Reflective Journal Analysis

Unit 1

Reflection as defined by the Oxford English dictionary (2012) as the action or process of thinking deeply about a subject, involving influence from one’s life and experiences, thus a reflective journal is designed to help me think deeply about my learning, especially on issues such as: my progress in learning, the difficulties I may have encountered in the process of learning, the strategies I have taken to get around those difficulties, and my evaluation of my own performance.

For the study, writing a reflective learning journal helps me: bring together theory and practice and yield better understanding of the course material while for my development as a successful and independent learner, it helps me: See my strength and weakness

This includes active versus passive learning, contextualising experience – particularly social – as a form of active learning, as well as the benefit of diversity of experience. As a learner I am encouraged to view reflective learning holistically. The importance of dialog was emphasised, particularly in dealing with the emotional aspect of learning, and the obstacles to learning and how to overcome

Reflection can been described as a process of turning experience into learning, that is, it is a way of exploring experience in order to learn new things from it. Accrding to Boud, eogh, and Walker (1985:19) define reflection as “those intellectual and affective activities in which are engaged in by individuals to explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings and appreciations”. Reflection often involves taking the unprocessed, raw material of one’s experience and engaging with it Inorder to derive sense from what has occurred. It often involves exploring messy and confused events and focusing on the thoughts and emotions that accompany them. Reflection can be undertaken as an informal personal activity either for its own sake or as a part of a structured course. Reflection may focus on special activities taking for instance workshop activities, events of the past experience for example, what learners easily recall from prior experience, or concurrent activities in the learners’ workplace and community that can act as a stimulus for learning. In this context, the word event is used to refer to any activity from which learning may result, whether it happens regardless of its location that is whether in a classroom, a workshop, a formally scheduled placement,