Read guidance on how to embed reflection in your teaching and assessment.
What is reflection?
Reflection is the process of thinking deeply about a particular subject, typically an event or activity in the past. It's an active process through which we can make sense of experiences, like thinking about decisions taken and lessons learned, in order to guide future actions.
Reflection is often a new and difficult skill for students. It should be carefully scaffolded and factored into assessment workloads.
Why use reflection?
Reflection promotes critical thinking and metacognition (the process of thinking about one’s own thinking and learning). It enhances students' comprehension of the subject matter while simultaneously equipping them for upcoming challenges. It cultivates adaptability, self-directed learning, and a proactive mindset, preparing students for both personal and professional development in the future.
Assessing students’ reflective accounts of the approaches and processes they used to inform or create their work, rather assessing solely the assessment product, can make assessments more AI-resilient.
How to introduce reflection
Suggestions for how to introduce the purpose, process and practice of reflection to your students.
1. Discuss the purpose of reflection
Reflection is an undervalued skill. Students will be more likely to engage in reflection if they understand how it will benefit their learning.
Explain to your students that reflective learning will foster critical thinking skills that help them to make sense of and grow from a learning experience. It's also important to emphasise that students’ abilities to reflect upon their own work are not only important in terms of improving writing, but are vital skills to develop as they move into professional environments. You can also direct students to the Skills Hub’s guidance on reflective writing.
2. Provide students with reflective models
Reflection is a skill you need to help students develop. Providing your students with a reflective model will help them better understand the process and structure their reflection. They will also direct students toward analytical expression rather than simple description.
Explain to students that employing a reflective model doesn't mean following a strict set of steps. It's fine to use one reflective model as a foundation and to incorporate prompting questions from other models if they better suit the learning context.
Some reflective models may work better with particular disciplines than others. The choice depends on the goals and context of reflection.
- Commonly used reflective models
Gibbs' Reflective Cycle (1998)
Disciplines: Widely used in healthcare and education.
Features: Consists of six stages: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan.
Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle (1984)
Disciplines: Applied in education, business, and psychology.
Features: Four stage cycle: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation.
Schön's Reflective Practice (1991)
Disciplines: Applied in education, architecture, and professional practice.
Features: Differentiates between "reflection-in-action" and "reflection-on-action," emphasising the importance of learning in real-time.
Rolfe’s Framework for Reflexive Practice (2001)
Disciplines: Widely used in healthcare and social work
Features: Consists of three phases: Descriptive Phase, Interpretive Phase and Outcome Phase.
3. Explain the difference between discursive and reflective writing
Most university assignments involve discursive writing, which presents arguments using reasoning and evidence. It's crucial to convey to students that reflective writing necessitates a personal writing style focused on first-person experiences, complemented by references to the literature and personal insights.
It's important to point out to students that the essence of reflective writing lies in being analytical, rather than just being descriptive. Encourage them to delve into the "why" behind an experience, rather than just describing the events.
- Reflective sentence starters
To help students in achieving this, you could use these sentence starters:
- The most important thing was...
- At the time I felt...
- This was likely due to...
- After thinking about it...
- I learned that...
- I need to know more about...
- Later I realised...
- This was because...
- This was like...
- I wonder what would happen if...
- I'm still unsure about...
- My next steps are...
4. Cultivate reflection in the classroom
Some ways to encourage reflection among students:
Exit slips
Before students leave your class, ask students to write a quick response to a reflective question. If your students are online, they can share ideas on a digital collaborative space such as Padlet.
Think-pair-share
Incorporate think-pair-share activities where students have a few minutes to individually reflect on a question or prompt, discuss their thoughts with a partner, and then share their insights with the whole class.
Concept mapping
Use concept mapping as a visual tool for reflection. Students can create mind maps to connect concepts, ideas, and their own understanding, fostering a deeper level of thinking. Learn more about concept mapping tools at Sussex.
Diamond nine
Ask students to rank nine ideas, viewpoints, or pieces of information into what they consider highest to lowest importance into a diamond shaped hierarchy. This can be done in person using cards or post-its or using an online collaborative tool.
5. Discuss learning from previous assessments or feedback
Lead a discussion of insights from previous assessments completed and/or feedback received, like asking students to identify what they will continue doing, need to do differently, and why. This will also help develop student assessment and feedback literacy.
Building reflection into your assessments
There are various ways you can include reflection in your assessments.
- Example assessment approaches
Course or module content
Integrate reflective prompts into assignments or discussions. Ask open-ended questions that prompt students to think deeply about the material, their learning process, and connections to real-world applications.
Learning outcomes
Ask students to reflect on their performance in a project, exam, or presentation, and to explain how they have met specific learning outcomes.
Feedback
Require students submit assignment cover sheets, identifying areas they were least confident in/would like feedback on, or aspects they have tried to improve based on previous feedback. Provide pro formas or prompts
Ask students to include a short reflective commentary on how they applied feedback on drafts, such as by including a reflective piece as part of the portfolio of assessment task. It could be useful to provide prompts to support this reflection.
Skills
Ask students to reflect on the academic and transferrable skills they have developed through a module or assignment, how they intersect, and their relevance to specific industries and/or students preferred futures.
Peer work or peer feedback
Embed peer feedback for individual and group assessments. This process not only helps the receiving student but also prompts the giver to reflect on the work of others
Approach and process
Go beyond requiring students to acknowledge the use of generative AI tools, like asking them to include a reflection on how they used generative AI in the preparation of their submission. You could ask them what they learned from that process, or to discuss the difference between the AI output and their own critical engagement with the assessment topic.
Important considerations
Before adding a reflection element to an existing assessment task, consider the impact on the student's assessment workload for the module, and whether the workload for other assessments need to be reduced to accommodate.
When adding a reflection to an existing assessment task, make sure you clarify to students:
- how the reflective element will be marked and the criteria you will use
- the word limit for the relfective element and whether this is included in, or additional to, the word limit for the associated submission
- how you expepct the reflection to be submitted. For example, as a section in, or appendix to, the main assessment task.