Guest Writer, Rajesh Krishnamuti: Introducing reflective writing to EAL students using a backward design approach

Recently, I had to teach reflective writing to a group of international students. I began to reflect on how I could introduce this new concept to them. I use the word ‘new’ because I was teaching a bright calibre of students who were unfamiliar with what it means to reflect on one’s learning. It was a new concept for many of the students who come from different learning cultures where neither critical thinking nor reflective learning is encouraged.

Reflective writing is a common assessment tool in many undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Yet, it remains an unfamiliar concept for some students. The situation is compounded with needing to use specific reflective models that are normally prescribed as course requirements. A considerable amount of literature has been published on the teaching of reflective writing; however, there has been relatively little literature on how the nature of reflective writing is first broached or introduced to students.

I have always believed that students should be conscious of how they learn and be made aware of the classroom processes they engage in. As enablers and facilitators, teachers can play their part by telling them why they do what they do. I believe that knowing why is key to effective and sustained learning. So how does this come to bear on the teaching of reflective thinking and/or writing? Boud (2001) proposes a reflection model which focuses on “reflection in the midst of action” and conceives of the phrase “reflection-in-action” to describe the ongoing process of observing, noticing and intervening that occurs in the classroom (p. 13). This applies to the teaching of reflective writing as the reflective process is in fact an ongoing phenomenon that should occur at key stages of any lesson.  

Wiggins and McTighe (2005) state that a good lesson design is one where the teacher can “state with clarity what the student should understand and be able to do as a result of any plan and irrespective of any constraints we face”. They add further that the questions teachers need to ask are “what kinds of learning are sought? And how can they be evidenced” (p. 14-15). Wiggins and McTighe’s questions enabled me to see that providing a learning environment where students get to engage with the elements of reflective thinking is important to the process of reflective writing.

In conversations with my students throughout the course of the semester, I learnt that many of them wanted more classroom activities. They wanted opportunities where they could get their ‘hands dirty’. Thus, I felt that to begin the lesson with three fundamental questions using the placemat method was an ideal active learning strategy to broach the concept of reflective thinking to my students.

The three questions that were designed for the placemat activity had three very different objectives. The first question was designed to get them to think about their own individual learning experiences in their home countries. The objective here was a learner-centred approach where their lived experiences were key to accessing notions of what reflective writing entailed. This was followed by a general question about their strengths as a writer-thinker as the process of reflection is also about developing an awareness of one’s strengths and weaknesses. This organic approach would culminate in the final question about their own interpretations of reflective writing.

“Learning is making sense, not just remembering” (Petty, 2006)

The title of Geoffrey Petty’s article sums up my teaching belief succinctly. Whilst there is a critical space for knowledge acquisition in learning, I agree with Petty that knowledge is but a means to an end. An equal, if not greater importance should also be placed on how the learner acquires knowledge. It is thus the learner’s needs rather than the demands of the subject that go to heart of student-centred learning (Race and Pickford, 2007). In the course of my teaching, I discovered that the most meaningful encounters occur when the learner sees and knows how (s)he learns.

(for more information on the actual details of the lesson design, kindly contact the author directly)

Rajesh Krishnamuti is currently as Associate Lecturer in Language and Learning at Murdoch University. He has close to 20 years of teaching experience and has taught widely in many undergraduate and postgraduate course, He is currently completing his doctorate in Communications, Media and Cultural Studies at Edith Cowan University, Australia.

References

Boud, D. (2001). Using journal writing to enhance reflective practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. No. 90, 9-17.

Petty, G. (2006). Learning is making sense, not just remembering. In Evidence based teaching: A practical approach (pp. 8 – 40). Oxford: Oxford University Press.  

Race, P., and Pickford, R. (2007). Supporting individual learning and responding to learning needs. In Making teaching work: ‘Teaching smarter’ in post-compulsory education (pp. 21 – 30). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Wiggins, G. P., McGrant, McTinghe, J. (2005). Understanding by design Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.