1. Reflective Writing for Education Majors
3 November 2015
Dr. Heather Blain Vorhies
UNC Charlotte
Writing Resources Center

2. Reflective Writing
Reflective writing requires careful observation and sophisticated analysis.

3. Reflective writing allows us to examine the context, the meaning, and the greater implications of an experience.
----- Meeting Notes (9/24/14 10:45) -----
Peer review is a standard professional practice for academics in all fields. Your graduate professors will expect you to engage in peer review with your cohort (those in your graduate program) without them telling you to. This will be an unspoken expectation.

4. Double-Entry Notes (Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater)
Record
This side contains direct observations (concrete, verifiable details).
Respond
This side contains personal reactions, opinions, feelings, and questions about what’s on the left-hand side.

5. Key Reflective Questions
What surprised me about the classroom? (Tracking assumptions)
What intrigued me? (Tracking positions)
What disturbed me? (Tracking tensions)
How does this connect to the theory I’m reading in class?

6. Let’s Practice!

7. More Specific Questions for Classroom Observation
Why do I view the classroom or this student like that?
What assumptions have I made about the situation, the student, or the teacher?
How else could I interpret this situation?

8. Free-writing
Read through your notes and then give yourself a timed free-write.
It’s often good to give yourself a question or a specific observation to work with. For example, “Why is it that Mrs. K’s response to Tanya bothered me so much?”
Feel free to go off topic.

9. Web or Cluster Mapping

10. Some Things to Keep in Mind

11. Reflective writing will provide a great deal of descriptive detail, but this does not mean that you will include every single detail from your notes.
Instead, you might provide a thick description of one particular moment that triggered your reflective thought process.
Make sure that every reflective writing piece includes analysis.

12. Why if I’m not doing an observation reflection?
You may be required to do reflective writing on readings or even on your own writing.
You can approach these kinds of reflection in much the same way.
What do I see? What assumptions, positions, and tensions do I find from myself or from the author?
What questions remain for me?

13. Campus Resources The Writing Resources Center
Our website:
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14. Web Resources
Purdue Online Writing Lab on Observing
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Writing Center
The Visual Thesaurus