19 Reflective Writing: Thinking about me
Reflective Writing-What it is:
You might think, “Why do I need to learn about reflective writing? I’ve written reflections every year in school. I could get up at 8 am and write a reflection for my 9 am course. Easy, peasy. No sweat.” So, why do you need to learn to write a reflection now?
Well, because reflection is more than just quickly putting some words on a document about what you did during your summer break. Reflection is a deliberate, conscience, way of thinking. Reflecting makes you think about what you did (cognition), and then think about why you made the choices you made (metacognition). This reflective process helps you assess and build on previous knowledge like why you wrote a research project about mental health rather than social hierarchy, or why you chose to dye your hair bright pink instead of black.
Reflection is careful thinking and consideration about your experiences. It can take the form of thinking, talking, or writing. The goal of reflection is to help you work through your thoughts and feelings about your experiences. Reflection also helps you to remove yourself from the initial experience, so you can analyze it and see how you might do things differently next time. You can also use reflection to compare, contrast, and bring together experiences from different parts of your life.
Continuous Reflection for Continuous Learning
Now that you have some ideas of what reflection/reflective writing is, you might be thinking, “It sounds hard and dull, why should I do it?” Because reflection/reflective writing can help you in whatever you do: in your academic career, your professional career, or even your personal life. “I baked that cake, and boy was it awful. What did I do wrong?” Ah ha! Reflection!
Reflective practice has a lot of benefits. Students who participate in reflection have a more in-depth understanding of their learning and can take informed actions. Reflection can help you be a better student. However, it is hard work! It can make you uncomfortable, open you up to fear of judgement and criticism. It can make you feel vulnerable. You need to be willing to explore your thoughts and your feelings. You need to be willing to honestly think about what went wrong, what went right and what you want to do in your next attempt.
The most important thing you can do when you have trouble with reflection is to keep trying. If you feel challenged, see that as an opportunity for you to grow and develop.
Adopt a growth mindset. A growth mindset is about establishing that you can do difficult things, even if you can’t yet accomplish them.
Ongoing reflective practice provides huge benefits for developing and increasing awareness of self and others. It develops creativity and encourages curiosity for deeper insights to inform future actions in work processes. The more you practice reflection, the easier it will become.
Reflection, Transfer, & Metacognition
One part of why we engage in reflective practice is so we can think about what we have learned and how we have learned it. Remember the cake example from earlier? We do this so we can repeat successes or learn not to repeat a failure, so we can apply what we have learned to new situations. This application process is called transfer.
The key to successful transfer is the ability to integrate knowledge you already have with new knowledge. For example, A traditional persuasive essay assignment, may prompt a first-year writing student to recall what they already know about making arguments and deploy those strategies in a highly formal academic essay. The prior knowledge in this example is the student’s familiarity with debate and argumentation and writing skills.
To foster transfer, a writing instructor might then ask the student to not only attempt a persuasive essay, but then, once it’s completed and turned in, to write about the process of drafting the essay. The goal in such a reflective assignment is to ask the student to recognize the prior knowledge, the new knowledge, and what might carry over (transfer) into other contexts and future writing situations. This process is known as metacognition.
Metacognition is a buzzword associated with reflective learning and allows writers to assess which skills and knowledge sets apply in these situations and which do not…metacognition…endows writers with a certain control over their work.2
These reflective writing situations require metacognition, the ability of a student to reflect on their process and their knowledge. Crudely defined, it means something like, ‘thinking about thinking.’ What’s key about metacognition is that it’s a habit of mind—something that must be practiced. This video provides an overview of the concept of metacognition and how this links into learning.
Driscoll Model of Reflection
Now you’re telling me there’s a format for reflective writing? No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying there are MANY formats. Reflective writing isn’t just word salad scrawled on a scrap of paper 10 minutes before it’s due with a broken pen. That’s a diary entry. Effective reflection for transferring knowledge helps you engage in transferring what you have learned by using critical thought. The University of Guelph McLaughlin Library provides an explanation of Driscoll’s Model of Reflection.
In the video, Terry Borton is acknowledged as creating the model, but John Driscoll refined this thinking in 1994.
Driscoll developed the “What?” cycle of reflection for healthcare practitioners, but it has since been picked up by many kinds of learners. The model includes three very basic steps:
- WHAT? Describe what happened.
- SO WHAT? Analyze the event.
- NOW WHAT? Anticipate future practice, based on what you learned.
Each step requires different rhetorical strategies and distinct forms of cognition.
- Step 1, “What?”, challenges the learner to recall what happened as objectively as possible, without critiquing anything that happened. This is simply outlining the event as it occurred.
- Step 2, “So what?”, requires the learner to slow down and begin looking for patterns or moments of significance. Not just what happened, but why what happened mattered. For example, a student might learn different rhetorical terms that relate to persuasion, such as logos, pathos, and ethos. Analyzing the experience according to anyone of those terms is a form of analysis.
- Step 3, “Now what?”, encourages the learner to begin transferring new knowledge to future situations and other contexts. Transfer is key to becoming a reflective practitioner.
Ok, now how does Driscoll’s Method come together? I can do this in three sentences, right? Well, think about it. You are writing something that you can use to see what you did right, and where improvements can be made. Wouldn’t you think that more than three sentences are required to act as a reminder to you? The following example of the Driscoll Method was developed by a student at The Robert Gillespie Science of Learning.
Example of Driscoll’s Method of Reflection
Table1: Example of Driscoll Method
| Stage in the Driscoll Method of Reflection | Commentary |
| WHAT?
Our task was to complete a full-term assignment that required all team members to contribute and collaborate in order to be successful. The act of working in a group required that the work to be evenly: Communication was key during the course of this assignment as [having] only one lecture a week, limited the amount of time we could communicate during class. Therefore, time outside of class was arranged to meet and complete the assignments to the best of our ability. |
The first paragraph describes the circumstances of the assessed activity or experience.
In other words, it addresses the “WHAT” portion of the Driscoll model. The author uses descriptive vocabulary and does not attempt to analyze or interpret the task. For example, the student writes “time outside of class was arranged to meet and complete the assignments to the best of our ability.” She makes no attempt to explain this activity or analyze its significance. The “WHAT” section of the assignment represents the most basic form of reflection and serves only as a detailed recounting of an event (activity or exercise). There is limited reflective value in this paragraph other than its ability to record the details of what has transpired. However, a complete description is still essential to situate the following paragraphs. In other words, it is not possible to describe the impact of the activity or experience without first articulating in detail what they were.
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| SO WHAT?
Teamwork has not always had a great impression on my academic career. However, this experience allowed me to be more open- minded towards group work. During this activity, I felt a greater sense of teamwork, collaboration and respect. Initially, I was not aware that the majority of the course would be based on teamwork. If I had known, I probably would not have taken or considered this course. My previous experiences with group work have been negative as I was usually the only one who actively wanted to succeed. Most of the workload was done by one person, and the entire experience was not fulfilling. However, this experience, was based on my lack of understanding of what constructive group work is really like. I had not considered the important role that collaboration plays in our growth as students and as people. In this course, group work was very effective, and the work was not only evenly distributed, but students were able to appreciate the importance of collaborative learning. The professor had mentioned during the first lecture that collaborative learning is exceptional and can allow students to retain more information compared to individual studying. Moreover, during this course, group work was discussed and practiced regularly.
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The second paragraph provides the “SO WHAT” in Driscoll’s model of Reflective Practice.
It attempts to interpret or evaluate the description in the first paragraph. For example, in the first paragraph, the writer notes that the “task was to complete a full-term-assignment that required team members to contribute and collaborate.” In the second paragraph, the writer attempts to place this description of an activity or experience into a more meaningful context by stating that her previous experience with group work has been negative: “Teamwork has not always had a great impression on my academic career.” By connecting the described experience with these negative associations, the writer considers the SO WHAT. For example, the writer not only describes the experience as negative but provides evidence to support that claim: “Most of the workload was done by one person, and the entire experience was not fulfilling.” The evidence suggests that the work was not shared and was completed by a single group member. The result is problematic, and the writer has identified that scenario as having contributed to her feeling unfulfilled. The writer goes on to add that “The professor had mentioned during the first lecture that collaborative learning is exceptional and can allow students to retain more information compared to individual studying.” Since one of the course’s themes is to provide collaborative learning opportunities, the frustration on the part of the student is palpable and relevant to the activity or experience.
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| NOW WHAT?
The experience of group work during this course has allowed me to develop and enhance my skills as a team player. The skills I have acquired are interdisciplinary and can be applied to my education in the future. Furthermore, being able to work collaboratively, problem solve and communicate in an effective manner are all skills that I can utilize in the coming years, despite the career I might pursue. Teamwork encourages the idea of each person pulling their own weight and working in an engaging and academic setting in order to benefit the entire group. For instance, if one were to become a surgeon and had encountered a difficult case which had an inconclusive diagnosis, teamwork would be essential. Multiple doctors would work together to problem solve by practicing the same skills learned in class to diagnose the patient in an accurate manner.
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In this last paragraph the author has attempted to apply this activity or experience to a future learning opportunity and so has completed the “NOW WHAT” part of Driscoll’s model.
In this section she writes that “The skills I have acquired are interdisciplinary and can be applied to my education in the future.” This is a good example of how to link the present experience to a future context. This last section of the assignment represents the deepest form of reflection in which you attempt to apply your learning to something new. This is essential to maximize the benefits of Reflective Practice. This is particularly apparent in this piece of writing when the author notes “Teamwork encourages the idea of each person pulling their own weight and working in an engaging and academic setting in order to benefit the entire group.” This is effective, because she refers to the course concept of “teamwork” articulated in the previous section and then demonstrates through a specific example how knowledge of that concept could be applied in the future: “if one were to become a surgeon and had encountered a difficult case which had an inconclusive diagnosis, teamwork would be essential.”
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Now we have examined what reflection is and its importance in your academic, professional, and personal life. No matter what profession you go into, you probably will engage in many daily reflections.
In your personal life, you may just be thinking about why that cake tasted so bad.
Resources:
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Licenses and Attributions
WIL Reflection Worksheet by Deb Nielsen; Emily Ballantyne; Faatimah Murad; and Melissa Fournier is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 licence, based on Driscoll, 2017, p. 65.
