Reflectve Journal

Reflection has the potential to form the basis of personal transformation and lifelong learning. Experience in itself is not a suffident condition in order to learn. Without reflection, any experience can be easily lost as well as its inherent potential for learning (Gibbs, 1998, pp.9). Reflection is primary in any form of experiential learning to integrate new understanding (‘know what and ‘know how’) into future action. Reflection can be seen as a form of internal dialogue where we make sense of our past experiences. You are asked to keep a weekly learning journal over five weeks (Weeks 3-6; 4 weekly logs in total)to be incorporated in your Appendices with this assignment) written in the first person. The weekly journal should be no more than an A4 page (or 300 words) with the following sub-headings: 1. Date: 2. Learning Event/Experience: (this may be more than one learning event/experience each week). Don’t make this too long. What is it? What happened? Why am I talking about it? Think about following common types of questions: What? Where? Who? When? I suggest you select your learning event based on your own practice or experience during the course and in relation to existing literature. 3. Interpretation: What did I learn? Why is it important, relevant, interesting, useful? How is it similar or different from other scholars and commentators? How can it be explored and explained using current theories? What evidence base supports my conclusions especially in comparison to others? Analysis is an important skill to develop as part of your interpretation. Here you are comparing and contrasting different elements and explaining how they fit into a whole through an interconnection of relationships between different elements. You may find diagrams useful in this regard. Think about common questions such as: How? Why? What if? I suggest you study relevant literature (books and journals) and develop an ability to make connections between the literature and your experiences (particularly from practical tasks on this course). You will understand how aspects of your practice are relevant to the literature. 4. Outcomes: What have I learnt from this? Focus on personal learning points. What went well and what went wrong? What could I have done better? This is developing evaluative skills judging the success and failure of your experience. Think about common questions: So what? What next? 5. Development of Knowledge & Skills: What are the long-term implications? What areas of knowledge and/or skills have you developed or improved significantly? Your learning will be able to make recommendations for future action and/or practice. A reflective journal is a way of thinking critically and analytically about your experiences that connects together concepts (ideas), materials, and techniques into your learning context Learning experiences and events often arise from sources of inspiration that may involve self-questioning and interaction with different ideas and concepts arising from the course and/or external reading. Such ideas may emerge from theorists or empirical findings in the field (including from academic joumals, practitioner journals, newspaper and magazine articles) set in different social, political, economic, technological, environmental and legal contexts. You are asked to submit a 1500 words reflective journal for this assignment Your reflective journal should engage with critical reading and writing. This will look at different aspects of quantitative methods from different perspectives. If you are studying journal articles, your writing will provide a clear line of reasoning providing evidence to support your insights and support your conclusions. You will make clear how other perspectives reach different conclusions to your own based on an analysis of your own practice as well as ideas and evidence of other scholars and commentators. Apart from exploring and explaining ideas and processes involved in quantitative methods, your reflective journal will consider what went well and what went wrong. 1. Prioritise and provide a brief overview of one significant learning experiences on the course 2. Explore the experience objectively 3. Recall the specifics of the event subjectively 4. Evaluate the experience and discuss what did and did not go well 5. Describe how the experience confirms or challenges existing knowledge 6. Assemble all the new ideas into new-found knowledge or insights 7. Develop actionable plans towards positive change for the future; especially your own learning