Reflection is a key part of personal and professional development. It allows you to pause, step back from an experience, and make sense of what happened. By reflecting, you can uncover patterns in your thinking, recognise your strengths, and identify areas for growth. In academic settings, reflection helps you connect theory to practice, making your learning more relevant and applied. In professional contexts, it supports continuous improvement, critical thinking, and adaptability. Reflection transforms everyday experiences into valuable learning opportunities that shape how you act in the future.
Reflective writing is the process of articulating and analysing your experiences to gain insight. It involves more than just describing what happened, it requires you to critically examine your actions, thoughts, and feelings, and connecting them to relevant academic theories or professional frameworks. Reflective writing helps you interpret your experiences, recognise opportunities for development, and consider how to apply what you have learned in future situations.
To maintain an appropriate academic tone:
Models that support reflection
Using a reflective model can help you structure your thoughts, especially when you are new to reflective writing. Below are three popular models:
Getting started and reviewing your work
When it is time to edit your reflection:
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Driscoll, J. (2007) Practising clinical supervision: a reflective approach for healthcare professionals, 2nd edition [ebook]. Edinburgh: Ballière Tindall. Available from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ulinc/detail.action?docID=2072473 [accessed 10 November 2025].
Gibbs, G. (2013) Learning by doing: a guide to teaching and learning methods [ebook]. Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development. Available from https://thoughtsmostlyaboutlearning.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/learning-by-doing-graham-gibbs.pdf [accessed 10 November 2025].
Schön, D. A. (1995) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action [ebook]. Aldershot: Ashgate. Available from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ulinc/detail.action?docID=4816972 [accessed 10 November 2025].
Reflective Writing
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Packed with practical advice, this concise guide explains what reflective writing is and how to approach it. It equips students with all the key information and strategies they need to develop an appropriate reflective writing style, whatever their subject area. Annotated examples from a range of disciplines and contexts show students how to put these tips into practice. It concludes with a section on applying reflective practices to personal development and career planning. This handy guide is an indispensable resource for students of all disciplines and levels, who are required to develop and demonstrate reflective qualities in their work. It will be particularly useful to students writing reflective logs on placements. New to this Edition: - Contains more content on the value and importance of reflection in other life contexts, so that students can appreciate its relevance from an early stage; - Features a short overview of academic writing genres, to help students make connections between reflective writing and other forms of academic writing with which they are already familiar - Covers alternative ways of capturing reflection, such as free-writing, blogs/vlogs and other technologies - Includes new examples which show how students have re-worked their initial drafts to produce a better, more appropriate response
How to Improve Your Critical Thinking and Reflective Skills
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New to the highly successful Smarter Study Skills series comes this essential guide to thinking and writing critically. This easy-to-use guide identifies and addresses the key areas where most students need help in developing and enhancing the critical thinking and writing skills that are crucial to successful academic study, and provides practical tips and solutions. The authors use real life examples to illustrate common mistakes and demonstrate how to avoid them. They provide solid advice on enhancing analytical and argumentation skills by adopting best practice with critical thinking and reflective writing.
Reflective Practice
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Reflecting thoughtfully on your work is vital for improving your own self-awareness, effectiveness, and professional development. This newly updated Fifth Edition explores reflective writing as a creative and dynamic process for this critical inquiry. This bestselling book has been used worldwide in various disciplines including: education, social work, business & management, medicine, and healthcare. It is essential reading for students and professionals seeking to enhance their reflective writing skills and to examine their own practice in greater critical depth.
Experiential Learning
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Experiential learning is a powerful and proven approach to teaching and learning that is based on one incontrovertible reality: people learn best through experience. Now, in this extensively updated book, David A. Kolb offers a systematic and up-to-date statement of the theory of experiential learning and its modern applications to education, work, and adult development. Experiential Learning, Second Edition builds on the intellectual origins of experiential learning as defined by figures such as John Dewey, Kurt Lewin, Jean Piaget, and L.S. Vygotsky, while also reflecting three full decades of research and practice since the classic first edition. Kolb models the underlying structures of the learning process based on the latest insights in psychology, philosophy, and physiology. Building on his comprehensive structural model, he offers an exceptionally useful typology of individual learning styles and corresponding structures of knowledge in different academic disciplines and careers. Kolb also applies experiential learning to higher education and lifelong learning, especially with regard to adult education. This edition reviews recent applications and uses of experiential learning, updates Kolb's framework to address the current organizational and educational landscape, and features current examples of experiential learning both in the field and in the classroom. It will be an indispensable resource for everyone who wants to promote more effective learning: in higher education, training, organizational development, lifelong learning environments, and online.
