How do I introduce reflection? | Reflection Toolkit

If you have decided to use reflection in your initiative and may already have found an appropriate implementation method, one of the next questions is how to successfully introduce it to your reflectors.

Term	How we use it on this page
Assignment	Refers to any task completed in the reflector’s own time outside of lectures/workshops etc such as reflective projects, essays, or journals. These may or may not be assessed.
Activity	Refers to any task completed during lectures/workshops, where time has been set aside for the reflector, such as reflective discussions, group work, journal writing (with protected time), or presentations. These may or may not be assessed.

Overview

Ensuring that you keep the following considerations in mind should allow you to successfully implement reflections in your initiative.

Be positive about reflection

If you do not see the value from the concept of reflection, do not teach it. When introducing reflection, it will be clear to your students or participants whether you see the value or not. Without a clear reason and value behind using reflection, you will not get the reflectors excited to do your assignment or activity, which will reduce the value of the task.

Communicate its value to the reflectors

To introduce reflection effectively, it can be helpful to inform reflectors about the benefits of reflection and your motivation behind using it. This communicates the value of your teaching and assignments to the reflectors, and can encourage them to engage fully with the tasks.

Interviewing people about their experience with reflection, we consistently heard people saying they would have engaged properly earlier if only someone had made them understand the value sooner.

Be clear on definitions and ready to tackle misconceptions

One challenge in introducing reflection can be that people have different understandings and definitions of reflection.

To implement reflection successfully, you have to make sure that everyone shares one understanding or definition of reflection. We suggest using the definition included on the homepage of the Reflection Toolkit, but if you have found/are using another one that resonates better with you, that can work equally well. The most important aspect is that you are consistent when using definitions.

Be aware that people might use different words or might not like the word ‘reflection’..

Different terminology for reflection is especially seen in natural sciences or medicine, where words such as ‘review’ or ‘processing’ are common. Moreover, the process of working through a log book highlighting ‘things that went wrong’, ‘why that might be’, and ‘what to do to mitigate the risk in the future’ is familiar to many coming from the natural sciences.

Therefore, choosing terms people are familiar with can be useful. Otherwise, speaking openly about people’s reservation with reflection and then defining it clearly so that there is no doubt what you mean when you use it in your context can be helpful when introducing reflection.

Use reflection to introduce reflection

In practice, it can be helpful to ask a couple of reflective questions initially and let people work through them. When the participants are done, suggest that they just reflected and then state your definition.

This can be helpful as often the people who are against the word ‘reflection’ are not against the process itself. Using reflection as a means to introduce the term will allow people to experience the process and then reassign the word to it. This, of course is just one way of doing it, but can be helpful.