries over that time. (During internships or field experiences the period of time may be a given.)
• Discussion of the characteristics of journal writing together with practice in journal writing, for example by responding to a video or a specific question. (See Resources 2 & 3)
• Different prompting questions at different times for students to focus on specific aspects of their experience. (See Resource 4)

Related Patterns

Analysing Reflective Texts (ART) Reflective Blogs during Internship (RBI) Second Order Reflections (SOR)

• Additional comments on the criteria for evaluation
• Using the 4Rs to structure a journal entry (responding to a question) “power writing” for practice
• Responding to a video “power writing” for practice
• Guided questioning

Acknowledgments

This pattern draws on resources developed by Suzanne Carrington and Louise Mercer (Education) in preparing students to write a reflective journal during their Service Learning in EDB004.

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Writing a critical reflection

• Welcome to SEB104
• Annotated bibliography (10%)
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• Locating information resources for your annotated bibliography
• Reflection on your Interview with a Scientist (10%)
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• Writing your research essay
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SEB104 Reflection on interview with a Scientist

Reflective writing :  What is it? What does it mean to reflect?

Reflecting on an experience involves drawing on current understandings to think deeply and purposefully about what can be learned from the experience.

The purpose of academic or professional reflection is to transform practice in some way, whether it is the practice of learning or the practice of the discipline or the profession.

Generally, a reflection is written in 'first person' (e.g. I/ me/ we/ us) and the writer discusses in detail their personal thoughts, feelings, reactions to or opinions about the subject.

I've done my interview. How should I approach writing the reflection?

One way to approach writing a reflection piece is to follow a simple 3 step procedure:

• describe the issue or experience;
• explore your response to it;
• consider what you've learnt from the experience and how you might apply that new knowledge in future practice.

For ideas on how to organise ideas into sentences, look at the resource link below.

• SEB104 language of reflection

A commonly used structure for reflective writing is the "4 Rs".  They are:

• Report  on the experience;
• Relate  the experience to your previous knowledge or personal experiences, thoughts, feelings, etc.;
• Reason  why your thoughts are this way;
• Reconstruct  with what you've learnt and look to the future.

NOTE: you don't necessarily have to write 4 distinct paragraphs, but using this formula will help organise your ideas coherently. See the slide show below for some prompting questions for each of the 4Rs.

'4Rs' prompt questions - click through the slides

Clarifying reflective writing

Reflective writing IS :

•  your response to  experiences, opinions, events  or  new information
•  your response to  thoughts  and  feelings
•  a way of thinking to  explore your learning
•  an opportunity to  gain self-knowledge
•  a way to achieve  clarity  and better  understanding  of what you are learning
•  a chance to develop and reinforce  writing skills
•  a way of  making meaning out of what you study
•   written in the first person

Reflective writing is NOT :

•  navel-gazing, pure opinion or simply an emotional response
•  just  conveying information , instruction or argument
•  pure  description , though there may be descriptive elements
•  straightforward  decision or judgment  ( e.g. whether something is good or bad)
•  simple  problem-solving
•  a  summary  of course notes
•  a standard university  essay
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• Starting well
• Writing well
• Finishing well

At the start of the writing process, plan carefully so that you have a clear idea of how to complete the task and stay on track. Create the space to work:

• physical space where you can comfortably set up with everything you need (charged laptop, pens, paper, your sources, good light, table and chair)
• mental space so you can focus on the task (limit or remove what distracts you such as noise, social media, your phone, interruptions from others)
• digital space by setting up folders to save your ideas, drafts, and research for each task
• space in your calendar - set aside time to analyse your assessment task, research the topic and write. It’s hard to know how much time to allow if you haven’t written before but set yourself some manageable goals each week.

Keep reading! Each of the sections here will guide you to plan and start well.

Understanding the task

Planning your time, researching, planning your writing, developing your writing voice/style, academic integrity.

Before you begin writing it is essential to understand what you are being asked to do. Read the task carefully and pay attention to the task, content and limiting words .

• Task words are often verbs such as analyse, identify, reflect, justify, apply. Your guiding question is - What do I have to do?
• Content words tell you the topic which may be specific or general. If a general topic, you will need to choose an area to focus on (scope) and tell the reader your topic and make the reasons for your choice clear. Your guiding question is - What is it about?
• Limiting words may indicate the expected form of writing (such as essay, report, reflection), word length, types of sources and referencing style. Your guiding question is - What are the limitations?

Practice with this task and identify the task , content and limiting words .

Analyse three challenges for the Australian tourism industry as a result of climate change ( climate change ).

In this example, "analyse" is the task, "Australian tourism industry" and "climate change" identify the content and "climate change" and "three challenges" are limiting words.

If you have access to it, you should also refer to the marking criteria which is what your marker will be looking at when they read and grade your writing. You can often get information about the weighting of different parts of the task, the types and numbers of sources, and differences between a failing, passing and high grade.

The time it takes to write an assessment changes depending on required length, how familiar you are with the topic, the amount of research needed and your personal writing style. What doesn’t change is that writing an assignment is less daunting when you break it down into manageable steps . Possible steps are each of these sections in QUT write. Start with the due date and work backwards to decide on an appropriate date to get each step finished. Remember you may need to revisit some steps if you realise you need more research as you write your draft. Set realistic goals (consider the step and your time) and practise sitting and concentrating for longer periods. Commit to achieving something each time you start. Give yourself breaks and rewards.

You might be tempted to start researching your topic as soon as possible but always start with what you already know. Before you research make a list, table or mind map of what you know and what you will need to find out. Your lecture and tutorial notes can help with ideas and information. If you like, you can colour code your notes into topics or themes. These ideas will help inform your research and structure. Your research provides evidence or justification for the ideas in your writing that create your response to the task. Use your existing knowledge to create a list of research topics that includes the ones you know about, the ones you need to learn more about and be prepared to add other topics that you find while researching. Start your research using libraries and trusted internet sources with your research topics as search terms. Don’t forget to filter your search. Have an idea of how many sources you will need and use your time wisely. Instead of looking for the perfect source you will probably need to join ideas from a range of sources to make your point. Each time you find a possible source ask yourself these two questions.

• Will it help me write my essay? To help you answer this question, you should skim read and check the relevance/quality. If your answer is yes, save it and make a note of the publication details so you can reference it later (free software can help with this).
• How will it help me answer my task? You will need to read the source (or relevant parts) fully and make notes about the ideas and how you will use them. Use your own words and colour coding as these will help when you are ready to write.

You should now have notes and research which will help plan the structure of your writing. Follow these steps and you will be ready to write.

• Review your notes and identify clear ideas/topics along with the research that supports them.
• Arrange these in an order that is logical for the reader. The order is often influenced by the task (for example, reasons for and against), the type of writing (for example, a report) and/or the research (for example, your research identified four contributing factors).
• Review the assessment task and check you are following the instructions (remember understanding the task step).
• Make a plan with points for each paragraph topic, the supporting research and a suggested word limit.

As well as learning about the topic you also have the opportunity to learn about yourself as a writer. Although you have a clear topic and audience, you can develop your own style and still follow academic writing conventions. Look back at some of the research, each writer has their own style and so do you. As you write notice when and where you write best, your writing speed, words and sentence types you overuse, common mistakes, when you get stuck and when you are happy with your writing. Build confidence in your style and do not try and write like someone else.

At every stage of writing, you should keep academic integrity in mind. Academic integrity is something everyone who is part of the learning community follows and you should too. Academic integrity is based on honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. For students, it means do your own work to the best of your ability and earn your grade. That means do not copy, do not share, do not ask or pay someone to do your work and never post your work in places it can be copied. It means you always acknowledge the work and ideas of others. In your writing you acknowledge the work of others by citing when you use paraphrases, quotes and/or summaries and referencing the sources. For more information go to the Academic integrity on HiQ .

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