Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing

Topic 2: Reflective Learning I

Reflection and Reflective Writing

Introduction
This topic is going to look at reflective learning. As your experiences last year in Legal
Skills will have made clear, this is not only a central aspect of what you learn during
the year, it is central to how you are assessed. Therefore developing the skill of
reflection by doing so on a regular basis and actively improving how you do so is
central to preparation for your assessment in this module.
As a reminder, the relevant MLO is MLO 1, which states:
'Apply experiential learning practices by actively reflecting on a range of advanced
legal skills, and identifying and implementing personally challenging and practicable
actions for improvement'.
There are some key terms to note here (and they are more fully developed in the
‘General Module Information’ section on the VLE):
 We want you to ‘apply’ the experiential learning by ‘actively reflecting’: you
need to reflect during the year and show the results of this in your portfolio.
 We also want you to identify personal improvements: in addition to thinking
about what you did well or poorly, you should come up with ideas about what
you can personally do better. You need to make sure that all your reflection
relates to your own learning and improvement. Rather than writing about
interviewing in general, for example, you should write about your own
experiences, your own challenges and successes and your ideas for how (and
why) you will improve what you yourself did in the way you suggest (and how
this will be useful to you in future).
 Your improvements need to be ‘challenging’: do not let yourself off lightly or
find easy fixes to minor problems. Find substantial issues with what you did
and identify specific clear challenges that will make your substantially better in
that skill.
 The improvements need to be ‘practicable’: while challenging, your
improvements also need to be realistic. Show that you have really thought
sensibly about what you did and how to do it better. Do not suggest over-
simplified or vague and general fixes. A key issue here is that you should
identify specific and particular steps and actions so that you can ask yourself
(and we can judge) whether you are really going to achieve what you say you
want to achieve.
We have written this MLOs in this way because we think that it gets to the heart of
what reflection is and why it is useful.
You might also notice that this is a very practical and applied MLO – what we do not
want is a lot of abstract theory about reflection. We do care about whether you ‘get’
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Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing

reflection and therefore looking at theories is going to be useful to you as part of your
learning but, at the end of the year in your portfolio, we will judge your understanding
of the concept of reflection not on what you write about it but on how effectively you
do it.

Reflection and your learning portfolio

At the end of the year you will need to submit another learning portfolio to show your
development throughout the year. This will be the main way that you will be assessed
in ALS (being 80% of marks for ALS).
The format and structure of your portfolio will be the same as last year. What you
submit will have two elements:
 A ‘Reflective Analysis’ document. This will be up to 2,500 words long (note
that is a bit longer than in Year 1) and will identify and explain your learning
relevant to each of MLOs 1-5.
 Evidence that supports what you write about and claim to have learnt in the
reflective analysis document.
The marker’s focus will be significantly on the Reflective Analysis as this will be your
account of what you have learnt through doing things (which will appear as evidence
to which you will link) and thinking about them (which will take the form of both your
personal reflections and the theories and concepts you have drawn on during that
reflection and which you will set out in the ‘reflective analysis’).
In simple terms, there are two aspects to putting together your portfolio: reflecting on
experiences and building your store of evidence to help you show and explain those
reflections. It is the first aspect of the process that we are particularly concerned with
in this topic because your Reflective Analysis should be built up from your best
reflections developed during the year (i.e. those that show the most significant
learning on your part). A regularly kept Reflective Learning Journal will be the best
basis for your Reflective Analysis. Do keep in mind, however, the link between
‘reflecting’ on an experience and the evidence of that experience that you gather.
One of the main problems with many portfolios last year was that the evidence
gathered did not obviously relate to the reflections being written about (or, at least,
did not relate in a way that was made clear). So, while reflecting always be also
asking yourself, ‘How can I show this in my portfolio?’

'Reflective' or 'Experiential' Learning

You had a lot of opportunities to put reflective learning into practice last year so
reflecting regularly, systematically and actively (whether in an RLJ or in some other
way) should be becoming integral to your learning. Reflection is, however, a skill and
learning reflectively is part of the process of ‘learning to learn’ which you should
continue to develop throughout the rest of your life.

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Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing

Although there were many Learning Portfolios which were very strong last year, it was
also clear that many of you found the whole process of reflection challenging. Most
people do in fact so now is a good time to recap on how you might do it effectively.
Reflective learning is really just a shorthand way of describing the process of cyclical
thinking about a particular issue. It is cyclical because it takes you from the doing of
something through a process of thought to the point at which you can do that thing (or
something similar) again more successfully. Theories of reflective learning identify
particular ways of doing this consciously (and therefore, one would hope, more
effectively).
Topic 2, Activity 1: To remind yourself and put into practice your reflective
technique, take a moment to think over one of the presentations you gave last year
(whether the moot or your end-of-year presentation) then open up this link to Topic 3
Activity 1 (a google document). Make a copy of it and answer the questions there.

Kolb’s Cycle
The process of thinking that you undertook in Activity 1 is a structured form of
reflective thinking. It roughly corresponds to Kolb’s learning cycle (see below).
Taking last year’s moot as an example, you did the moot (an ‘experience’), which
triggered particular thoughts, reactions and impressions (‘reflection’), which led to
new insights (the ‘conceptualization’) that will inform how you might do the same (or
similar) thing again (planning/’experimentation’).
While this may feel odd and artificial, it is a way of being systematic about processes
of reflection that take place sub-consciously or intuitively for many people in many
situations. A professional footballer practicing taking penalties or a musician getting
ready for a concert performance will repeatedly carry out the same activity and
improve or perfect it each time. That process of thinking back on the last kick or last
few bars of notes, reviewing it and improving it is reflective learning. So is editing and
revising a piece of writing .You have almost certainly reflected repeatedly without
necessarily being particularly aware of it as a process, whether in developing some
such sporting or artistic talent, learning to drive or in developing your learning and
writing techniques as a student. So a lot of reflective development is instinctive: many
professionals have developed skills reflectively without being conscious of doing so.
By being conscious of reflection however, they might be even better at what they do.
The same coudl be true for many good lawyers or other professionals: they might be
better if they were more conscious of the ways that they could improve. So, a key aim
of ALS (and your time at YLS generally) is to make you more conscious of how to
develop your skills and techniques. Taking time now to be systematic, conscious and
methodical about this will help you learn from experiences much more effectively and
effortlessly in future. The result is not that you will suddenly be able to learn by doing
– you have been doing this from birth – but rather than you can be do this much more
effectively and efficiently in your learning. You may not have to keep a journal of your

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reflections for the rest of your life (although it can still be useful to do so, especially in
early stages of your next career) but you will be able to learn from experiences much
more effectively if you have developed these reflective learning skills.

Identifying improvements
A key part of the process is to identify particular improvements. Many learners either
forget this or do it very weakly (which is odd because it is the aim of the preceding
steps). This is reflective ‘learning’: so you need to be clear about what you have
learnt. When we grade reflective portfolios we will pay particular attention to the
strength of your conclusions in terms of their value as insights, how challenging and
useful they are and how solidly they are based on your experiences.
Try, in identifying improvements to ensure that they are:
 Related to the previous experience: too many portfolios include reflection on on
thing and a conclusion about something else– that lacks cogency as reflection.
 Reasonably detailed and specific: try to be as specific about what you would do
differently next time rather than simply stating that you would do ‘more’ research
(weak because it does not show understanding of what research was needed) or
spend ‘more’ time (weak because it does not show understanding of what exactly
was not done due to lack of time). 
 Challenging and effective: it is easy to list easy fixes or focus on basic problems.
The best reflection (i.e. thinking that has really probed an experience, analysed
what should have happened and researched how the skill is used) will come up
with improvements that will make a practical difference and actually lead to
substantial improvements. We are very much looking for this with the better
portfolios - those that do not stretch the writer and delve into the skill are less
impressive than those that try to come up with insightful and useful potential
improvements.
 Realistic and sensible: there is nothing less credible than a reflective insight that
does not seem practical and realistic. Perfection or no errors in future is not a very
practical aim and shows no understanding of the realities of the skill. So you need
to balance challenge with realism.
 Reasonably transferable: show how experience A leads to improvement in
situation B, not just how you would redo experience A better. If you interviewed Mr
Smith, you have not learnt much if you only know how to ask better questions of
Mr Smith in the same situation. The real learning comes from understanding how
to go about preparing and then conducting an interview in a similar but not
identical situation in future (e.g. an interview in a different civil case or interviewing
people more generally when they want your advice).
 Personal: linked to the above point, you should make you are transferring the
insight to something that will be useful to you. This is partly a matter of using first
person language but also a matter of being clear how you yourself will gain from
the experience given about your personal aims and aspirations.

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Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing
Concrete Experience

It is clearly necessary to have something to reflect on. This is the ‘concrete experience’ in
Kolb’s cycle. We do not have to be too rigid about this – the experience does not have to be
your own: you can learn from other people’s experiences. This is the whole principle of
observing and giving feedback that we encourage in Skills session at YLS. The idea is that
by actively doing something or observing someone doing something, we have experiences
from which to learn. This means, in ALS, that it is not only things you did yourself that will be
useful evidence and material but what others in your firm (or other firms you are appearing
against) do can and should be used as the basis for reflection in your portfolio.
Reflective Observation
Active Experimentation
This is the process of thinking about what
The next stage of Kolb's cycle is to you did (or saw) and starting to reach
use the previous thought to identify conclusions or insights about it. Note the
what might be done next time ‘starting’: there is a bit of an ambiguity in
around. This is usually a matter of Kolb’s cycle about the boundaries
thinking about how to fix a flaw to between the stages. But this stage is
avoid it next time. It might also, probably best understood as the point at
however, involve thinking about how which you first review an activity and
to repeat a success. The key is that reach your first insights about it. Note that
you are looking ahead to future this could be your own first thoughts, the
situations. Of course, the next feedback you give to other students (or
experience might not be exactly the got from them or your tutor). This is why
same so it can be useful at this point Abstract Conceptualisation we want you to make sure you capture
to think about future potential uses of The next stage, according to Kolb, is that you start to try to and use feedback.
an experience and how you can understand your first instincts and impressions (or feedback). You
transfer into slightly different look more widely (i.e. do research) or you think more deeply and
contexts. The key thing, however, is question your first impressions - not necessarily in a critical our
to have an 'and so next time I will ...' doubting way but in a way that probes the reasons for that first
impression. Here asking (and exploring) 'why' and 'how' questions
can be particularly useful: why did it happen, why does it matter
whether I do this right or wrong, how might I do things differently, how
might I do that again, etc? Doing this is key to effective learning
because it is the attempt to learn itself. If you skip this stage, you
might not necessarily get any better at the thing you did wrong or
might not be able to repeat the success in future.

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Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing

Reflective Writing
We recommend therefore that you reflective regularly by revisting the experience and trying to
capture the key elements of it to try to identify areas to improve. Reflection can be used for
knowledge too (i.e. thinking about how you have developed your understanding of a concept) but
what follows is a bit more focused the development of skills. It may help to think about some of the
following points: 

Reflection in Action and Reflection on Action

It may be worth pausing for a moment to note an alternative (or, possibly additional) theory to that
of Kolb. That is Schön’s distinction between ‘Reflection in Action’ and ‘Reflection on Action’. This
distinction draws attention to the fact that a lot of learning and development happens while doing
things (changing your tactics mid-negotiation, changing your tennis service action mid-swing,
adding salt or spices to something you are cooking, etc). This is ‘Reflection in Action’. Not all
thought about improving something has to be after the event. There are therefore some interesting
questions to ask here. Does Schön contradict Kolb or can the two theories be reconciled? More
practically, can you use the concept of ‘reflection in action’ to understand some of the things you
do during skills activities. We will leave it to you to find out more about this theory (and others) and
to explore them in your portfolios. The reading list is a good place to start.

Reflecting after the event – first impressions and reflective writing

Whatever the value of Reflection in Action, it is certainly true that a lot of useful reflection takes
place after an event. Looking back on something you did and thinking about what you could do to
improve ‘next time’ is a useful human impulse and seems particularly important in some heavily
skills-based activities (post match analysis in sports, debriefs of business meetings, module
evaluation on University modules, feedback on assessments.)  One way in which you can develop
good reflective habits and techniques is by reflective writing. You might capture your reflection in
many ways. We talk about your ‘Reflective Learning Journal’ but others might refer to a Diary or
Blog. Equally, it might be a piece of fully written prose with a date at the top or it might be
something more sketched out or basic. An engineer doodling on a plan might be engaging in a
sort of ‘reflection’ (although it might not be quite as good as if he or she was more systematic and
thorough). Whatever you call your record of your reflections, reflective writing means that you take
a purposive approach that helps you learn from a particular practical experience. In other words,
you writing about experiences involves consciously looking to find improvements and consolidate
on successes. 

How often should you reflect?

There is a lot to be said for writing up on a regular basis. If you are less systematic, there is a
danger that you will be less effective in charting your progress. Reflection itself is a skill that
develops with practice (and reflection). Whatever approach you adopt, you should try to make a
distinct journal entry for each session, activity or issue upon which you are reflecting. Also in
reflecting regularly is a useful point at which to identify and store evidence of your learning and to
think about what exactly the evidence shows. In fact your reflections should be constantly
combined with the ‘How can I show this’ question. If you have some interesting insight or
experience that you want to write about, then you should be looking for evidence to show the
particular problem or issue you are writing about. Reflecting regularly should make this easier. 
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Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing
What should you reflect about?
You should base your reflections around your impressions and experiences of a session. You
certainly should not try to reflect on everything that happened: focus on the things that strike you
as most significant or interesting. However, do bear in mind the purpose of reflecting in ALS (or
any other module) – you are reflecting to develop in particular ways, which are define by the
module learning outcomes. This means that revisiting the MLOs may help focus your thoughts on
when you reflect. In fact, you will probably find that most of your first impressions and instincts can
usefully be related to the MLOs on many occasions, even if it takes a bit of thought to work out
how exactly. The point is that you should try to make that connection and also to make sure you
are able to explain it (in something like a portfolio).

Refining Kolb
A particularly important additional benefit of reflective writing is that it also encourages you to link
your experiences and thoughts with research and the understanding of theories about what that
skill or area of learning. Of course, such research might not be possible at the time of the initial
reflective writing (and might in fact get in the way of your reflection at that point). Kolb is really
advising use of wider and deeper understanding not just research but you may think that drawing
on sources of advice and guidance will improve your insights.  Where does this leave Kolb? Can
you really 'reflect' and then engage 'conceptualise' distinctly or are those two inter-linked parts of
effective reflection. If so, does that make his cycle ‘wrong’,  does it require use to modify his theory
or is it something that he in fact anticipated in the detail of his theory? It might help to do about of
reading around the subject (and practical thinking) to answer this question. 
We might also question whether ‘abstract conceptualisation’ necessarily requires ‘research’. Take
the example of a chef cooking a curry, for example. The chef might taste the dish, decide it needs
particular spices and add them. The tasting is ‘reflective observation’ but the decision that a
particular spice is required is based on learning, understanding and experience. These are
elements of abstract conceptualisation: drawing in previous experience and learning. Of course,
this works better for experienced chefs: a novice cook might have to check the recipe to work out
what might have been left out and that would be the ‘research’ element of conceptualisation. The
chances are that you are more in that category of ‘beginner’ in your Legal Skills activities and so
we strongly recommend research to check up your experiences (and will definitely be looking for
this in portfolios rather than just hunches and past experience).
As a result, you may find that the best reflective writing is not a ‘one off’ that you can complete in
half an hour. It might be better to go through this sort of process:
 Capture your initial thoughts, then
 Identify particular questions or issues for you to go and research and read about, then
 Do that research and reading, then
 Revisit, review and improve the initial reflection, and then
 Plan particular solutions (the ‘active experimentation’ below).

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Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing
In other words we might re-
present Kolb’s cycle a bit like this:
Where does that leave Kolb, do
you think? How might you
engage with his theories if you
followed this approach?

Reflection as a skill - Activity 2 (Part A)

Being effective at reflection is itself a skill that we can improve. This activity is intended to help you
to think about this. Dig out a piece of your reflective writing from last year (RLJ entry, part of a
portfolio) and compare it to the four stages of Kolb’s cycle. Open up this  link to ALS Topic 3 -
Activity 2 (a Google document), save a copy on your own drive and answer the questions there.
For now, only complete Part A. Then read the tips (below) before completing Part B.

Tips about reflection

Be reasonably self-critical
 Do not expect too much of yourself; you are not expected to be brilliant at anything the first
time you do it and it takes years to become highly effective in most legal skills. 
 But do find things to improve upon. This may seem obvious but many pieces of poor
reflection simply state “I did x, I did it well” or “I did it badly”. Remember that the whole point
of reflection is to find what you could have done better. To write about something you did
and simply to conclude that you did it well does not show any learning. Of course, if you can
write about how you overcame a particular challenge to do something well, this does show
learning as you will have to be candid about what you were doing wrong in the first place.
 Try not to blame others if an activity went wrong. This is a common reaction in skills like
negotiation. Try and identify what you could have done differently to prevent or solve the
problem (e.g. if your impression was that a negotiation failed because your opponent was
being unreasonable, what could you have done better to persuade him or her?) Doing so
shows an engagement with your own learning.

Do not be simplistic; be sophisticated:

 Try to be balanced; try to identify both your strengths and your weaknesses.
 Do not assume that you are simply “bad” at something: spend time identifying what makes
you unhappy with your performance and how to improve.
 Do not assume that you are simply “good” at something (or that you did something well).
First of all there is nearly always a way in which it is possible to improve if you look closely
enough. Secondly, even if you are happy with your performance, explain why it was good
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Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing
and how you made it good. Being good at something could be lucky; explaining how you
managed to do somethign well engages with the skills used.
 Unpack the skill. Advocacy, for example, consists of speaking skills, depth of legal
knowledge, use of examples, ability to anticipate and answer questions, etc. Unpick the skill
to identify strengths and weaknesses, where you are best and where you need to improve
most. 

Focus on things you can take practical steps to improve

 Be careful of emotional factors. It is not particularly useful to put your ability in a skill like
advocacy, for example, down to issues like nerves. 
 But if you think that emotions like nerves or lack of interest, etc impacted upon your
performance in an activity, then try to identify solutions. Nerves, for example, can often be
solved by identifying more precisely what makes you nervous (e.g. not feeling well enough
prepared, worrying about being wrong) and taking practical steps to fix those concerns.
Remember that assessment of reflections involves identifying how (and how much) you
have learnt and developed. If you stop at an emotional factor like nerves and do not explore
solutions, you will not have shown that development.
 The same point about blaming others applies here – suggesting that a negotiation failed
because of someone else’s fault does not show your learning.

Be specific and be realistic

 When looking back identify in detail what went wrong. Do not simply state that “my client
interview was not very good” or “I did not ask the right questions”. What questions were
asked and which ones were left out? It is only by having a fairly precise sense of what
exactly went wrong that it will be possible to identify ways to improve.
 Having worked out what exactly happened, be precise as to why it was a problem (e.g. why
was not asking the particular questions in an interview a problem – what information was
missing as a result?) Make specific links to the purpose of the activity to identify why
something was or was not problematic. Why did not having that information pose a problem
(e.g. did it mean that you were not able to make an effective court argument or sensible
concessions in a negotiation)? 
 When coming to solutions, identify exactly how to solve the problem in future. It is not
enough to conclude ‘If I did more research, I would not have made the mistake’. Try and
work out what was wrong with your understanding or research that led to the error or
omission. Deciding you need to do ‘more’ of something is rarely a useful conclusion. You
need instead to have a clear sense of what was missing or wrong and how to fix it. For
example, ‘more research’ is less useful as a solution than identifying that your research had
not engaged with journal articles or that your research was not sufficiently focussed on the
specific question.

Try to make your conclusions about skills transferable

 Do not just focus your conclusions on the specific activity you have undertaken; reflections
on making a bail application may apply more generally to all sorts of applications before a
court or even to your presentation skills more generally. Identifying these general points can
make your conclusions more useful and insightful. 

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Topic 2: Reflective Learning I – Reflection and Reflective Writing
Have a systematic way of reflecting
 We have suggested a structure above. Whether that one or another, do try and have a
systematic method so that you can develop the skill of reflection clearly in your own mind.
 Try to be disciplined about when you reflect – set aside specific parts of the week for it or
set objectives as to how much reflection (or on what) you will achieve during the week and
be rigorous about it. This year in ALS you are expected to complete your portfolio
immediately at the end of term. This means that you do not have time to start gathering
together your ideas and recollections from the year’s activities. This is deliberate: in
previous years students did not reflect regularly during the year and their reflective learning
suffered as a result. Now you have to reflect constantly to have a chance of producing a
good portfolio. So make sure now, at the start of the year, that you have planned how to put
together your portfolio by reflecting regularly and incorporating those reflections into
portfolio content as you go along.

Reviewing your reflection: Activity 2 (Part B)

Using the same piece of reflective writing, go through the list below and identify ways in which
your reflective writing had or did not have the qualities listed below. Can you think of any other
strengths of weaknesses to your reflection that are not listed here?
We strongly recommend that you (a) use this experience and your conclusions to reflect from this
point forward and (b) that you revisit your reflective practice during this term to identify further
ways of making it more effective.

Final Thoughts
We have reiterated some core ideas here about reflective writing and have relied heavily on the
theories of Kolb to do so. It is particularly important, however, that you try out this theory this year
and that you spend a bit of time thinking about them and exploring other theories. The ‘Kolbian’
learning cycle is not without its critics and we have in fact raised some questions about it here.
Like most theories in a skills module, it is something for you to test out, develop and refine. By the
end of the year, you will be expected to be show competence in reflection and we think that Kolb is
a very good place to start so do try to put it (or a refinement of it) into practice through the year
and in writing up your portfolio.

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