Reflective writing is increasingly becoming a part of university assignments, as well as professional practice. Reflection is highly beneficial, as it can help us improve by connecting theory to practice and showing us what we can do better next time.
While reflection is essential, it can also be challenging. It’s often difficult to know how to be critical about our personal experiences, or how to connect our practice to the appropriate theory and evidence.
To find out more about reflective writing, watch our Lightning Session on the topic, then scroll down for our top tips!
Tip 1: Be Personal
Reflection should be personal. Your reflection should deal with your own experiences/practice, rather than speaking generally about the topic. While it’s often tempting to cover big, general situations, your reflection will be stronger if you engage with specific situations you’ve encountered and how you responded. Being too vague is the enemy of good reflection!
Tip 2: Be Critical
One central aspect of academic reflection is criticality. While reflection is personal, it isn’t subjective. To write critically about your personal experience, you should drill down into the details of your situation, and connect your experience with theory and evidence. Reflection should involve discussion about your own thoughts and feelings, but it should always connect those emotions and beliefs to external sources.
Tip 3: Be Purposeful
Reflection must be purposeful. One essential aspect of reflection is the final step: the “now what?” question. Since reflection is all about improvement, it’s important to end your reflection by discussing what you’ve learned. You may consider questions like “what would I do differently next time?” or “how has my behaviour changed because of this event?” This “now what” stage is often the most difficult, but it’s central to effective reflection.
Want more help? There are many excellent models you can use to structure your reflection. We discuss one in the lightning session, but if you’d like to learn about some more complex models, this short video will explore a few of the most common.