Employability Skills Log – Reflective Writing Guide

Employability Skills Log – Reflective Writing Guide

As part of your Employability Skills Log you are required to write and submit a 250-word reflection. Your submission should also include a link to your website or alternative record of your Employability Skills Log as well as a live link to your completed Employability Skills Log Form.  

Reflective writing is a crucial academic skill that helps you critically analyse your experiences, examine your learning process, and develop critical thinking abilities. Building your ability to reflect critically will be fundamental for your continued personal and professional growth, during your time at RUL and beyond. This guide offers you an overview of what reflective writing is, how to approach reflective writing, and provides you with further resources and examples to master the art of reflective writing.

What is Reflective Writing?

Reflective writing involves examining your experiences, thoughts, and feelings about a particular event, learning experience, or observation. Unlike traditional academic writing, it uses first-person perspective and encourages personal insight while maintaining academic rigor and analytical depth. The key to do proper reflective writing is to be analytical rather than descriptive. This means asking “Why?” rather than just describing what has happened during an experience.

Key Elements of Good and Critical Reflective Writing

Your reflective writing should demonstrate clear analysis rather than just description. In reflective writing you are including your thoughts, feelings, and reasoning about what happened, what you learned, and how it will influence your future actions. It is important to consider both the positive and negative aspects of an experience. You can support your insights with relevant academic theories, concepts, or references to other material when appropriate. However, most importantly, reflective writing will be about you, your own experience, and your own thoughts and feelings – this means nobody (not even AI) can do it for you!

Reflective Models to help you structure your reflective writing

To guide you in your reflective writing journey and help you start with the process, you can make use of different models or frameworks which were developed over the years. For your reflective writing, you may want to adopt one of the two following models which can both help organise your reflective writing. Which model you adopt is your choice but consider that the second (Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle) may allow you deeper reflection and may thus be more appropriate to use as you develop your skills further. 

“What? So What? Now What?” (also: “Rolfe et al.’s Reflective Model”)

A simple but effective model developed originally by Driscoll (1984) and later developed by Rolfe et al. (2001) that helps you describe what happened, let’s you analyse the significance of what happened, and prompts you to consider future implications of what happened. As the name suggests, you must answer the three questions:

• “What?” - You describe the experience or situation.
• “So What?” - You discuss the implications of the experience or situation.
• “Now what?” - You lay out an action plan for how to act in future similar experiences or situations.

For a more detailed description of what each questions should include, please check out the Reflection Toolkit provided by The University of Edinburgh, and the specific advice (including examples) on the What? So what? Now what? Model. Additional links to further reading on Rolfe et al.’s model and reflective writing in general can be found below.

Gibbs' Reflective Cycle

Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle is one of the most famous models for reflective writing, introduced by Graham Gibbs in 1988. The model consists of six stages through which you explore and reflect on one of your experiences. They are:

1. Description – You describe what the experience was.
2. Feelings – You explore any feelings and thoughts you have about the experience. 
3. Evaluation – You evaluate the experience, considering good and bad aspects. What went well, what didn’t go so well?
4. Analysis – Now you make sense of the experience. How can you understand the situation? Think about why did it go well or why didn’t it go so well?
5. Conclusion – You summarise the experience and discuss what you learned from it. Discuss what you could do better or differently next time you face a similar situation or similar experience. 
6. Action plan – You plan how you will do things better or differently the next time you end up in a similar situation or have a similar experience. Discuss what skills you will develop and how you will make sure you are prepared to do better or act differently next time. 

For a more detailed description of what each of the six cycles should include, please check out the Reflection Toolkit provided by The University of Edinburgh, and the specific advice (including examples) on Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle. Additional links to further reading on Gibbs’ model and reflective writing in general can be found below.

Writing Tips for your Reflective Writing

• Use first person in your writing. (“I experienced…”, “I felt…” etc.)
• Be honest and genuine in your reflection while maintaining professional language.
• Give insight into how you felt in the situation or during the experience. Clearly stating how you felt (e.g. beginning a sentence with “I felt…”) is expected! 
• Balance description with analysis - avoid just telling a story.
• Include specific examples to support your insights.
• Connect your experience to relevant theories or course concepts from your study.
• Consider multiple perspectives and alternative interpretations where possible.
• Demonstrate how the experience has influenced your understanding and will shape your future approach to similar situations or your career/life more generally.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in your Reflective Writing

• Using third person writing.
• Being too descriptive (only writing about What?) without sufficient analysis (no discussion of the How? and the Why?)
• Failing to demonstrate your personal insight or learning
• Forgetting to include anything on your own thoughts, feelings, and emotions
• Not connecting reflection to wider contexts, your studies, or future applications
• Using overly casual language or informal tone
• Lacking structure or a clear focus on a specific experience
• Not supporting the insights with specific examples

General Questions to Guide Your Reflection

While you may structure your reflective writing by using one of the models above, the following questions should be covered in any reflection. If you apply the models correctly, the below could be a handy checklist for you before submission: 

1. What exactly happened?
2. What were your thoughts and feelings?
3. What went well or poorly?
4. Why did things happen the way they did?
5. What did you learn?
6. How can you apply this learning?
7. What would you do differently next time?

Final Tips to Develop your Reflective Writing as a Practice

• Always try to start writing soon after an experience while details are still fresh. If that is not possible and the experience has happened sometime in the past, you may have notes, recordings, or other accounts that can help you reflect on what happened.
• Keep a reflective journal to develop the habit of reflection!
• Review and revise your writing to ensure depth of analysis
• Seek feedback from your peers or your tutors. Student Support Service could also help you develop your skills further!
• Use specific examples to illustrate your points
• Consider both immediate and longer-term implications. For instance, how will your experience and reflection shape your time at University (immediate) and your future career (longer-term implications). 
• Link your reflection to your professional or academic development goals and how the experience is crucial in your growth journey.

Finally, always remember that effective reflective writing is a skill like most others, and it will be developed with practice. Every time you reflect and every time you note down your reflections, you should demonstrate and witness growth in your understanding and ability to analyse experiences critically.