Skip to Main Content

Academic Writing: Reflective Writing

What is Reflective Thinking?

Reflection involves thinking about actions undertaken, whether they were successful or not and the reasons for this, and to consider what steps can be taken to improve outcomes in future. Reflection can be applied to an area of professional practice or personal performance. At a personal level, it allows us to examine feelings that impact and arise from actions and behaviours in different situations.

Reflective thinking is a three-stage process:

Stage 1: Looking back Think about what happened and your role in this

Stage 2: Analysing Think about what worked, what didn’t, why and what you think and feel about it

Stage 3: Looking forward Think about what you (and potentially others) could do differently in future for a better outcome

What is Reflective Learning?

Reflective or experiential learning is required to achieve success in many HE courses, particularly vocational courses such as nursing and social work.  It enables you to assess your own strengths and weaknesses, develop critical thinking skills, increase self-knowledge, and improve future performance by analysing past experiences. Reflecting on experiences helps to embed the learning you gain from them.  

Learning through reflection can build confidence and enable you to feel more empowered. It also helps you to identify future development needs. Reflective learning encourages you to be an independent learner by enabling you to develop your own insights rather than relying on those of others and supports positive change. 

 

Reflective Writing

Reflective writing at HE level is a particular style of academic writing which demonstrates your own reflective learning. Informal forms of reflective writing include diaries, blogs, and journals which, depending on the guidance you are given, can usually adopt a more informal, conversational writing style. Formal academic reflective writing can take the form of essays and reports. 

Reflective writing requires a certain amount of description or scene-setting. This typically includes:

  • What happened
  • When it happened
  • Where it happened
  • Who was involved

However, any description should be kept to the minimum needed to inform the reader. More importantly, you need to include:

  • Your own observations, thoughts, and feelings
  • Explanation of why things happened, with the benefit of hindsight
  • Evaluation of strengths and weaknesses that impacted outcomes
  • Consideration of relationships between causes and effects
  • Constructive criticism of yourself and others and their roles

Furthermore, you need to examine the implications of your reflective learning and propose how things might be done differently for better outcomes in the future. Typically, this requires you to:

  • Explain how you will apply your reflective learning to future experiences
  • Propose actions to improve future outcomes, utilising knowledge gained since the original experience
  • Explain the benefits of changes in actions, thinking and behaviours over the longer term
  • Summarise individual personal learning outcomes and any future personal development needs

Formal academic reflective writing needs to be both personal and academic.  In other words, you need to make connections between your own observations and related theory, areas of controversy or dispute, research, policy and so on.  As with any other kind of academic writing, these need to be carefully researched and referenced. Academic reflective writing will, therefore:

  • Usually incorporate theory
  • Incorporate supporting literature, properly referenced
  • Use formal, academic language
  • Use expressive adjectives to describe individual experiences
  • May require you to write in the first person (check assignment guidance)
  • May require you to write in the third person, referring to yourself as ‘the author’ or ‘the practitioner’ for example (check assignment guidance)
     

Whilst the precise questions that you ask yourself will depend on the nature of the task you have been given, there are certain generic questions that may help you to get started and also to structure your reflective writing. These can be divided into before, during and after the experience. For example:

Before

  • What preconceptions did I have?  What did I already know (or think I knew)?
  • Did I have any prejudices or assumptions?   Was I completely open- minded?
  • Did I have any anxieties or concerns at the outset?   

During                                             

  • How did I behave or react at first?
  • Did this change over time, or stay the same?
  • Who and what helped me the most/least in the situation I was in?
  • What did I find particularly challenging or tricky?
  • Was there anything I found relatively easy or straightforward?
  • What did I find surprising/shocking/stimulating/thought-provoking?

After 

  • What would I do differently in future?
  • What connections can I now make between my own experience and previous reading and study (between theory and practice?)
  • What have I learnt, and how can I apply it?
  • What new questions arise from my experience?
  • How can I best move forward?

 
With most of these questions it is important that you go on to explain why? or why not? For example, why would I do this differently? 
 

You can use a variety of expressive adjectives to set out your experience.  For example:
Positive: Rewarding, encouraging, stimulating, pleasant, beneficial, supportive, considerate, constructive, helpful, inclusive, thorough, detailed, ethical, methodical...
Negative: Inadequate, unsatisfactory, careless, arbitrary, repetitive, unclear, lax, disorganised, disappointing, wasteful, hazardous, harmful, damaging, demotivating...

For formal reflective writing, avoid casual language such as ‘great’, ‘super’, ‘nice’, ‘rubbish’, ‘stupid’.

Unlike in most academic writing, it is usually acceptable to use the personal pronoun "I" but check your assignment brief.

The following are some phrases that you may find useful.

  • This experience has made me aware of/highlighted the need for/given me an insight into/made me reconsider...
  • One of the most significant issues/conflicts/concerns that arose was...
  • At the time/at the outset/subsequently I felt that...
  • My initial reaction/response/instinct was...
  • Having considered/explored/reflected on this incident further...  I now realise that...  it is clear to me that...
  • Were I to be in this situation again I would...
     

There are several different reflective models which support academic reflective writing. You may be directed to make use of a specific one or, alternatively to choose the one that is most appropriate to your task. 

Gibbs' Reflective Cycle is one of the most widely used.   It consists of the following sequential stages:  

  • Description:  what exactly happened?
  • Feelings:  what were your initial thoughts/feelings?
  • Evaluation:  what was good and bad about the situation? 
  • Analysis:  what sense are you able to make of the experience?
  • Conclusion:  what else could you have done?  What should you perhaps not have done? 
  • Action:  what would you do if the situation arose again? 

 
Another commonly used model is the Framework for Reflexive Practice (Rolfe et al., 2001). This is based on three questions, each intended to stimulate reflection, namely "what?", "so what?"  and "now what?"  Again, this moves from factual description of what happened to personal evaluation to consequences and future actions.  

A final example is Johns' (2004) Model of Structured Reflection.  This entails five stages: description of the experience; reflection upon its purpose and consequences; influencing factors (i.e., upon your decision-making at the time); alternative courses of action and learning (what will change as a result?).