Reflective Writing
Workshop with Michael Cleg (22/03/2021)
Reflection allows us to learn from our experiences and be better prepared for similar situations in the future.
We started the session by discussing Free Writing, which is when you write for 5 minutes on a topic without stopping. This gives you a chance to collect your thoughts and notice patterns, as well as eliminating the problem of 'internal censorship' which sometimes blocks one's ability to write.
We practiced this by writing for 5 minutes about a recent learning experience. I found it hard not to judge the quality of my writing but, towards the end, did manage to get into the flow. What I notice from reading back my ramblings is that I had a strong sense of how I felt about my learning experience, whereas it normally takes me a long time to articulate feelings in the 'right way'. This is something I will take forward to my Areas of Learning, as I have yet to write down my experiences. Using free writing might allow me to unlock feelings or reflections that I haven't been able to access yet.
For structuring reflective writing, it is useful to to look at either:
- Kolb's (1984) Cycle of Experiential Learning
Or (preferably)
- The Gibbs' Reflective Cycle (1988)
We then analysed a few examples of reflective writing against this cycle.
Key Tips:
- When describing what happened, keep it brief
- Always ask yourself WHY and HOW - these are the questions that lead to reflection
- Don't use abbreviations, like e.g., i.e., etc. (this is not specific to reflective writing, but is something I didn't know previously)
Useful Resources:
Reflective Writing by Kate Williams, Mary Woolliams and Jane Spiro
(https://read.kortext.com/reader/pdf/15637/Cover)
(https://read.kortext.com/reader/epub/281223?page=)
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