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Reflective Practice & Reflective Writing

Reflection for Learning

Although reflection can be informal, you may be required to formally document your reflection as evidence of your learning.  Reflection can help us to link theory to practice by encouraging us to examine our practice and identifying how it relates to the theory we have learned.  It provides an opportunity to learn from real life experience.  It can also help us to identify what we do well and highlight any gaps in our knowledge, which can help us to plan for future learning and deal with new challenges.

Reflection can help:

  • us to  make sense of learning
  • to take learning from one situation and apply it to  another
  • to develop an open and questioning attitude
  • us to gain deeper insight into our actions, behaviour, feelings
  • to challenge our assumptions
  • to develop emotional intelligence
  • to develop professionally through engagement with new theory, development and practice

If reflection is informal and subjective (from our own point of view), why do you need to include quotes and references?

We use references to the literature as evidence to show learning and understanding in our assignments. Reflection gives you the opportunity to use evidence from your personal experience, practice or observations in addition to literature and the theories you’ve learned in class.  You are trying to identify links between theory and your practical experience, noting any new insights or understanding that you may have gained through practice. You might have questions about theories and how they are used, seeking answers to those question will help to further your knowledge and understanding.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0