How to do Reflective Writing: A Guide for Students

Reflective thinking is a worthwhile activity that should be a regular part of your life. It is a form of critical thinking that helps track your learning progress and identify gaps in your skills and knowledge. Events and happenings need to be digested and reflected on, to see connections and general patterns and to be synthesised. Reflection is the “space suspended between experience and explanation, where the mind makes the connections.” Successful people learn from their mistakes and their successes, and reflection helps you do that.

Reflective thinking is a higher-order thinking skill that allows you to find connections among topics and theories, promotes professional growth, and aids in understanding one’s thoughts and feelings. Reflection helps digest events and happenings, recognise patterns, learn from mistakes and successes, and become an active learner in control of your life, actions, and emotions. Reflection allows you to develop new perspectives and identify areas for change and improvement. It helps you to envision a response to complex challenges, and apply your learning to new situations. “Successful ‘visions’ are not immaculately conceived; they are painted, stroke by stroke, out of the experiences of the past.”

“Imagine yourself in a meeting when someone suddenly erupts with a personal rant. You’re tempted to ignore or dismiss the outburst — you’ve heard, after all, that the person is having problems at home. But why not use it to reflect on your own reaction — whether embarrassment, anger, or frustration — and so recognize some comparable feelings in yourself? Your own reaction now becomes a learning experience for you: You have opened a space for imagination, between your experience and your explanation. It can make all the difference. Organizations may not need “mirror people,” who see in everything only reflections of their own behaviour. But neither do they need “window people,” who cannot see beyond the images in front of them. They need managers who see both ways…” — from The Five Minds of a Manager, Gosling and Mintzberg.

You may be asked to write a reflective piece to demonstrate your learning and show that you understand how it will impact your future professional practice. Reflective writing enables you to make sense of the past so you can use the present to manage the future.

The structure of a piece of reflective writing can vary greatly. You’ll need to read the instructions carefully to see if a structure is provided. Reflective writing is more than descriptive; it includes analysing why something happened, how your feelings or thoughts have changed, and what you might do differently in a similar situation in the future.

Keep records of any situation that affects your learning, either positively or negatively, for future reference. You might want to keep a journal for this purpose. You can write this more personally than is usual for an academic assignment — a first-person narrative is acceptable.

In my opinion, the most straightforward approach to reflective writing is what I call the three-step reflection process, which is as follows:

1. Description of a past event — What happened? Something that triggered your thinking about your past performance.
2. Critical explanation or analysis of the past event. Think about: Why did that happen? What can you learn from it? How has this changed your perspective? Focus on your self-awareness; this is where you really get to think about, digest and understand the event.
3. Reflection on how your explanation or analysis of the past event can contribute to your future professional practice. What can you learn about yourself? What should you do differently in the future? What are the likely pitfalls for your professional practice? How to apply what you’ve learned? Do you need to change? How? Is that type of change really possible? How will you overcome any obstacles?

You’ll observe that my descriptions of steps 1 and 2 are comparatively brief in relation to step 3. Your reflection should mirror this pattern. While the description of the learning event should be concise, your critical explanation of how the event altered your perspective should be more detailed. However, step 3, where you consider and write about your growth or personal changes and how you will apply your learning to future situations, should take up most of your time and words. This step is also the most challenging.