Vocabulary for Reflective Writing

Reflective writing has its own vocabulary. The words and phrases that fit this kind of writing are different from the ones that fit a research report, a lesson plan, or a complaint email. Picking the right vocabulary makes reflective writing easier to read and more honest about what it is doing.

A few suggestions on vocabulary

Because reflective writing covers such a wide range of events, ideas, and objects, it is hard to give specific words for every situation. The vocabulary depends on what is being reflected on. A few general patterns are useful.

Past tense for events

Events get described in the past tense. The lesson went, the student said, the activity broke down. This holds the description to what actually happened.

A common error is to drift into the present tense when describing events: “the student says he doesn’t understand.” This makes the writing feel like a story being told, rather than an event being analysed. Past tense is steadier.

Present tense for theories and models

Theories and models stay in the present tense. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development describes; Schon’s reflection-in-action involves; Gibbs’s cycle suggests. Theories do not happen at a single time; they are descriptions that hold across many cases, so the present tense fits.

This split between past and present tense within the same paragraph can feel awkward at first. It is the standard convention in academic reflective writing.

Why reflective writing feels harder than other academic writing

Reflective writing involves an exploration and explanation of an event. It often feels more difficult than other forms of academic writing for two reasons.

1. It involves writing about anxieties and errors. A research paper rarely asks the writer to admit confusion. Reflective writing does.
2. It blends the personal with the rigorous. The writer has to use first person and discuss their own feelings while still being thorough, careful, and grounded in evidence.

The fix is to stand back from the situation and be as objective as possible, even while writing in first person. Although the writing covers the writer’s own experience and feelings, the writer needs to be as rigorous and thorough as they would be for any other assignment.

This is the discipline of reflective writing. It is personal but not casual.

Two key features that make reflective writing work

Beyond the vocabulary, two features distinguish reflective writing from a private journal or a polished essay.

Feature 1: it integrates theory and practice

Reflective writing is a way of processing practice-based experience to produce learning. The first feature of that processing is integration. Theory and practice are brought side by side. Each one informs the other.

In practice this looks like:

1. Identify the important aspects of your reflection.
2. Bring in appropriate theories or academic context to help explain and interpret what you saw.
3. Use the experience to evaluate the theories. Can the theory be adapted or modified to fit your situation?

Step 3 is the one most often skipped. The teacher feels they should defer to the theory. But experience can push back on theory, and reflective writing has space for that. A theory that does not fit a real classroom should be questioned, not just applied.

Feature 2: it identifies the learning outcomes of your experience

The second feature is forward-looking. The writing should make explicit what was learned. This might include:

1. A plan for next time, naming what would be done differently
2. New understandings or values
3. Unexpected things learned about oneself

Without an explicit learning outcome, the writing has not produced learning. It has produced description.

Using academic evidence in reflective writing

The aim is to draw out the links between theory and practice. The writer keeps comparing the two and exploring the relationship between them.

Three useful questions when bringing in academic evidence.

1. Are my observations consistent with the theory, model, or published evidence? If yes, the theory helps explain what happened. If no, that is also useful information.
2. How does the theory help me interpret my experience? What does it let me see that I did not see before?
3. How does my experience help me understand the theory? Does my experience bear out what the theory predicts? Or is it different? If different, can I work out why?

This third question is the one that turns a piece of writing from a one-way application of theory into a genuine integration.

Be selective and reflect deeply on a few points

A common temptation is to cover everything. The writer wants to mention every interesting thing that happened, every theory they have read, every angle of analysis.

The result is shallow. A reflection that touches twenty things at the surface produces less learning than a reflection that goes deep on three.

The advice is straightforward.

1. Identify the challenging or successful parts of the experience.
2. Pick a few that are significant.
3. Reflect deeply on those.

Depth is not produced by length. It is produced by going past the first explanation. The first answer is usually the easy one. The second answer, the one that emerges after the writer has questioned the first, is often the useful one.

Discuss your reflections with others

Discussion deepens reflection. Talking through a reflection with a colleague does three things.

1. It tests your insight. Saying it out loud shows whether the reflection actually holds together.
2. It improves your ability to express ideas. Words that work in your head sometimes fall apart when spoken.
3. It surfaces other perspectives. A colleague may see a part of the situation you missed.

A reflection done entirely alone tends to confirm what the writer already believed. Discussion disrupts that pattern.

Two sources of evidence in a reflective writing assignment

A reflective writing assignment uses two sources of evidence. Both are needed.

Source 1: your reflections

Your reflections are essential evidence of your experiences. This means keeping notes on what you noticed, the developments that occurred during the process, and the changes in your thinking. These notes are the raw material.

A teacher who tries to write a reflective assignment without keeping reflective notes during the experience has to reconstruct memory after the fact, which loses precision and depth.

Source 2: academic evidence

Academic evidence comes from published case studies and theories. It shows how your ideas and practices have developed in the context of the relevant academic literature.

Academic evidence does two jobs. It gives you concepts to think with. And it gives the reader confidence that your reflection is grounded in something beyond your own opinion.

Flashcard

What two sources of evidence does reflective writing use, and what does each contribute?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Your own reflections (notes, observations) and academic evidence (theories, case studies, research).

The first source provides the raw material of your experience. The second source provides concepts and external grounding. Reflective writing without the first becomes abstract. Reflective writing without the second becomes private opinion. The integration of the two is the work.

Practical phrases for each part

Some phrases tend to fit each section of a reflection. They are not rules, but they are useful starting points.

For description: “during the lesson…”, “the situation involved…”, “what happened was…”, “I noticed that…”.

For interpretation: “this suggests that…”, “one explanation is…”, “according to (theory)…”, “however, my experience differs from this in that…”, “an alternative reading is…”.

For outcome: “I have learned that…”, “in future I will…”, “this changes my understanding of…”, “I am still uncertain whether…, so my next step is…”.

These phrases are scaffolds. Once a writer has a feel for the rhythm of reflective writing, they can drop the scaffolds and write more naturally.