What is reflective writing?

Reflective writing is the formal or informal recording of your thoughts. Reflective practice requires that you learn from your practical professional experience (Booth and Brice, 2004). So first we have to learn to reflect on our learning and professional practice, and then we have to become accustomed to recording that reflection in writing. By recording the reflection we formalize the process and have a record of our development.

If you Google ‘reflective writing’ you will find many useful and interesting ideas to help you get started. Remember that your thoughts and therefore the recording of those thoughts are personal to you and different from the more academic writing that you may be more used to.

Many of us find it difficult to write reflectively; like most skills, though, the more practice you have, the easier it becomes.

Reflective practice

Those of you who are fans of Harry Potter will remember a wonderful magical object that Albus Dumbledore owned called the pensieve. Professor Dumbledore could place memories into this stone basin and then relive them, taking Harry with him so he could learn from those memories. This is a good example of reflection and underscores the importance of learning from experience. It is not sufficient to just have an experience; reflect on that experience and evaluate it, and then apply that knowledge to another experience or activity. Deep and sustained learning – becoming able to do something you could not do before – only comes through experience, but experience on its own is not enough. Experience needs to be reflected on and made sense of to create knowledge, and this knowledge deepened when it is applied in fresh situations (Thomson, 2006).

So before reflective writing comes reflection. As part of your CPD you should try to get into the habit of being reflective – thinking about the task you have just performed, the course you have been on, the discussion you have just had at work, the article you have just read, and so on. Any activity that is part of your working life should be reflected on, and lessons learned. Keith Trickey reveals later in this chapter that reflection can also become a part of your personal development as well as your professional development.