Reflective writing as assessment

Reflective writing requires students to look back on an event and critically consider their thoughts and actions. In writing about past behaviour, students are encouraged to rethink their options and reflect upon how they can integrate their new knowledge into their future behaviour.

Reflective writing can improve skills required in students’ personal and professional lives. This assessment type encourages students to get deeper meaning from their experiences as they critically examine them as a basis for guiding future behaviour. Importantly, for UTS’ commitment to authentic assessment, reflective assessments enable transferable skills which encourage thinking beyond the immediate context and into future contexts.

Authentic assessments focus on tasks that are relevant beyond university. They may replicate tasks required in the professional sphere, for example, writing nursing case notes, or in preparation for an internship where students can apply what they have learned to a context beyond the educational environment. 

Inviting the students to do some reflective writing as part of your subject can also help you learn more about your students’ thought processes and approaches to their study. Academics note that they have changed some of their practices after reading students’ reflective writing.

Reflective writing can be used at any time, and in many different ways throughout your subject. You may ask students to reflect upon an area of professional practice, or upon a personal ethical dilemma. Or you may ask students to reflect on their strategies for drafting assessments which will enable you to learn more about your students’ thought processes and thus guide them more effectively. Each of these reflective questions are designed to support students to understand their own thoughts and behavioural processes so that they can work to improve them.

Reflective tasks may be used for formative work throughout the semester, or for one larger summative piece. They may be used for self-reflection or peer reflection. Reflective writing could also be used as a whole assessment or as part of an assessment.

While reflective writing may be a valuable assessment type, there are some drawbacks which need to be acknowledged.

Drawbacks for students

• Students are usually more able to describe their behaviour than the thinking processes behind this behaviour. Reflective writing needs to be guided so that students start by describing, and then progress to analysing their behaviour and thinking processes.
• Students tend to be vague and general in their analysis of their own thinking so they need to be guided towards being  more focused and specific. This will enable them to more astutely describe and then transform their metacognitive processes. 
• Students can suffer from ‘reflection fatigue’ if they are asked to write reflections for several different assessments. It’s worth asking your students how frequently they are required to write reflections in other subjects. 
• Students may incorrectly believe that they need to be overtly positive in reflections, and position themselves as making the right decisions instead of wrestling with contradictory ideas.

Drawbacks for markers

• Markers may find it hard to judge one piece of reflective writing against another as students often choose to reflect on situations which have varying complexities. Clear assessment guidelines which orient students to expected levels of complexity of situations and of analysis will help markers and students.  
• Markers must be aware that students may take a mark for a reflective piece more personally than a purely theoretical assessment. This is because reflective writing often involves a high degree of affect and encourages a reciprocal relationship between teachers and students. You may therefore consider using reflective writing as a formative or low-stakes assessment before a summative or final assessment.

• Provide students with prompts or exemplars so that they can attune themselves to the appropriate level of difficulty expected. Students may be concerned about reflecting upon complex situations, or those in which they took the wrong approach. Exemplars and other scaffolding activities can ensure students understand your expectations.
• Guide students towards providing as much detail about their thinking processes as possible. This foregrounds reflective practice as a metacognitive tool to strengthen critical awareness and not just describe processes or events.
• Consider enriching existing assessments by including reflective practices. For example, ask students to write a few paragraphs about how they approached the assessment and their thinking behind specific decisions. Draw out the learnings from group work assessments by asking students to reflect upon their own contributions and how they would like to perform next time.