Reflection in Professional Contexts

Reflective writing is not simply limited to your ongoing growth as a college student. In fact, many employers in various fields require workers to engage in reflective practices to increase productivity, track progress, and identify potential workplace concerns.

In the video below, educational developer Neil Currant provides some background on reflective engagement before analyzing the strengths of a reflection written by a new engineering lecturer:

You should notice that even though the teacher is writing from a scholarly perspective within a particular, job-related context, he/she is still adhering to many of the same principles we use in first-year writing by completing the following steps:

(1) Identifying strengths

(2) Acknowledging challenges and questioning motivations

(3) Explaining the rationale for his/her practices and the decisions he/she has made

(4) Considering multiple perspectives and examining the feedback he/she has received

(5) Providing specific examples of how he/she plans to improve