Teaching Your Students to Think Reflectively: the case for reflective journals

This article is about encouraging students to think more deeply and teachers to listen more effectively by using reflective journals. Work done over the past 4 years is reported on the use of reflective journals. Their use is developed over the three undergraduate years in a series of numeracy and problem‐solving classes. In this way students have become better at putting their thoughts into words and later to reflect upon them. What has emerged is a systematised approach to the use of reflective writing that provides students with a tool to enhance both their thinking and motivation to learn. It has provided feedback of students' successes, frustrations and concerns that is not a superficial reaction to someone else's questions. Thus informed, I have been able to develop a series of classes with clear directions about students' considered needs.