Guide to Reflective writing: Best practices and examples

Reflective writing is more of a personal experience, written in a non-academic style of writing. In this style of writing, you analyse an experience and mention how it has impacted you, what did you learn, and how it can help you in future.

Reflection enables self-development and helps a student make links between theory and practice, and between their past and present knowledge.

Reflective writing is more about what you feel about a topic. It is about what you have learned and why it is important to your learning.

Reflective writing differs from most academic writing because you write in the first person (make use of “I”) to describe your experience and feelings. One also has to refer to academic theory and cite sources.

• Reflection is an exploration and an explanation of events – not just a description of them.
• It is often useful to ‘reflect forward’ to the future as well as ‘reflecting back’ on the past.

Reflective writing is often used as a reaction to what has been read/presented. Reflective writing helps improve learning by making thoughts more developed and precise, as well as enhance critical thinking.

Tips for Effective Reflective Writing

Write at the earliest, after the event. By delaying, you may not recollect several things and your experience in that case may not be a true reflection.

Focus on the most significant parts of the event or idea on which you’re reflecting. If you try to ‘tell the whole story’ you’re likely to use up your words on description rather than interpretation.

Its okay to talk about your anxieties, mistakes, errors and weaknesses, as well as strengths and successes. This is fine (in fact it’s often essential!), as long as you show some understanding of possible causes, and explain how you plan to improve.

Focus more on the positive things and how the experience will help develop you and your skills.

Critical Reflection Guidelines

Here are guidelines on how you could write a critical reflection of your work.

Critical Reflection

Critically reflect on your own learning by drawing upon the theoretical themes and concepts covered in your business artefact development. The theoretical themes and concepts can be from your whole course of study or specific to the artefact, but your reflection should demonstrate how these have informed your chosen artefact development.

Literature Sources, Data, Theory.

What are the most important theories and literature sources used to support your artefact development? In this section, you should focus on describing the sources and theories/concepts used and outline why they were fundamentally important to the development of your artefact (citing appropriate sources using Harvard Referencing).

Knowledge

What key areas of knowledge have you gained/developed during your artefact development and why were they important/crucial to the process? In this section, you should focus solely on the knowledge you have gained (or strengthened) from undertaking your artefact development. Further, you should outline why these were important in underpinning the artefact development (citing appropriate sources using Harvard Referencing.

Critical Reflection Aspect (individual reflection)

This part of the critical reflection can focus on outlining what you would have done differently given the time over again. This is a crucial element of ‘reflection on action’ and should demonstrate critical reflective abilities.

Barriers Overcome

What barriers have you met and overcome? In this section, you should outline what difficulties you faced (this could be about group dynamics if you worked as part of a team) and what you did to overcome them. You should also include what you learned from these experiences.

Learning Development

What are the most important things you have learned and/or skills you have developed from creating your chosen artefact? In this section, you should consider the skills you have developed (such as effective time management, research skills etc…) throughout the process of your artefact creation (citing, where appropriate, sources using appropriate referencing) and outline what you would do differently if you had to do the project again.

Examples

Example: Reflect on how these topics will assist you in your future management role.

Change

In many businesses, things like customers, markets, and new technology are all factors that lead to changes in how things work. Because the consequences of not managing change well can be very bad and long-lasting, people professionals need to know about them and be able to use tools and techniques to help with change management operations.

As a manager, it will enable me to better deal with all kinds of changes that may happen in my company. In addition to new markets, it will help me deal with downturns in the economy and difficult trading. It will also help me deal with changes to my strategic goals.

Change will help me lead with the organization’s culture, which is very important to the success of change management projects. It will help me when I try to get over cultural barriers or make the best use of the cultural support I have.  People at all levels should be involved in the process of change as soon as possible. The process of implementing change is much easier when these people are consulted early on about issues that will affect their jobs. 

Remote Working

“Remote work,” or “working from home,” means when people do work for an organization that doesn’t have to be done in a certain place or at a certain time. Employing a team to work from home or in another place, which is called a “virtual team,” gives companies access to employees who have the skills they need, no matter where they are. The subject of remote working will help me learn how to use information technology, which is a big part of making it possible for remote working environments to happen. Because of this, I could give more information technology training to my employees, which would help my whole management team as a whole. I will be able to work with my boss as a team after I learn this.

Remote work will also allow me to be more flexible in the way things are provided in my future management job, as well as reduce the need for too much micromanagement. When I move from on-site supervision to remote management, it will help me make the transition from face-to-face communication to telecommunications-mediated communication, from on-site working to off-site or multiple office-site working, and, in the case of groups, from side-by-side collaboration to virtual collaboration. It will help me come up with a good strategy for managing a remote worker’s work, which is a good source of self-efficacy knowledge for the employee to have.  I will also be able to find new ways to cut costs for the company by using new technology.

Global Leadership

Global leadership is a cross-disciplinary achievement that includes important components that future leaders in all areas of individual competence must learn in order to be good global leaders.
Knowledge of global leadership will enable me to better understand the psychological, physiological, and geographical aspects of globalization, as well as the geopolitical, anthropological, and sociological aspects of globalization.

It will help me understand how culture affects norms and values when I become a manager in the future. It will help me figure out how I can be more successful when I connect with people from different cultures around the world. It will be easier for me to deal with a wide range of important new issues facing humanity, such as modern unrestricted, global business planners and important moves in geopolitical ideal models. It will help me acquire skills and knowledge that will enable me to lead in the era of globalization.

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