*Derived from University of New South Wales Learning Centre Online Reflective Writing Resource
Reflective writing is:
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● your reaction to new experiences, incidents or new knowledge gained from your placement your reaction to thoughts and emotions relating to your placement experience a thought process to analyse your placement experience a chance to secure understanding of your actions and conduct during the placement an opportunity to engage with an important type of writing skill a way to gain added value from your placement
Reflective writing is not:
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● a normal university essay a descriptive account, although it may contain factual statements a way to gain a more balanced perspective (e.g. both good or bad placements are a valuable learning experience)
To build on your pre-existing skills as a historian
Reflective writing helps you build and reinforce these skills by connecting:
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● your pre-existing knowledge and what you have learnt on the placement your historical knowledge gained from your university historical learning and the practical knowledge gained from the placement
● historical knowledge and the real world of the placement
To explore how you learnt as a historian on the placement
Reflective writing provides you with an opportunity to analyse and discuss your placement learning, both what you have learned and how you learned it.
To refine what you have learnt on the placement
Reflective writing allows you to:
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● to understand better your placement experience combine your practical knowledge from the placement with your existing university
● historical learning identify the questions arising from the placement
To reflect on your failures and successes during the placement

Reflecting on mistakes you made during the placement may help prevent them from happening in your future employment post-graduation. On the other hand, reflecting on the successful aspects of your placement may allow you to draw upon the placement experience in your future employment.
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What can I include in my assignment?
● Experiences, thoughts and observations you have had on the placement, and how they relate to you university historical learning
The high and low points of the placement
Questions arising from the placement
Conclusions you have drawn about the world of work as a result of your placement
How practical applications of history relate to history in the university
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As reflective writing draws upon your thoughts, it is mostly subjective. So as well as providing factual information in your assignment you can offer your own insights and opinions on your placement experience.
● Reflective writing combines description (what, when, who) and analysis (how, why, what if).
Your conclusion will often contain more questions than answers.
A reflective assignment often makes use of different types of writing and language
○ descriptive (what you did on the placement)
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○ explanatory (why and how things happened on the placement) expressive (your thoughts on the placement)
You can normally use personal pronouns such as “I”, “my” or “we”
● Avoid the use of non-standard English
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Think of an incident that you experienced during the placement
Describe what happened
What was your role?
What was the role of the other people involved in the incident?
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What emotions and insights are associated with the incident?
How would you describe the incident to another person?
How might this incident relate to your skills as a historian?
What other perspectives, theories or concepts could be applied to your analysis of the incident?
Derived from the University of New South Wales, The Learning Centre, Academic Skills Resources,
Reflective Writing. http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/reflect.html
Accessed on 16 January 2013