An exploratory study on assessing reflective writing from teachers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT

With society increasingly valuing soft skills and competencies, reflective practices are more commonly adopted in higher education, particularly for experiential learning. As reflective writing is becoming a part of official assessments in many courses, an overarching question arises as to how teachers are currently assessing reflections. This study explores teachers’ perspectives on the assessment of written reflections by interviewing six university teachers in Hong Kong, who respectively assessed written reflections by 135 students. Teachers’ understandings of reflective writing, teachers’ understandings of assessing reflections, as well as teacher training are discussed in this exploratory study. The findings provide insight into how reflection is currently understood among teachers, also offering suggestions for reflective practices in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflection
• reflective writing
• assessment
• experiential learning
• teacher perception

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded through the General Research Fund of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [reference number 17610215] and the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong.