Academic Skills Office (ASO) – Fact Sheets
Reflective Writing
Reflection is an important part of learning and professional practice. For this reason, reflective
writing tasks may be set as an assessment in some of your units, particularly if you are studying
professional degrees in education, health, or business. But reflection is not only beneficial for these
disciplines. Reflective thinking can be applied to all aspects of your academic and professional lives.
1. What is reflection?
2. A model for writing reflectively
3. Different reflective assessment tasks
1. What is reflection?
Reflection involves examining your personal reactions and responses to your educational, research,
professional, or personal experiences. Through reflection activities, you have the opportunity to
identify and question your own thoughts or reactions to the theories, philosophies, and knowledge
by comparing them to your own past experiences. Conscious, purposeful, and critical reflection on
your actions, thoughts, and behaviours can consolidate your learning, transform your future
practice, and develop lifelong learning skills.
2. A model for writing reflectively
The 5Rs framework (Bain et al., 2002) provides a model that can help you to structure your
reflective writing. Each stage increases in the complexity and/or abstraction of information
required. Different tasks may require different levels of response.
Stage
Task
Useful language
Stage 1 Reporting
describe
a situation, incident, or issue
that you observed or were i nvolved in
What I did
e.g., I saw…, I witnessed…, I said…., I
heard
Where and when it took place
e.g., in a meeting, in
the classroom, during my first placement, on my last
day…
Stage 2
Responding
explain
your emotional or personal
response to that situation, incident, or
issue
What did I feel and
think
e.g., I felt…, I thought..., I
believe…, I think…, I remember…
How did I react to this situation
, e.g., distressed,
frustrated, impressed
Stage 3 Relating
relate
the situation, incident, or i ssue
to previous experiences or to other
knowledge that you have such as
theories or other relevant literature
Compare and
contrast
my responses
e.g., in the
same way, similarly, like, in contrast, al though
Provide evidence
e.g., this demonstrates that…,
Brown (2019) suggests that…
Stage 4
Reasoning
explore
the situation, incident, or issue
in more depth; look for explanations
for causes and effects; draw on
theories and other relevant sources
Think about cause and effect, reason, and result
e.g., because, as a result, consequently, therefore,
thus
Use references to sources
e.g., according to Dunn
(2020),…
Stage 5
Reconstructing
draw conclusions
about the situation,
incident, or issue based on the
understanding you have gai ned from
the reflective process;
plan
how you
might approach similar issues in the
future
Think about different impacts or alternative
outcomes
e.g., in these circumstances, teachers must
reflect…
How I may behave differently in the future
e.g., I
will…, Next time, I should …, children must be
encouraged to…, they could have done…
