From reluctance to addiction: the impact of reflective journals on Qatari undergraduate students’ learning

Abstract

Reflective journals are used to develop students' writing skills, assess reflection level, gather research data, promote teachers' professional development, promote instructional practices, and affect students' learning. However, little research explored the impact of reflective journals on undergraduate students' learning and its challenges in an English writing course. The current study fills the gap in the literature by exploring Qatari female undergraduate students' perspectives of reflective journals in an English writing course and identifying their challenges with using reflective journals. Social constructivism and Gibb's reflective cycle informed the theoretical framework of the study. Using a case study methodology, the researcher designed a reflective journal based on Gibbs' reflective cycle. Accordingly, reflective journals, written by 55 Qatari female undergraduate students, were collected and qualitatively analysed using thematic content analysis. Findings revealed that students experienced the following learning moments in their English writing course: engaging, invaluable, surprising, challenging, novel, perplexing, worrying, enlightening, and transferrable. Moreover, participants reported a number of benefits and challenges of using reflective journals that are peculiar to the Qatari context. Implications for using reflective journals in higher education are provided.

Learning to teach self-study in improving data management practices of student-teachers during an action research course

“…Our challenge during the facilitations was how to support reflective practices and model collaborative engagements in researching and improving learning situations. Reflective practices should be incrementally scaffolded among students because prescribing reflective practices do not mean that they would actually be reflective (Ahmed, 2020;Dreyer, 2015). Also, engaging in sustained reflective writing process by attending to cognitive, affective, and motivational dimensions in teacher learning is a glaring gap in the pedagogy of teacher education (Korthagen, 2016(Korthagen, , 2017.…”

Harnessing the Power of Reflective Journal Writing in Global Contexts: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Since students reflectively engage in dialogue, reflective journal writing intends to generate effective and lifelong changes, making learning more relevant, contextual, and meaningful. They focus on personal development, observation skills, reflective learning, and uncensored writing (Ahmed, 2020) through critical and reflective thinking, so that the use of social skills and personal voice continues to receive mutual support in the struggle for teamwork, reflection, criticism, self-analysis, and metacognitive skills (Bashan & Holsblat, 2017). All of these activities can help individuals achieve long-term goals by promoting personal and professional development, personal reflection, critical thinking, independent learning, and intrinsic motivation (Yu & Chiu, 2019).…”

The role of self-learning in the practical training among preschool teachers

“…Qualitative self-analysis of one's own education with the use of reflective reports provides an opportunity to choose structured or unstructured forms of reporting. It is also important to vary the questions for reflection, which will avoid the automatic filling of diaries and journals [5]. In general, the scientific study of cognitive, affective, motivational aspects of reflection in the process of professional training of teachers is insufficient [6].…”