By Iain Wilson
Introduction
Reflection is often seen as “fluffy”, ambiguous and something that can lack meaning and impact, however, this is only the case if it is not approached rigorously. Whether you are using a reflective tool, such as Gibbs’ Cycle (1988), or writing freely, it is essential that you engage with reflection in a systematic way and scrutinise the evidence that you include to build robust arguments. You are (or will become) familiar with writing research reports as this is something that you practice on a regular basis throughout your studies and practice. I am going to talk you through planning your written reflections and map on the principles of a research report to help you to transfer your skills and enhance not only your written reflections, but also your reflective practice.
Know your field
Before you start reading any literature to get a detailed understanding of what is known in that area, you have to make a decision of where to start. This may be broad in terms of something in ‘Biological Psychology’ or ‘Forensic Psychology’, or it may be more focused, such as interested in the impact of leadership on productivity of employees, or interested in how nature can benefit people’s wellbeing. In short, before starting a research project, you have to have some direction to guide your reading. This will enable you to find articles of interest and narrow down the specific arguments which will lead to your research question.
This is very similar for reflecting on your development. Having ideas about the types of working roles that interest you will help give you a starting point to focus your development on. This may be broad and exploratory, such as you would be interested in working with people supporting their mental health, or in a role that involves using your learning about research and data analyses. You may have a more focused idea, such as working towards qualifying as a Counselling Psychologist or working in academia. By identifying a direction, you will have a frame to build your arguments on, i.e., identify what experiences and learning you have gained which are appropriate for that direction, as well as identify development needs. If you are unsure about a direction, think about it like a research project and ask yourself questions like these:
- What am I interested in doing?
- What am I happy to learn about?
- What do I enjoy doing and wish to continue?
- What am I good at?
- What makes me feel proud?
- What feels meaningful for me to do?
Identifying the gap.
When it comes to research there is a strong emphasis that your study should be novel and that you should identify a gap in the previous literature in which you will address with your research question or hypothesis. This gap can be relatively small, as all research studies are building blocks, such as making an argument for replicating a study in a new population; or adding in a variable; or focusing on a more specific lived experience. This can be easier said than done though. You have to read the previous literature, summarise these arguments to see what is already known, whilst also asking the question “what is not known that I can tell you about?”. When done properly, this takes time, but this time is invested as you build stronger arguments and justifications for your research questions. Overall, this leads to a stronger research rationale and study conducted.
“How does this relate to written reflections? There are no research questions or hypotheses in Gibbs’ Cycle” I can hear you thinking. That is correct, however, preparation is key. If you wish to have a strong, robust reflection where you can meaningfully learn from your experiences, then planning needs to occur. Imagine you are the research: the object of study. What are the ‘gaps’ that you wish to address? How do you know that these are appropriate gaps? Similar to when you review previous literature, you need to examine the evidence of your starting point. You can have a look at your previous experiences, feedback that you have been provided, achievements you have gained, failures you want to learn from. When you start pulling this information together, you will start to identify where your strengths and areas for development are. You may also have an idea of the direction that you wish to pursue, so you can look at the knowledge and attributes that you need to develop for those particular roles. As with a literature review, this will take time to do properly, however, it will give you more clarity of your goals and aims that you wish to develop. Remember that exploratory research questions are appropriate as well as you may not have a clear direction but wish to gain experiences to help you gain more of an understanding of what you enjoy and are good at. After these exploratory experiences, you will be able to become more focused with your objectives.
The key message is that for science to be high quality, you need to review the literature and develop evidence-based questions before you collect any data. Developing questions to fit our data is bad science, which you would not engage with, however, selecting experiences to reflect upon retrospectively is all too common and some principles of good science will improve the quality of reflective writing and practice.
Data collection
I can already hear you thinking “What data do I need to collect? This is a reflective piece, not a research project.”. This next section will reveal all…
As you may already know for your research methods, it is important that you collect data which will enable you to robustly answer your research question. This may be selecting questionnaires which have good psychometric properties, or structuring your interview schedule to help your participant to give you depth of detail whilst remaining focused on your research question. Careful thought needs to be applied to the planning of the data collection because if your data are not very high quality, or do not relate to your research question, it makes it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions. It is also essential to think about the ethics of your research and not just the tools of how you collect your data. Is the research likely to cause harm? Are all aspects of the study necessary? Are you being honest about the purpose of your study? Are you respecting and valuing those you are working with (both participants and collaborators)? All of these are important to consider when designing your study and before you carry out and data collection.
This is the same for reflection. You should seek out experiences, proactively, which will help you work towards your goals and aims. Some experiences will be of higher quality and value to your development, but identifying and recognising these can be difficult if you have not done the preparation outlined earlier in this article. It may be that you need to ‘pilot’ your experience, having a few practices as part of your learning process. Each time you may be engaging in reflection about the quality of that experience, but they are not the ones that you plan to include in your written assessment. For an interview study you would identify participants who will be able to give the richest answers to your questions. Similarly, in an experiment you set up your test in the most appropriate environment to gain the best quality results. You need to approach the experience you plan to reflect upon in the same way. Is this the best context for me to test myself working towards my goal? Are the people, that I will be working with, experts who can provide informed feedback? Do I understand the cultural and societal contexts in which I will be in? Am I prepared with my knowledge and theory which I wish to try and practice?
It is also important to consider the ethics of your experience. If you are completing a placement, or volunteering to develop your skills, it is important that you speak with your supervisor about why you are engaging in the role. Is it because it is tied to a module? Is it because you are exploring experiences to see what you may enjoy? Is it because you are seeking to develop specific skills? Is it simply that you value the role and wish to contribute? Honesty with those around you will enable you to be more honest when you reflect upon your experiences. In addition, as a professional courtesy, it is polite to let those you are working with know that you will be writing about your experiences with them for your assessment. There may be sensitive information that they wish you to not include.
Hopefully from this, you can see that being prepared and systematic will aid you to gain quality experiences on which you can reflect. It would be possible to gain experiences without this level of preparation, but as with data collection which has not been planned or prepared, the quality of the data and therefore the rest of the report will be limited.
To be concluded in Part 2…
This article has highlighted how reflection can be approached and planned in advance, meaning that high-quality, appropriate and meaningful experiences can be proactively identified to support development. Although your written reflection will capture a snapshot of your experiences, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation which takes place, similar to all of the work in research that is not seen in the final report (the background reading, ethics applications, group work and group discussions, designing of the study etc.). In short, you have a depth and breadth of knowledge and experience which you can apply to approaching your reflective work. In the concluding article, you will learn about making sense of your experiences, similar to the way that you make sense of your data through your analyses. You will also be guided on how to link the learning that you have gained from your experience(s) to your overall development, like in a discussion when the results are explained in relation to the previous literature.
About the author
Dr Iain Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology within NTU Psychology. He specialises in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning within Psychology, with particular interests in employability learning and written reflective assessments. Iain is currently working on a sabbatical, in the 2022-23 academic year, which is evaluating a new model for assessing reflective writing, as well as developing resources to support the teaching, learning and assessment of reflection.
Psychology at Nottingham Trent University 