Reflective Writing Workshop

Last Thursday I attended a workshop on Reflective Writing, organised by CDG NE, led by Dr Ali Pickard, Head of Information and Communication Management at Northumbria University. I’m (finally!) about to begin my Chartership attempt (registration fee paid, meeting arranged with potential mentor…this really is happening!) so one of the main reasons I was there was to develop my skills further for writing the portfolio. However, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m keen to incorporate reflective practice into my working life where possible. As information professionals we instinctively look back on and evaluate successes (and failures), continually learning from our experiences. This workshop was about bringing all of that to the surface, looking at the reflective process, and formalising how we articulate this into reflective writing. For Chartership I know that I’ll need to develop more structure into my reflective process and writing style so this workshop has given me the foundations for that.

The main points I took from the workshop were:

• Start analysing, evaluating and recording what you’re doing anyway BUT be realistic – can’t analyse everything to the same degree!
• Reflective practice is a cyclical process so it is most important to identify action taken as a result of reflection
• Chartership is about evidencing that you are a reflective practitioner and therefore a professional (we do this stuff anyway, Chartership is the badge that tells everyone else!)
• Reflection is a method of thinking about and challenging your practice, adding to your knowledge so you continue to develop and learn
• Need to learn to be good at recognising what went well as it is as important to identify and analyse successes as to reflect on what went wrong and how things could be improved
• Important to reflect quickly after the event so as not to lose the ‘gut reaction’
• Reflective practice gives us the ability to develop creative solutions rather than just identify problems

Ali identified the main elements for a template for reflective writing as:

1. New knowledge & learning
2. Personal reaction
3. Any problems / difficulties / challenges
4. Action taken

[Image taken from slide used in workshop]

By answering questions in each of these areas we can create an open narrative (perhaps as a journal entry) which can be structured afterwards into a piece of reflective writing to include in the Chartership portfolio. From this we developed a framework for reflective writing which will be useful to help me structure my thoughts into a more formalised analysis and, hopefully, to more effectively articulate my learning experiences.

1. Description – this is the briefest section, outlining the event/activity to be reflected upon
2. Interpretation – this is the main section of the reflective review. Look back at the open narrative and make it meaningful. And personal – what did it mean for you?
3. Outcome – another brief section to explain action taken as a result of the reflective process

The emphasis was definitely that the most important part of the reflective process is to take action afterwards. If it was a success, evaluate why so that this success can be repeated. If things went wrong, what could be done better next time? The only way to fail is to do nothing!