Reflective journal writing of undergraduate students enrolled in sex education in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of reflective journal writing on the thinking process and academic performance of local undergraduates in their course on sexual health and human sexuality. A two-group quasi-experimental design was used to analyze students’ reflective journals in terms of learning gains on sex education. The data for analysis were extracted from the 159 specific phrases which were categorized and retrieved through NVivo analysis of the students’ reflective journals. The comments about thinking were the largest number of responses. The correlation between academic performance and self-reflection was significant; the F value (0.125, 0.025) = 4.96, p value was 0.029 which is significant at p < 0.05. There is a relationship between reflection and course grade in the context of sex education.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflective journal writing
• critical thinking skills
• reflection
• sex education
• learning process

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peggy Or

Dr. Peggy Or obtained the PhD degree in Infection Control from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She is dedicated to integrate her professional knowledge in health and infection control to school and other community settings.