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What is reflective writing?

During your studies you may be asked to keep a reflective journal or a learning diary or log. These journals, diaries and logs aim to encourage you to reflect on and explore your own personal learning experiences. The assumption behind reflective writing is that what you learn at university builds on previous experience, both within formal educational institutions and in your life more generally. Reflective writing therefore helps you develop the crucial connections between what you already know and what you are now learning.

In other words, it is one more way to help you become an active and aware learner.

If you think about it for a moment, the process of reflection is something that we all do every day, in much the same way as we are engaged in critical thinking on a daily basis. Incorporating these reflections in your studies is simply a more formal way of tapping into the experiences of reflection and contemplation and utilising them for a specific purpose. You can use these reflective exercises to help you see how your own ideas are changing and developing and to test your practice against the theoretical ideas which you have been introduced to. This type of writing can be particularly useful for distance students who have less face-to-face contact with their teachers and peers.

Types of reflective writing tasks

The types of reflective writing exercises you may be asked to undertake will vary considerably in terms of their style and scope.

For example, you may simply be asked to think about :

• your previous educational experiences and reflect on what styles of teaching you found the most inspiring and informative, or
• the strategies you personally employed that proved the most successful.

You may also be asked to reflect on your professional life and the process of learning new skills in the workplace.

In many cases, reflective writing will involve you focusing on specific activities in your courses such as workshops, group work or fieldwork. After completing these activities you may be asked to comment on the new skills and knowledge you have developed and how the activity enhanced or detracted from your learning experience. In these situations, you may also be asked to examine how these activities matched up with the theory behind your practice. In other tasks you may be asked to complete a module and at the end identify any gaps in your knowledge and then examine what you did to fill in those gaps.

Despite the differences in style and scope, all of these tasks aim to get you to really think deeply about your learning experiences. This can be an invaluable tool in helping you identify what sort of learner you are and what strategies work best for you. Reflective writing can also strengthen your understanding of specific course material, help you forge the links between your past and present learning, and clarify the relationship between theory and practice.

Useful links in this kit

Self directed learning