Writing reflectively involves critically analysing an experience, recording how it has impacted us and what us plan to do with our new knowledge. It can help us to reflect on a deeper level as the act of getting something down on paper often helps people to think an experience through.
The key to reflective writing is to be analytical rather than descriptive. Always ask why rather than just describing what happened during an experience.
Here are some key points to remember when writing reflectively:
- Written in the first person
- Analytical
- Free flowing
- Subjective
- A tool to challenge assumptions
- A time investment
- Job applications
- Appraisals
- Written feedback
- Blogging
- During the research process
- In academic writing
A common mistake poeple make when writing reflectively is to focus too much on describling their experience. Think about some of the phrases below and try to use them when writing reflectively to help you avoid this problem:
- The most important thing was
- At the time I felt
- This was likely due to
- After thinking about it
- I learned that
- I need to know more about
Always try and write in the first person when writing reflectively. This will help us to focus on our thoughts/feelings/experiences rarger than just a description of the experience.
Being able to reflect on somthing is an important part of critical thinking and writing as it allows us to question arguments made in the literature, be open minded about different approaches and move towards being constructive in our criticism.
And it is important to remember not to include too much description and focus on what you are bring asked to do. For example, if you are asked to write a reflective piece on a particular topic, you should not spend too much time describing the topic. Instead, you should focus on your thoughts and feelings about the topic.
Reflection in IT requires us to analyse our descriptions of experiences or ibservations. Analysis communicates what we have learned from our reflections, and how it relates to the theories and concepts we have been learning about in the course.
A model(Gibbs, 1988) to help we think mad write reflectively in IT. Models like this are designed to help you to go deeper into the experience or situation that triggers the reflection, in order ot create new understanding and ultimately gain greater awareness of self and others.
At a basic level, a reflective approach involves you asking yourself the following three questions:
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What happened?
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So what? (Why is it important or intersting? Why do I need to reflect on it?)
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Now what? (What action do I take to improve the situation or make a positive situation even better?)
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Description
- What happened?
- When and where did it happen?
- What did you know about it before experiencing it?
- What were you doing/ involved in?
- Who was involved?
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Feelings
- How did it make you feel? How did you find it? E.g. challenging, interesting, surprising, frustrating
- What made you feel that way?
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Evaluation
- What was positive and negative about it?
- What was its significance?
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Analysis
- Why did you do that in that particular way?
- Did you follow procedures taught in a course?
- Was your decision directly informed by training-acquired knowledge?
- What other elements came into the forming of my decision?
- Did you exclude anything that should have been considered?
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Conclusion
- What conclusions can you draw? How can you justify these?
- What new questions have emerged for you as a result of your reflection?
- What have you learnt?
- What are the take home messages you have uncovered in relation to the experience?
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Action plan
- What implications does the experience have for your future learning/development?
- How is it going to influence your actions/practice in the future?
- What would you do differently in the future based on what you’ve learnt?