Reflective Learning Journal Teacher Guide

Content

What is Reflective Learning Journal?

Positive outcomes expectable

Designing a Reflective Learning Journal

The Prompt Questions Bank

Implementing Reflective Learning Journal

Appendix

11

Sample guide for student

Reflective Learning Journal

What is Reflective Learning Journal?

It is a piece of writing which allows students to record thoughts and insights about their own
learning experience. It encourages students to review and consolidate learning, to evaluate
performance, to plan future learning based on past learning experience. In such a way,
students become capable to take charge of their own learning, and eventually to develop into
independent life long learners.
The term Reflection has been used widely colloquially and in academic disciplines, such as
psychology and education. Nevertheless, in both settings, it simply means the process of
thinking deeply with ones awareness and conscious effort on an issue or event. The product
of such a highly engaged cognitive process would be informing insights, strategies, plans and
predictions on the issue one vigorously ponders upon.
Psychologist and educators further differentiate two kinds of reflective thinking: reflectionin-action and reflection-on-action. The former suggests a simultaneous monitoring when
performing or practicing a task; the latter suggests a retrospective evaluation after the task is
accomplished.
With the meaning of the word reflection bears, writing something reflective becomes very
meaningful and fruitful in the process of learning, which is one of the reasons why the use of
Reflective Learning Journal in teaching has a rather long history. Reflective learning journal
is well-accepted by many educators and teachers because it helps students to narrow the gaps
between theories and practice, and most importantly heightens students felt need of
constantly monitoring their learning progress. Learning should not be a passive process of
simply in-taking information from teachers and lecturers, but rather an active process that
requires a lot of personal thinking and questioning.
By encouraging your students to write reflective journal regularly, they will find in it a
personal space for them to keep records of their own ideas and thoughts, and which these
thoughts are useful for themselves to come up with solutions and novel approaches to get
around problems encountered in their course of learning.
In this guide, we provide all necessary information you need to implement reflective journal
writing in your course. Give it a try!

Positive outcomes expectable

Students can gain a clearer overview of their learning progress

Students can gain an insight of their own strengths and weaknesses as a learner
Students can realize learning strategies which suit their personal needs
Students will become more capable in planning for overcoming learning difficulties

Reflective Learning Journal

Students will understand and appreciate the importance self-evaluation in the role of
improving oneself

Reflective Learning Journal

Designing a Reflective Learning Journal

The structure of reflective learning journal

A journal can be structured with guiding questions (see our Prompt Questions Bank) or
unstructured, in which students are asked to write about anything related to the subject or to
their learning. An over-structured journal prevents reflective thinking, while an overly
unstructured one might not encourage reflection to be made either.

Structured reflective learning journal

The example below is a highly structured kind of journal with specific questions
that students have to answer in each entry. In particular, these questions aim at
leading students to find out difficulties they encountered during the process of
learning, also to provide themselves with plans and remedies in order to solve
these problems.
This kind of reflective journal is suitable for courses with regular tasks of
similar nature, like mathematics. This form of reflective journal is ideal and
most effective for helping your students to realize their problems. However, it
forgoes the space for them to have personal reflection, which also is an
important component for cultivating a lifelong learner.
Writing your Reflective Learning Journal
This course composes of different teaching and learning
activities, such as lecture, tutorial, discussion, take-home
assignment, presentation.

Notes:

Although a structured
reflective journal contains
specific questions to be
answered, this should be
executed with a fair amount of
flexibility to avoid trivial
entries of little significance to
the development of students
learning.

Similarly, make sure your

students understand that
answering the questions is not
the purpose of keeping a
reflective journal, that things
outside the area covered by
the questions may also be
included.

In the entry, you might want to write something about each of

these activities with the help of the following questions:

What points youve learnt from the activities?

How do I do in the activities?

Give one or two examples of your most successful acts

in the activities. Try to explain what things you did that
made them successful

Give one or two examples, if relevant, of errors or less

successful acts in the activities. What did you do wrong
or fail to do in each case

The next time you confront a similar situation, what if

anything, could you do differently to increase your

Reflective Learning Journal

Unstructured reflective learning journal

This type of reflective journal is characterized by little prompt questions

provided, which gave students the greatest freedom to ponder upon things that
had the greatest personal significance to them. This regular writing exercise
helped students organise their thoughts, reflect on their work, identify problems,
and find solution to them independently.
However, students often felt confused and uncertain about what to write in this
highly unstructured piece of writing. Therefore, it is recommendable to give
simple instructions and jump-start questions to give students a lift, but these
questions do not necessarily confine the structure or intrude the personal quality
of students writing. See the following template:
Writing your Reflective Learning Journal
This course composes of different teaching and learning
activities, such as lecture, tutorial, discussion, take-home
assignment, presentation.

Notes:

This piece of writing should

be highly unstructured,
therefore its important that
the guided questions provided
should be very open-ended, so
that allow students to carry
deep thinking on courserelated issues

Only a few guided questions

will do, otherwise, students
will be overwhelmed and
divert all their energy in
attempting all the questions
instead of taking a quality
reflection on their learning

In each journal entry, you might therefore want to write down

your reaction, comment, personal feelings, suggestion to each
of these teaching and learning activities. For example, you
can start by thinking:

Whats my interest in the course?

Whats my interest in the lecture?

Whats my reaction to a particular topic in this lecture?

Whats my opinion on the content of the course?

How do I like the format of each of the above teaching

and learning activities?

How can I relate other things directly or indirectly to

things that I have learnt in the course?

Reflective Learning Journal

The Prompt Question Bank

Facilitating reflective thinking

Asking students to write reflective journal seems easy at the first glance. However, students
often get lost and frustrated, and simply resort to reporting as many events as possible.
Students complain a lot and cry for guidelines to help them write good reflective journal.
We believe only when students can correctly understand and carry out the process of
reflective thinking, they can become genuine independent learners. To facilitate your
students reflective thinking you may include prompting questions in the Guide. This Prompt
Questions Bank is a collection of questions for this purpose.
Organisation of the Prompt Questions Bank

In this Bank, the prompting questions are systematically organised according to the following
dimensions:
Three elements of metacognitive reflection
The backbone of the Prompt Question Bank is a sequence of metacognitive reflections
composing of the three essential metacognitive abilities for independent, reflective learners.
They are:

Awareness of ones learning experience

Evaluation of the experience
Regulation in attitude and behaviour for better performance and more fruitful experience

Focuses of reflection
It is sometimes useful to provide students with focuses of reflection. This prevents them from
getting frustrated as a result of not knowing where to begin. It is also a means to direct your
students reflection to areas you particularly want them to develop.
In the Prompt Questions Bank, we provide two sets of focuses: one explores the learning
experience itself, the other thinks about the learning experience in relation to ones academic,
professional and personal development.
The first set Explore a learning experience deals with the specific and the immediate. This
helps improve their performance. The focuses of reflection are:
Content - the whats of the learning experience
Process - the hows of the learning experience
Reasons - the whys of the learning experience

Reflective Learning Journal

The second set concerns long-term issues and widening the perspective of students, helping
them see the relevance of and appreciate what they are learning. It engages students to think
of a learning experience in relation to their
Academic development
Professional development
Personal development

Reflective Learning Journal

The Prompt Questions Bank (Also known as Reflection Menu)

Area 1
Content
(What)

Process
(How)

Explore a learning experience

Awareness
What have I learnt?

How did I learn / do it?

Evaluation
Do I understand what I have
learnt?

Regulation
What can I do in order to
gain a better understanding?

What else do I need to

learn?

Where can I find more

information?

How effective is this

strategy?

How can I make this

strategy more effective?

What strategy have I used in

learning this topic?
Reasons
(why)

Is the way I do it the best

way?

Why learn it?

Why would I think so?

What is learning?

Is this the only purpose of

learning?

What would be a more

useful way to understand
learning?
How could this learning
experience be interpreted
differently?

Area 2

Think of a learning experience in relation to

Academic
developmen
t

Awareness
How does this learning
experience contribute to my
academic development?
What is/are my short-term /
long-term academic goal(s)?

Evaluation
What does this learning
experience tell about my
choice of academic goal and
path?

Regulation
All things considered, is this
goal a suitable goal?

Am I making good
progress?

What other paths can I take

to achieve my goals?

Are there any other options?

Am I on the right track?

What obstacles have I
encountered?

Professional
developmen
t
Personal
developmen
t

What is the source of the

obstacles?

How can I remove those

obstacles?

Am I on the right track?

What other paths can I take

to achieve my goals?

Same as academic development, just that this time think about the learning experience in
relation to your professional development instead of academic development.
What does this learning
experience mean to me?
How does it matter to me if
I failed or succeeded?

What does this learning

experience tell me about my
potentials, and myself as a
person?

What do I know about

myself?
How am I living the most of
myself?

Reflective Learning Journal

Using the bank creatively

There are numerous ways to use the bank. Here are a few ideas that we could offer:
Option 1: Random selection
This is a quick and easy way to build in tips and prompts to your student guide for a more
unrestricted kinds of reflective learning journal. Use a list of randomly selected questions to
trigger thoughts in students when their ideas run dry.
Option 2: Choosing a focus of reflection
Choose the focus of reflection, which you might want your students to reflect the most on,
then you can simply use the blocks of questions in that category as suggested in the Prompt
Question Bank in order to guide your students through.
Option 3: Reflection Menu
Instead of selecting the reflective questions for your students, you can allow them to make the
choices themselves. This has the advantage of further developing their independence and
metacognitive abilities. (You may use the guidelines below with Reflection Menu as the
detail guidelines of your students guidebook)

Reflection Menu
What to reflect on?
One important step in completing this reflective journal is to select your
own reflection questions to reflect on from the Reflection Menu.
In the Reflection Menu, there are two areas of reflection, each representing
three focuses of reflection.
You have the choice of reflecting on which focus(es) in each entry.
But at the end of this semester, you should have reflected on every focus for
at least once.
Some suggestions:
Reflect on one or more focuses for each entry.
You are not required to answer all the questions. They are only there to help
you.
But you are strongly advised to go through all three stages (awareness,
evaluation and regulation) every time to get the full benefit of the exercise.
Tips:
You might find it hard to limit yourself to the focuses of reflection as soon
as you start writing. Follow your mind and go where it takes you.
If that is the case, you could use the menu as a checklist to see what you
have covered this time. Start from one of those you have left out next time.

Reflective Learning Journal

Writing your own prompt questions

Our list is non-exhaustive, feel free to use your own prompting questions if ours couldnt do
the best job for you! There are no rules in how to write the best questions for guiding
reflective thinking. But there are certain things that might be useful to consider when you
write your own prompt questions. Here we shall describe those we have used in building our
Prompt Question Bank, for your reference.
Metacognitive reflection
The backbone of the Prompt Question Bank is a sequence of metacognitive reflections the
awareness of ones learning experience, the evaluation of the experience, and the regulation
of ones attitude and behaviour for better performance and more fruitful experience. They are
elements of ones metacognitive abilities that enable one to become better than oneself, i.e. to
grow, and reflection is the mediating process essential to the development and operation of
these abilities. Therefore it is recommendable that when you write your own prompt
questions set, bear in mind sequence of metacognitive reflections so that your questions may
guide your students towards developing themselves as independent, reflective learners.
1. Awareness of ones learning experience
Awareness of the current state is a necessary prerequisite of any conscious improvement.
Students often do their study without knowing much about their current state of learning (e.g.
how they learn, why they learn, etc). Reflective learning journal is a good place for one to
start noticing their learning experiences.
2. Evaluation of the experience
Between being aware of ones learning experience and taking steps to do better is a stage
where judgements must be made. An evaluation of the current state identifies problems and
creates a felt need for change. It is sometimes useful to provide some criteria for evaluation.
For example, in the prompt question Do I understand what I have learnt, understanding is a
criterion for the evaluation, as contrast to memorisation that some students believe.
3. Regulation of ones attitude and behaviour
Knowing how one is doing does not lead to improvement unless one is willing to make some
adjustments accordingly. This is where remedies are generated and alternatives considered.
Writing the plans down also helps students commit to doing them. Questions at this stage are
very important as they help students look at the situation in a positive light, rather than
leaving them in despair which the finding out of problems at the evaluation stage has created.

Reflective Learning Journal

Implementing Reflective Learning Journal

Reflective learning journal is useful in cultivating lifelong learners if implemented
successfully. However, as a novel idea, the relevance and value of keeping a reflective
learning journal are not readily perceivable to many students such that the time and effort it
requires can be justified. In this section, we shall share with you some ideas that may help
you in implementing reflective learning journal successfully.
Launching the reflective journal keeping

To motivate students in engaging in reflective journal keeping, it is important to show them

that the teacher cares and the department supports this continuous assignment, and that it is a
worthwhile thing to do. Here are a few reminders and suggestions:

Explain to them clearly what a reflective learning journal is.

Mention the benefits of keeping such a journal.
Give them a briefing in the administrative particulars of this exercise, e.g. length per
entry, assessment criteria etc.
If resources allow, provide students with a nice simple binder to keep their journal
entries. After all, the collection of entries should be something nice to look at.

Clear instructions and continuous support are important as students might feel quite lost and
confused at first, not knowing how to begin. A comprehensive guide might just be what they
need.
Preparing a comprehensive guide for a reflective learning journal

The content of the guide should pretty much offers the support and guidance students need,
which may vary depending on your course and subject. We suggest the following basic items:
Cover

We suggest giving the guide a cover not just to make it look nice, but to
convey the objective of the exercise in a direct, visual manner. A nice cover
also communicates the importance given to it by the teacher. It is also
recommendable to let students design their own cover to personalise their
journal.

Introduction

Briefly introduce what a reflective learning journal is and the benefits of

keeping one. This part reinforces the introduction given in class as mentioned
above.

General
instructions

Object of reflection What learning experience to reflect on? It could be

anything about learning or anything related to the course.
Frequency and length The emphasis should be on quality rather than
quantity, on regularity rather than frequency. One major benefit of reflective
journal writing is to develop the habit of reflecting on ones process of
learning, and a habit only develop through regular practice over time.

10

Reflective Learning Journal

Requirement for submission Because this exercise of journal keeping lasts

over a long period of time, it is useful to set some checkpoints to give the
exercise a time frame and the teacher an opportunity to give feedback and/or
assess the work.
Pattern of Feedback Some feedback is necessary for early entries to make
sure that the students are on the right track. The level of feedback depends on
the level of interaction and involvement you wish to gain through this
activity. Feedback offers guidance and support to students and is important in
keeping their interest in making entries. Some teachers used group discussion
as a means of feedback and attained very good results (e.g. Sinclair, 2001).
Assessment The assessment of reflective journal is a struggle between giving
the freedom of writing and guaranteeing the willingness to write. Some
teachers resolve this by checking for completion rather than in-depth grading.
This frees students the worry of being penalised for writing what comes to
their minds, so that personal reflection can take place. If grade is to be given,
a protocol of assessment will be a useful guide for students. Here is a sample
protocol:
(1) No entry or entry not related to the studying of the subject
(2) Provide a descriptive account of ones study
(3) Provide evaluative account of ones study with reference to ones learning
process
(4) Demonstrate effort in planning for improvement based on the evaluative
outcome of reflection
Detail
guidelines

Guiding questions can be included in the detail guidelines section to help

students get a grip on making reflective entries. Guiding questions can aid or
hinder reflection. See Designing a Reflective Learning Journal for further
discussions.

Help for
students

This section provides quick help to making journal entries, offering tips to
matters such as content and style of writing. Uncertainties in such matters
could make the task much harder thus de-motivates students.

Sample
entry

In addition to clear instructions and suitable prompt questions, a sample entry

would be most useful for students new to keeping reflective learning journal,
as it shows them how the answers to the prompt questions may be put
together to form a coherent piece of writing. It is recommendable to write
your own sample entry following the instructions and guiding questions you
are about to give to your students. This helps you evaluate the feasibility of
the task and the comprehensibility of your instructions.

A sample of such a guide for keeping a reflective learning journal is included in the appendix
of this document.

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Appendix
Sample guide for students

In this section you will find a sample guide for the subject Creative and Critical Thinking. It
is developed based on and includes components as described in earlier sections. Some
components can be used in most cases, while some will need modification to suit the specific
needs of your subject. Please note that this is only a sample. We strongly recommend you
develop your own according to your needs. For details of developing such a guide please
refer to the section on Implementing reflective learning journal.
Component

Remarks

Resources

Cover
Introduction
General instructions

Change the department and course title to use

Good for general use
Modify to suit your needs

Implementing Reflective
Learning Journal

Detail guidelines

Need to prepare your own

Designing a Reflective
Learning Journal
The Prompt question bank

Help for students

Sample entry

Good for general use

Need to prepare your own

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Reflective Learning Journal

What is Reflective Learning Journal?

Reflective journal is designed to help you think deeply about your learning, especially on
issues such as: your progress in learning, the difficulties you encountered in the process of
learning, the strategies you have taken to get around those difficulties, and your evaluation of
your own performance.

What can you get from writing reflective learning journal?

For the study, writing a reflective learning journal helps you:
bring together theory and practice,
yield better understanding of the course material
For your development as a successful and independent learner, it helps you:
See your strength and weakness as a learner
Find out the methods of learning which suit your own learning style
Notice how you can improve your learning in the future
Gain a clearer picture of your learning progress and so in a better position to plan your
learning

CC2002 CREATIVE AND CRITICAL THINKING

STUDENT
1

General Instructions
Quick reference

What learning experience to reflect on?

The object of reflection for this journal is your experience in
learning during the week. See Detail guidelines for the
specifics.

Your study

Frequency and length expected

You are required to make one entry per week, each about 250
words of length. You are advised to make entry regularly rather
than leaving it till before a submission date, and the quality of
reflection should be the emphasis of your entries rather than
worrying about the word count.

Once a week
250 words/entry

Pattern of feedback
A general feedback will be given to the entries in a submission.
If there is an entry that has particular significance to you that
you want feedback on, you can mark it with an asterisk on the
top right corner and special attention will be given to it.

All /selected entries

Assessment
Your reflective learning journal will contribute to 30% of your
final grade for this subject. The criterion for assessment is the
satisfactory completion of the task, i.e. making regular entry as
required. The focus of this exercise is on reflection.

Check for completion

30% of final grade

Requirement for submission

Your journal will be collected in three stages, on the dates
specified on the adjacent column.

16-10-2002
13-11-2002
18-12-2002

Detail Guidelines
This section offers guidelines to making journal entries that are reflective and significant to
you personally.
What learning experience to reflect on?
Reflect on your process of learning. Record any observations,
experience, thoughts and insights that are significant to you as a
learner, or even as a person.
Prompt questions for your reference:
The function of prompt questions is to stimulate your reflective
thinking. You dont need to (in fact, you are not supposed to)
answer every one of them in any entry.

How what I have learned relates to my other experiences?

What implications does it have regarding my learning?
What difficulties have I encountered in applying my
knowledge in dealing with everyday situations?
What would be the causes for those difficulties and how could
I overcome them?

What has been discussed today in class? What does it mean to me?
What do I find difficult in understanding? Why?
What do I find difficult in accepting? Why?

Could it have been otherwise?

Sample entry
Here is a sample entry to a reflective learning journal with teachers comments on the right.

The third lecture taught about critical reading. In the part of defining critical reading, I found myself always read books passively and

Miss recommends us to jot notes when we read: after understanding every paragraphs, write down the words in my own expression. It

I also have a question: We spent almost the whole lecture to talk about argument, how to distinguish it from other statements and ident

I got many difficulties and questions in writing this second reflective journal. At first, I think I know well to write journal, but later, I d

The content of the third lecture is quite hard for me to apply in my daily life. Apart from the above mentioned problem, I also have a q

Acknowledgement: Special thanks to Wincy Lee of HKCC for providing the above journal entry.

Quick Help on Reflective Journal

Writing
What to write in the Reflective Learning Journal?
Reflective learning journal writing is very different from academic assignments that you have
been writing. It is a piece of flexible, personal, informal piece of writing. If you are unsure
about how to start, and how to write, dont just scrabble something in the journal, as writing
something truly reflective is the most important part of the process, see if our tips can give
you a lift!

I dont know what to write!

5 tips on what to write in a journal entry:
- Start off with whatever in your mind about your learning experience in the course
- Dont just throw in events in chronological order
- Describe the meaning of what you learnt in the course. Also, your reaction, feeling,
opinions, views on both the learning process and the learnt material
- List the goods and bads, strengths and weaknesses you consider you demonstrate in the
course of your learning
- Make advice for yourself and make plan for your learning in the near future

Now I know what to put in the entry, but how

should I write it?
5 tips on how to write a journal entry:
- Write in first person, as if you are writing a letter to a friend
- There is no right or wrong answer for a journal entry. Therefore, feel free to express your
ideas, opinion, and thoughts
- Dont hesitate to share your personal experience if that helps to illustrate your point
- Dont limit yourself to words diagrams and pictures are ok too
- Dont be too intimidated by English rules. Its okay to make minor grammatical mistakes
if that does not interfere the transmission of ideas. So dont put too much thoughts about
how to write good English, instead spend more effort on what to write