PROF REG

WRITING REFLECTIVELY IN YOUR REVALIDATION JOURNAL

The LIANZA Professional Registration Board expects you to write reflectively in the ‘What specific thing/s did you learn professionally?’ field for each entry in your professional registration journal. This article will help you understand what reflective writing is and how to use it in writing your journal.

WHY REFLECTIVE WRITING?

The Board asks you to reflect on your learning to show your continuing professional development. Professional development is advancing your skills and competencies that contribute to your success in the workplace.

Reflecting on practice has become an important part of the continuing competence process. It gives you the opportunity to step back and examine your work critically, enabling you to identify areas for improvement and gain a better understanding of your work practices. By writing reflectively, professionals can develop more effective strategies for tackling work-related challenges and further their professional growth. Reflective writing encourages professionals to pause and consider how their work is progressing and how it could be improved. This helps to identify areas of growth and areas needing further development.

THE REFLECTIVE WRITING PROCESS

Reflective writing involves three processes:

1. 2. 3.

experiencing something

thinking (reflecting) on the experience, and

thinking about your learning from that experience.

Reflective writing is written in the first person. Tell us about what you learned and what conclusions you reached about the activity, not about your team or colleagues e.g. “I think” not “we learned”.

Reflective writing gives you an opportunity to think deeply about something you've learned or an experience you've had. There is neither a right nor a wrong way of reflective thinking - only questions to explore.

A common theme in many journals is that the reflective comment is not reflective but descriptive. The description of the activity, however detailed, is not what the Board is looking for. To avoid the trap of falling into a purely descriptive narrative consider using one of these phrases to kick-start your reflection, such as:

The most important thing was...

At the time

I felt...

This was probably due to...

After thinking about

I learned that... it...

More advice on reflective writing is available here.

Or read this blog post on the LIANZA Kōrero blog.