Reflective Writing: Learning Journals and Reflective Portfolios

---

A. Comparing Reflective Writings to Academic Ones

Other than writing academic papers, there is another type of paper that is used by high schools, colleges and universities to assess the understanding of the learners. The paper is called a learning journal or reflective portfolio. What is the main difference between formal academic papers to journals or portfolios? The key lies in the point of view of the author; academic papers use a third-person point of view while learning journals or reflective portfolios use a reflective first-person point of view.

Reflective writing is about analysing, reconsidering and questioning experiences within a framework. For example, as a master student majoring in education, I have to write a reflective journal or portfolio based on my knowledge regarding learning theory or my personal classroom experience. My friend, who is taking a major in medicine, has to reflect on his clinical approach to a patient instead. So, writing a portfolio or a journal actually gives us practice at self-reflecting: analyzing what had occurred, what worked, what didn’t and what we might do differently next time, with the aim of learning from our own personal experience.

Academic writing tasks usually require you to support your main points with references to literature and take an objective perspective largely without personal ‘I’ or ‘me’ references. Reflective writing, by contrast, involves recording your views, reactions, impressions or observations, using ‘I’ and other personal pronouns. Reflective writing within learning journals and portfolios also encourages us to consider why things occur, evaluate situations and apply critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Writing reflectively: it is about our own selves. Hence, putting the ‘I’ in reflection writings is not only acceptable but expected. Reflective writing, however, needs to be more than a description of your observations or thoughts or a simple summary of what happened in a situation, as reflective writing goes far beyond just describing what we do, to thinking about why we do things and to whether they have gone as we thought they would, why we think they may have worked well, and how we might do them differently next time (Brookfield, 1995).

B. Checklist: Questions to Ask Ourself about Our Reflection

In order to check if we have actually reflected with depth, rather than merely summarised what had happened throughout the whole week studying the unit, it may help to ask ourselves the following questions (The University of Melbourne, n.d.) and then build our reflective writing around the answers:

• What happened?

• Have I provided detail about this?

• Is it about the experience or me?

• What critical moments or events occurred?

• Were there any ‘light bulb’ moments that led to learning?

• What did I learn or get out of this experience?

• What positives can I take out of this? Why?

• What were the negatives? Why? What would I change next time?

• Was there evidence of theory in practice? How?

• How can I explain this situation?

To sum up, the actions (verbs) are usually those of expressing feelings and thoughts, e.g. felt, thought, considered, experienced, wondered, remembered, discovered, learned, etc. More than merely summarising what happened, our reflective writing involves critically evaluating such experiences, thinking about the connection between theory and practice, and linking these ideas with what we have learned from our coursework and reading and elaborating on it. It also asks us to reflect on what we have taken out of the experience in order to further inform practice (The University of Melbourne, n.d.).

Reference(s):

Brookfield, S. (1995). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. Oxford: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

The University of Melbourne. (n.d.). Academic skills writing reflectively reflective writing at university. In (pp. 1–2). The University of Melbourne. Retrieved September 7, 2021, from https://services.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/675776/Writing_Reflectively_051112.pdf