reflective writing for assignments

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Examples of Reflective Writing

Types of reflective writing assignments.

A journal  requires you to write weekly entries throughout a semester. May require you to base your reflection on course content.

A learning diary is similar to a journal, but may require group participation. The diary then becomes a place for you to communicate in writing with other group members.

A logbook is often used in disciplines based on experimental work, such as science. You note down or 'log' what you have done. A log gives you an accurate record of a process and helps you reflect on past actions and make better decisions for future actions.

A reflective note is often used in law. A reflective note encourages you to think about your personal reaction to a legal issue raised in a course.

An essay diary  can take the form of an annotated bibliography (where you examine sources of evidence you might include in your essay) and a critique (where you reflect on your own writing and research processes).

a peer review  usually involves students showing their work to their peers for feedback.

A self-assessment task  requires you to comment on your own work.

Some examples of reflective writing

Social science fieldwork report (methods section), engineering design report, learning journal (weekly reflection).

Brookfield, S 1987, Developing critical thinkers: challenging adults to explore alternative ways of thinking and acting , Open University Press, Milton Keynes.

Mezirow, J 1990, Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: a guide to transformative and emancipatory learning , Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Schön, DA 1987, Educating the reflective practitioner , Jossey-Bass. San Francisco.

We thank the students who permitted us to feature examples of their writing.

Prepared by Academic Skills, UNSW. This guide may be distributed or adapted for educational purposes. Full and proper acknowledgement is required. 

Essay and assignment writing guide

• Essay writing basics
• Essay and assignment planning
• Answering assignment questions
• Editing checklist
• Writing a critical review
• Annotated bibliography
• How do I write reflectively?
• Examples of reflective writing
• ^ More support

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A Complete Guide to Writing Reflective Assignments

• A Complete Guide to Writing…

As we begin 2021, many students have requested guidance on writing reflections for assignments . Unless someone explains the process, it can be challenging to know how to approach reflective writing. This comprehensive guide will help you understand how to structure and write effective reflections for your academic assignments.

Understanding the Basic Structure

Think of a reflection as you would any other assignment. It requires a clear structure with a beginning, middle, and end. The key to organizing your thoughts is using a reflective cycle. While there are several cycles available, including Driscoll’s model , the Gibbs reflective cycle is particularly useful due to its straightforward approach and extensive research backing.

Your reflection should follow this basic structure:

• Introduction: Describe what happened
• Main body: Explain the relevance and analysis
• Conclusion: Discuss future practice improvements

Writing the Introduction

The beginning of your reflection should focus on describing the situation you’re reflecting upon. For instance, one valuable reflection might come from experiencing a challenging shift with staff shortages. In this scenario, you would describe the situation: two nurses managing 29 patients on a ward. Despite being a difficult circumstance, particularly as a student nurse, such experiences can provide excellent learning opportunities.

Developing the Main Body

The main body of your reflection is where you demonstrate the relevance of your experience. This section should:

• Reference the NMC code of conduct
• Cite relevant NICE guidelines
• Include trust policies and procedures
• What went well?
• What could have been improved?
• How did various factors impact the situation?

Crafting the Conclusion

Your conclusion should focus on future practice. Explain:

• How you’ll implement what you’ve learned
• Specific steps for improvement
• How these changes will make you a better healthcare professional

Important Considerations for Referencing

While reflections are based on personal experiences, proper referencing is crucial. You can reference:

• Government policies
• NHS England guidelines
• Public Health England documents
• NICE guidelines
• Hospital trust policies
• Nursing journals and articles

Professional resources like the Nursing Times , Elsevier website, nurses.co.uk, and RCN student network provide valuable reference materials. These sources can help validate your experiences and show that others have faced similar situations.

Maintaining Confidentiality

Confidentiality is paramount in reflective writing. Never mention:

• The specific trust name
• Ward names or numbers
• Staff members’ names
• Any identifying patient information

You can mention general details, such as “an orthopedic ward,” but avoid specifics that could breach confidentiality.

Writing Style and Perspective

When writing reflections, you can typically use first person (“I”) in the introduction and conclusion sections, as you’re discussing personal experiences. However, the main body should shift to third person when discussing professional standards and evidence. Always verify your university’s specific guidelines regarding writing style.

Achieving Higher Marks

To excel in your reflective assignment:

• Don’t just describe events
• Explain why things are important
• Examine your feelings and their causes
• Keep asking “why?” to uncover deeper insights
• Show both positive and negative aspects
• Evaluate the impact of decisions
• Consider alternative approaches
• Aim for a reference every 50 words
• Include research papers and academic journals
• Support bold statements with evidence
• Demonstrate wider reading

Assessment Preparation

When writing your reflection, keep your assignment brief and marking criteria visible. Target the highest grade possible by ensuring you meet all criteria. Remember that markers will evaluate your work based solely on:

• The assignment brief
• Marking criteria
• Your submitted work

Understanding critical analysis is crucial but often overthought. Think of it as weighing pros and cons, similar to comparing products before making a purchase. You’re simply evaluating different aspects of a situation or decision from an objective standpoint.

Remember, reflection is a valuable tool for professional development. By following these guidelines and maintaining a structured approach, you can create meaningful reflections that demonstrate your growth and understanding in your healthcare journey.

If you want to get help how to write a reflective assignment reach out to MEDLRN , we can help you.

Author:  Faheem Ahmed

Pharmacist Prescriber, 2x Award-Winning Pharmacist, Pharmacy and Clinic Owner, Founder of MEDLRN and loves sharing his experience with pharmacists.

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Module 1: Success Skills

Reflective writing, learning objectives.

• Examine the components of reflective writing

Reflective writing includes several different components: description, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, and future application. Reflective writers must weave their personal perspectives with evidence of deep, critical thought as they make connections between theory, practice, and learning. The steps below should help you find the appropriate balance among all these factors.

1st Step: Review the assignment

As with any writing situation, the first step in writing a reflective piece is to clarify the task. Reflective assignments can take many forms, so you need to understand exactly what your instructor is asking you to do. Some reflective assignments are short, just a paragraph or two of unpolished writing. Usually the purpose of these reflective pieces is to capture your immediate impressions or perceptions. For example, your instructor might ask you at the end of a class to write quickly about a concept from that day’s lesson. That type of reflection helps you and your instructor gauge your understanding of the concept.

Other reflections are academic essays that can range in length from several paragraphs to several pages. The purpose of these essays is to critically reflect on and support an original claim(s) about a larger experience, such as an event you attended, a project you worked on, or your writing development. These essays require polished writing that conforms to academic conventions, such as articulation of a claim and substantive revision. They might address a larger audience than you and your instructor, including, for example, your classmates, your family, a scholarship committee, etc. It’s important before you begin writing, that you can identify the assignment’s purpose, audience, intended message or content, and requirements.

2nd Step: Generate ideas for content

As you generate ideas for your reflection, you might consider things like:

• Recollections of an experience, assignment, or course
• Ideas or observations made during that event
• Questions, challenges, or areas of doubt
• Strategies employed to solve problems
• A-ha moments linking theory to practice or learning something new
• Connections between this learning and prior learning
• New questions that arise as a result of the learning or experience
• New actions taken as a result of the learning or experience

3rd Step: Organize content

Researchers have developed several different frameworks or models for how reflective writing can be structured. For example, one method has you consider the “What?” “So what?” and “Now what?” of a situation in order to become more reflective. First, you assess what happened and describe the event, then you explain why it was significant, and then you use that information to inform your future practice. [1] [2] Similarly, the DIEP framework can help you consider how to organize your content when writing a reflective piece. Using this method, you describe what happened or what you did, interpret what it means, evaluate its value or impact, and plan steps for improving or changing for the future.

The DIEP Model of reflective writing

The DIEP model (Boud, Keogh & Walker, 1985) organizes the reflection into four different components:

Figure 1 . The DIEP model for reflective thinking and writing has you first describe the situation, interpret it, evaluate it, then plan what to do with that new information.

Remember, your goal is to make an interpretive or evaluative claim, or series of claims, that moves beyond obvious statements (such as, “I really enjoyed this project”) and demonstrates you have come to a deeper understanding of what you have learned and how you will use that learning.

In the example below, notice how the writer reflects on her initial ambitions and planning, the a-ha! moment, and then her decision to limit the scope of a project. She was assigned a multimodal (more than just writing) project, in which she made a video, and then reflected on the experience:

Student Example

Keeping a central focus in mind applies to multimodal compositions as well as written essays. A prime example of this was in my remix. When storyboarding for the video, I wanted to appeal to all college students in general. Within my compressed time limit of three minutes, I had planned to showcase numerous large points. It was too much. I decided to limit the scope of the topic to emphasize how digitally “addicted” college students are, and that really changed the project in significant ways.

4th Step: Draft, Revise, Edit, Repeat

A single, unpolished draft may suffice for short, in-the-moment reflections, but you may be asked to produce a longer academic reflection essay. This longer reflection will require significant drafting, revising, and editing. Whatever the length of the assignment, keep this reflective cycle in mind:

• briefly describe the event or action;
• analyze and interpret events and actions, using evidence for support;
• demonstrate relevance in the present and the future.

The following video, produced by the Hull University Skills Team, provides a great overview of reflective writing. Even if you aren’t assigned a specific reflection writing task in your classes, it’s a good idea to reflect anyway, as reflection results in better learning.

You can view the transcript for “Reflective Writing” here (opens in new window) .

Check your understanding of reflective writing and the things you learned in the video with these quick practice questions:

Candela Citations

• Process of Reflective Writing. Authored by : Karen Forgette. Provided by : University of Mississippi. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Reflective Writing. Provided by : SkillsTeamHullUni. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoI67VeE3ds&feature=emb_logo . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Frameworks for Reflective Writing. Authored by : Karen Forgette. Provided by : University of Mississippi. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Driscoll J (1994) Reflective practice for practise - a framework of structured reflection for clinical areas. Senior Nurse 14 (1):47–50 ↵
• Ash, S.L, Clayton, P.H., & Moses, M.G. (2009). Learning through critical reflection: A tutorial for service-learning students (instructor version). Raleigh, NC. ↵

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Find out more about the different types of reflective assignment and reflective writing style.

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• Assignment Types

Reflective writing encourages ‘metacognition’ (thinking about your own thinking) to help you engage more deeply with your learning and development. It helps you to review your progress as a learner and/or practitioner and consider how you might apply, or already have applied, what you have learned to aid your future development. Reflective writing may be set as an assignment, or you might be asked to keep a reflective log for your own purposes. You don’t need to write in order to reflect, but it is a good way to ‘think out loud’ and keep a record of your reflections, and also to demonstrate to lecturers and employers that you can learn from your own experience and evidence development. Reflective writing has some key differences with traditional academic writing, but also some characteristics that are familiar.  

Different kinds of reflective writing

There are several different types of reflective assignment, and therefore more than one way to write reflectively. Your assignment might fit clearly into one of these types or blend elements of more than one.  

Critical incident analysis

This form of reflective writing is common in professional practitioner subjects such as Health and Social care or Teaching. It asks you to look closely at a single event from your own practice (for example, on a placement) that you’ve identified as challenging in some way. The aim is to analyse why it was challenging for you, evaluate your decisions and actions at the time and identify ways to change your practice or learning which could be implemented in similar circumstances. You might choose to structure a critical incident analysis around a reflective cycle such as Kolb or Gibbs. 

Reflective report

The reflective report is looser in focus and structure than the Critical Incident Report. You might choose to focus on one or more events over a period of time, focussing on an aspect of your practice or emerging themes. The incident or events you select needn’t necessarily be challenging ones, simply something you would find it productive and interesting to reflect on. You could use a chronological approach, base it on one of the reflective models, or decide on a thematic approach, around different aspects of your learning. 

Demonstrating professional attributes

This type of assignment focusses very much on identifying and evidencing your development, often to specific attributes. It is closely related to the kind of writing you would do in a job application, professional accreditation or annual appraisal. The focus here is about drawing on your experience across your studies or a placement or volunteer work to show how you have developed and met certain criteria, rather than analysing and evaluating your own responses to a challenging incident. A reflective model might be helpful to prompt you to spot opportunities to reflect on and unpack them, but this assignment type is likely to be structured around the attributes you are reflecting on rather than the incident or model.    

Reflective journal or learning log 

This is an ongoing activity often for the duration of a period of training and development, for example, on a placement or course. It is related to a diary or blog in that it is structured around regular, chronological entries, perhaps weekly. Its purpose is to help you develop the habit of reflecting regularly on your learning during this time to help you get the most out of it. You might be asked to submit the whole of your journal or a sample of entries from it as a portfolio, for assessment. It might be helpful to use a reflective model to underpin each entry.  

Case study 

Case studies can be reflective if they are drawing from your own experience, rather than examples from elsewhere. The aim is often to demonstrate that you have understood a theory, concept or model by applying it to your own practice and showing how it explains, typifies or predicts it. A case study is a case example of something in particular, so theory and practice will need to be in balance, and your own experience needs to  be directly related to and clearly reflect your understanding of the wider principles.  

Reflective writing style

Personal .

The key difference between reflective writing and most forms of academic writing style is that you are writing in the first person ‘I’. Your voice is very present in the text because you are writing about yourself. You have to write ‘I’ when you are describing things that you did, thought and felt, and things that happened to you: “I did’, ‘I decided’, ‘I was frustrated’, ‘he said to me’. You also write ‘I’ when you are reflecting on these past events in the present, so you can write ‘I think’, ‘I will’, ‘I now understand’ ‘I need to’. 

Formality 

You are also often quoting or paraphrasing things that you or others said and writing about perceptions and feelings and other ‘real life’ things that are hard to scientifically quantify or characterise. Your language can therefore be a little less formal than in traditional academic writing: ‘he was really annoyed’ ‘I don’t think it matters that much’, ‘it was just too important’. Reflective writing is still a professional form though, so it needs to keep some formality and neutrality.  

Critical analysis 

Writing in the first person in a slightly less formal tone can sometimes lead us to overlook the need to be objective and unpack your reasoning for the reader. Reflection can then become a descriptive, unselective account of everything that happened, or a series of unsubstantiated statements which are easy to say, but too generic or too sweeping to be credible.  

Reflective writing is still quite academic in that it is critical, reasoned and evidenced, demonstrating higher level thinking beyond description, and your style will demonstrate this. To be critical of your own experience doesn’t mean criticising your own performance but to ask yourself critical questions to unpack it fully for yourself and the reader, such as  

• Why is that significant? How is it relevant? 
• How do I know that? What makes me think that? 
• What do I mean by that? 
• Why did that happen? What explains that? 
• Am I sure of that? How else could I see it? 

To help you answer these questions, you will be using evidence and often academic literature as part of your account.  

Using evidence and theory

You will be presenting evidence in the form of concrete examples from your experience, but these still need to be analysed and interpreted, just as you would for evidence from scholarship and research. Rather than just a list of things you’ve done with your own assessment of how successful they were, you need to explain and interpret these examples to show how they demonstrate your development and how you know they were successful (or not). It is useful where possible to include external forms of evidence, such as feedback from other people or tangible, measurable outcomes. 

You may also be interpreting your experiences in the light of theory, using academic research or professional frameworks to help explain and analyse your experiences, contextualise them in the light of what we know more generally to see if your experience is common, unusual or meeting the criteria, and help underpin your decision making. Reflective writing doesn’t always have references to literature in it as it’s mainly about you, but bringing in some theory might be helpful, depending on the assignment type.

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Reflective writing.

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