How do you structure reflective thinking and writing?

In this video, we’ll look at a basic structure for reflection, called the what? so what? now what? structure. Like all other types of reflection, you’ll see that it’s a cycle that moves through different steps. The what step ground you in the situation you want to learn from. The so what step is where you think about and analyze and the now what is where you make an action plan based on your new learning. Then you move back into the next phase of your learning and your next experience. Let’s look at these three phases in more detail. In the what phase, you’ll describe your experience of the situation. You’ll want to make sure you include clear details. You’ll want to think about the who, what, where, when, why and how to give some context for what comes next. You’ll want to explain the situation, perhaps the problems and the challenges that came up, what you were trying to achieve. What was your role? What did you do? What did others do in the situation? What feelings and thoughts did you have? What were the consequences? Next, you’ll move to the so what phase. In the so what phase, one of your main tasks is to apply theory, concepts, and course ideas to your learning experience. In an academic context, one of the purposes of reflection is to bring your experience and the new things that you’re learning together. You want to identify what you’re learning from your experience in light of the concepts in your course. So you might want to think through, in the situation you’re thinking of, what did you initially base your actions and decisions on? Now that you’ve learned some new things in the course, how might you understand that differently? Are there theories or concepts or ideas that you can apply to that situation? Do you have a new understanding of the situation now that you think back and reflect? Last, you’ll move to the now what phase. The goal of reflection is ultimately always to move you into the future. The now what phase is where you make a plan for what you’ll do in the future. You’ll be specific about your next steps and you’ll indicate what you hope will change as a result of your learning. The what, so what, now what model is one basic structure that you can start to use to think about the basic movements or the basic cycle of a reflection. As you move through the workshop, you’ll see some examples of how this structure is applied in practice.