what is critical reflection in research

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Critical Reflection

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

Writing Critical Reflection

Reflective writing is a common genre in classrooms across disciplines. Reflections often take the form of narrative essays that summarize an experience or express changes in thinking over time. Initially, reflective writing may seem pretty straightforward; but since reflective writing summarizes personal experience, reflections can easily lose their structure and resemble stream-of-consciousness journals capturing disjointed musings focused on only the self or the past.   

Critical reflection still requires a writer to consider the self and the past but adopts an argumentative structure supported by readings, theories, discussions, demonstrated changes in material conditions, and resources like post-collaboration assessments, testimonial evidence, or other data recorded during the collaboration . Common arguments in critical reflections present evidence to demonstrate learning, contextualize an experience, and evaluate impact. While critical reflections still require authors to reflect inwardly, critical reflection go es beyond the self and examine s any relevant contexts that informed the experience. Then, writers should determine how effectively their project addressed these contexts. In other words, critical reflection considers the “impact” of their project: How did it impact the writer? How did it impact others? Why is the project meaningful on a local, historical, global, and/or societal level? H ow can that impact be assessed?  

In short: reflection and critical reflection both identify the facts of an experience and consider how it impacts the self. Critical reflection goes beyond this to conceive of the project’s impact at numerous levels and establish an argument for the project’s efficacy. In addition, critical reflection encourages self-assessment—we critically reflect to change our actions, strategies, and approaches and potentially consider these alternative methods.  

Collecting Your Data: Double-Entry Journaling

Double-entry journaling is a helpful strategy for you to document data, observations, and analysis throughout the entire course of a community-based project. It is a useful practice for projects involving primary research, secondary research, or a combination of both. In its most basic form, a double-entry journal is a form of notetaking where a writer can keep track of any useful sources, notes on those sources, observations, thoughts, and feelings—all in one place.  

For community-based projects, this might involve:  

• Recording your observations during or after a community partner meeting in one column of the journal.  
• Recording any of your thoughts or reactions about those observations in a second column.   
• Writing any connections you make between your observations, thoughts, and relevant readings from class in a third column.  

This allows you to document both your data and your analysis of that data throughout the life of the project. This activity can act as a blueprint for your critical reflection by providing you with a thorough account of how your thinking developed throughout the life of a project.   

The format of a double-entry journal is meant to be flexible, tailored to both your unique notetaking practice and your specific project. It can be used to analyze readings from class, observations from research, or even quantitative data relevant to your project.  

Just the Facts, Please: What, So What, Now What

Getting started is often the hardest part in writing. To get your critical reflection started, you can identify the What , So What , and Now What? of your project. The table below presents questions that can guide your inquiry . If you’re currently drafting, we have a freewriting activity below to help you develop content.  

Freewrite your answers to these questions; that is, respond to these questions without worrying about grammar, sentence structure, or even the quality of your ideas. At this stage, your primary concern is getting something on the page. Once you’re ready to begin drafting your critical reflection, you can return to these ideas and refine them.  

Below are some additional prompts you can use to begin your freewriting. These reflection stems can organize the ideas that you developed while freewriting and place them in a more formal context.  

• I observed that...  
• My understanding of the problem changed when...  
• I became aware of (x) when....  
• I struggled to...  
• The project's biggest weakness was…  
• The project's greatest strength was…   I learned the most when...  
• I couldn't understand...  
• I looked for assistance from...  
• I accounted for (x) by...  
• I connected (concept/theory) to...  
• (Specific skill gained) will be useful in a professional setting through…  

Analyzing Your Experience: A Reflective Spectrum

Y our critical reflection is a space to make an argument about the impact of your project . This means your primary objective is to determine what kind of impact your project had on you and the world around you. Impact can be defined as the material changes, either positive or negative, that result from an intervention , program , or initiative . Impact can be considered at three different reflective levels: inward, outward, and exploratory.

Inward reflection requires the writer to examine how the project affected the self. Outward reflection explores the impact the project had on others. Additionally, you can conceptualize your project’s impact in relation to a specific organization or society overall, depending on the project’s scope. Finally, exploratory reflection asks writers to consider how impact is measured and assessed in the context of their project to ultimately determine: What does impact look like for the work that I’m doing? How do I evaluate this? How do we store, archive, or catalog this work for institutional memory? And what are the next steps?  

This process is cyclical in nature; in other words, it’s unlikely you will start with inward reflection, move to outward reflection, and finish with exploratory reflection. As you conceptualize impact and consider it at each level, you will find areas of overlap between each reflective level.   

Finally, if you’re having trouble conceptualizing impact or determining how your project impacted you and the world around you, ask yourself:   

• What metrics did I use to assess the "impact" of this project? Qualitative? Quantitative? Mixed-methods? How do those metrics illustrate meaningful impact?  
• How did the intended purpose of this project affect the types of impact that were feasible, possible, or recognized?  
• At what scope (personal, individual, organizational, local, societal) did my outcomes have the most "impact"?  

These questions can guide additional freewriting about your project. Once you’ve finished freewriting responses to these questions, spend some time away from the document and return to it later. Then, analyze your freewriting for useful pieces of information that could be incorporated into a draft.  

Drafting Your Critical Reflection

Now that you have determined the “What, So What, Now What” of your project and explored its impact at different reflective levels, you are ready to begin drafting your critical reflection.  

If you’re stuck or find yourself struggling to structure your critical reflection, the OWL’s “ Writing Process ” [embe ded link ] resource may offer additional places to start. That said, another drafting strategy is centering the argument you intend to make.  

Your critical reflection is an argument for the impact your project has made at multiple levels; as such, much of your critical reflections will include pieces of evidence to support this argument. To begin identifying these pieces of evidence, return to your “reflection stem” responses . Your evidence might include :  

• H ow a particular reading or theory informed the actions during your partnership ;  
• How the skills, experiences, or actions taken during this partnerhsip will transfer to new contexts and situations;  
• Findings from y our evaluation of the project;  
• Demonstrated changes in thoughts, beliefs, and values, both internally and externally;  
• And, of course, specific ways your project impacted you, other individuals, your local community, or any other community relevant to the scope of your work.  

As you compile this evidence, you will ulti mately be compiling ways to support an argument about your project’s efficacy and impact .  

Sharing Your Critical Reflection

Reflective writing and critical reflections are academic genres that offer value to the discourse of any field. Oftentimes, these reflective texts are composed for the classroom, but there are other venues for your critical reflections, too.  

For example, Purdue University is home to the Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement ( PJSL ) which publishes student reflective texts and reflections with research components. Although PJSL only accepts submissions from Purdue students, other journals like this one may exist at your campus. Other venues like the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Impact publish reflective essays from scholars across institutions, and journals in your chosen discipline may also have interest in reflective writing.  

Document explaining the theories, concepts, literature, strategies that informed the creation of this content page.  

Developing Critical Reflection as a Research Method

Cite this chapter.

• Jan Fook PhD 6  

Part of the book series: Practice, Education, Work and Society ((PEWS,volume 5))

2706 Accesses

48 Citations

Critical reflection is normally used in professional learning settings to assist practitioners to improve practice. I have worked for some time using critical reflection in this way with many different types of professionals. Over time, however, I have been impressed by the deeper and more complex understanding of practice experience which the process enables, and which practitioners themselves often cannot initially express. And so I have begun to speculate about the research potential of the critical reflection process, and whether it might be developed as a research method to allow better formulations of practice experience, and therefore, ultimately, better practice.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or Ebook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime
• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Unable to display preview.  Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Critical Reflection

Is reflection like soap? a critical narrative umbrella review of approaches to reflection in medical education research

Developing Reflective Practice

Alvesson, M., & Skoldberg, K. (2000). Reflexive methodology . London: Sage.

Google Scholar  

Bradley, B. (2005). Psychology and experience . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brookfield, S. (2009). The concept of critical reflection: Promises and contradictions. European Journal of Social Work , 12 (3), 293–304.

Article   Google Scholar  

Brown, W. (1995). States of injury. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Denzin, N., & Lincoln, Y. (Eds.) (1994). Handbook of qualitative research. London: Sage.

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process . New York: D. C. Heath & Co.

Dilthey, W. (1961). Pattern and meaning in history . New York: Harper Torchbooks.

Elliot, J. (2005). Using narrative in social research . London: Sage.

Fook, J. (2002). Social work: Critical theory and practice . London: Sage.

Fook, J., & Askeland, G.A. (2006). The “critical” in critical reflection. In S. White, J. Fook & F. Gardner (Eds.), C ritical reflection in health and social care (pp. 40–53). Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Fook, J., & Gardner, F. (2007). Practising critical reflection . Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Green, B. (Ed.) (2009). Understanding and researching professional practice. Rotterdam: Sense.

Haug, F. (1987). Female sexualisation: A collective work of memory. London: Verso.

Heaney, T.W., & Horton, A.I. (1991). Reflective engagement for social change. In J. Mezirow (Ed.), Fostering critical reflection in adulthood (pp. 74–98). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Merrill, B., & West, L. (2009). Using biographical methods in social research . London: Sage.

Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (Eds.) (2001). Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice . London: Sage.

Schön, D.A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action . New York: Basic Books.

Steier, F. (Ed.) (1991). Research and reflexivity. London: Sage.

Stephenson, N., & Papadopoulos, D. (2006). Analysing everyday experience . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Taylor, C., & White, S. (2000). Practising reflexivity in health and welfare . Maidenhead: Open University Press.

Turner, V.W., & Bruner, E.M. (1986). The anthropology of experience . Chicago: Uni. of Illinois Press.

White, S. (2001). Autoethnography as reflexive inquiry: The research act as self-surveillance. In I. Shaw & N. Gould (Eds.), Qualitative research in social work (pp. 100–115). London: Sage.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Interprofessional Institute, South West London Academic Network, UK

Jan Fook PhD

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Charles Sturt University, Australia

Independent Research & Practice Development Consultant, UK

Angie Titchen

University of Western Sydney, Australia

Debbie Horsfall

Donna Bridges

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Sense Publishers

About this chapter

Fook, J. (2011). Developing Critical Reflection as a Research Method. In: Higgs, J., Titchen, A., Horsfall, D., Bridges, D. (eds) Creative Spaces for Qualitative Researching. Practice, Education, Work and Society, vol 5. SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-761-5_6

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-761-5_6

Publisher Name : SensePublishers

Online ISBN : 978-94-6091-761-5

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Societies and partnerships

• Find a journal
• Track your research

• Deakin University
• Learning and Teaching

Critical reflection for assessments and practice

• How to reflect

Critical reflection for assessments and practice: How to reflect

• Reflective practice
• Critical reflection
• Critical reflection writing
• Recount and reflect

How to critically reflect?

"It is on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly."

Claude Monet

A helpful way to approach critical reflection is to use it as a tool to build on your current practice. It enables you to carefully examine an experience to gain better understanding, to make connections and identify your key strengths and areas of further development . To look at things that didn’t succeed and to use failure to better inform future practice. And that can be difficult. Particularly when you need to reflect on mistakes or when the intended, desirable outcome wasn’t achieved.    

Questions and models

Critical reflection takes practice and time to become part of your skillset. The easiest way to get started is to either use prompt questions and models to help you critically reflect on your actions, thoughts and feelings. 

• << Previous: Critical reflection
• Next: Critical reflection writing >>
• Last Updated: Jun 28, 2024 4:06 PM
• URL: https://deakin.libguides.com/critical-reflection-guide

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings
• My Bibliography
• Collections
• Citation manager

Save citation to file

Email citation, add to collections.

• Create a new collection
• Add to an existing collection

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search, create a file for external citation management software, your rss feed.

• Search in PubMed
• Search in NLM Catalog
• Add to Search

Critically reflective practice and its sources: A qualitative exploration

Affiliations.

• 1 Centre for Faculty Development, St Michael's Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• 2 Wilson Centre for Research in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• 3 Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• 4 The Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
• 5 Developmental Paediatrics, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• 6 Department of Medicine and Centre for Education Research and Innovation, Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
• 7 Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, Occupational Therapy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
• PMID: 31914210
• DOI: 10.1111/medu.14032

Context: Critical reflection may improve health professionals' performance of the social roles of care (eg collaboration) in indeterminate zones of practice that are ambiguous, unique, unstable or value-conflicted. Research must explore critical reflection in practice and how it is developed. In this study, we explored what critical reflection consisted of in a context known for indeterminacy, and to what sources participants attributed their critically reflective insights and approaches.

Methods: The study context was the interface between health care and education for children with chronic conditions or disabilities necessitating health-related recommendations and supports (eg accommodations or equipment) at school. We conducted a secondary analysis of 42 interview transcripts from an institutional ethnographic study involving health professionals, school-based educators and parents of children with chronic conditions or disabilities. We coded all transcripts for instances of critical reflection, moments that seemed to lack but could benefit from critical reflection, and participant-attributed sources of critically reflective insights.

Results: Critically reflective practice involved getting to know the other, valuing and leveraging different forms and sources of knowledge, identifying and communicating workarounds (ie strategies to circumvent imperfect systems), seeing inequities, and advocating as collaborators, not adversaries. Participants invariably attributed critically reflective insights to personal experiences such as former careers or close personal relationships.

Conclusions: This study shows that personal experiences and connections inspire critically reflective views, and that being critically reflective is not a binary trait possessed (or not) by individuals. It is learnable through personally meaningful experiences. Health professions education could aim to preserve philosophical space for personal experience as a source of learning and integrate evidence-informed approaches to foster critically reflective practice.

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and The Association for the Study of Medical Education.

PubMed Disclaimer

• Critical reflection in medical training and the biomedical world view. Wilson H. Wilson H. Med Educ. 2020 Apr;54(4):281-283. doi: 10.1111/medu.14077. Epub 2020 Mar 2. Med Educ. 2020. PMID: 32012322 No abstract available.

Similar articles

• Toward 'seeing' critically: a Bayesian analysis of the impacts of a critical pedagogy. Ng SL, Crukley J, Brydges R, Boyd V, Gavarkovs A, Kangasjarvi E, Wright S, Kulasegaram K, Friesen F, Woods NN. Ng SL, et al. Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2022 May;27(2):323-354. doi: 10.1007/s10459-021-10087-2. Epub 2022 Jan 1. Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2022. PMID: 34973100 Free PMC article. Clinical Trial.
• "The child's got a complete circle around him". The care of younger children (5-11 years) with CFS/ME. A qualitative study comparing families', teachers' and clinicians' perspectives'. Brigden A, Shaw A, Barnes R, Anderson E, Crawley E. Brigden A, et al. Health Soc Care Community. 2020 Nov;28(6):2179-2189. doi: 10.1111/hsc.13029. Epub 2020 Jun 9. Health Soc Care Community. 2020. PMID: 32519359
• Health and social care professionals' experiences of supporting parents and their dependent children during, and following, the death of a parent: A qualitative review and thematic synthesis. Franklin P, Arber A, Reed L, Ream E. Franklin P, et al. Palliat Med. 2019 Jan;33(1):49-65. doi: 10.1177/0269216318803494. Epub 2018 Oct 29. Palliat Med. 2019. PMID: 30371147 Review.
• Health professionals' experience of teamwork education in acute hospital settings: a systematic review of qualitative literature. Eddy K, Jordan Z, Stephenson M. Eddy K, et al. JBI Database System Rev Implement Rep. 2016 Apr;14(4):96-137. doi: 10.11124/JBISRIR-2016-1843. JBI Database System Rev Implement Rep. 2016. PMID: 27532314 Review.
• Student and educator experiences of maternal-child simulation-based learning: a systematic review of qualitative evidence protocol. MacKinnon K, Marcellus L, Rivers J, Gordon C, Ryan M, Butcher D. MacKinnon K, et al. JBI Database System Rev Implement Rep. 2015 Jan;13(1):14-26. doi: 10.11124/jbisrir-2015-1694. JBI Database System Rev Implement Rep. 2015. PMID: 26447004
• Reimagining global mental health in Africa. Wondimagegn D, Pain C, Seifu N, Cartmill C, Alemu AA, Whitehead CR. Wondimagegn D, et al. BMJ Glob Health. 2023 Sep;8(9):e013232. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2023-013232. BMJ Glob Health. 2023. PMID: 37666576 Free PMC article. Review.
• The Experiences, Needs, and Solutions of Caregivers of Patients With Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia Living in Residential and Long-Term Care Centers. Bélanger-Dibblee M, Pham Thi-Desmarteau S, Jacques MC, Tremblay H, Roy-Desruisseaux J. Bélanger-Dibblee M, et al. Qual Health Res. 2023 Aug;33(10):871-883. doi: 10.1177/10497323231173854. Epub 2023 Jun 4. Qual Health Res. 2023. PMID: 37271946 Free PMC article.
• A novel approach for assessing bias during team-based clinical decision-making. Pool N, Hebdon M, de Groot E, Yee R, Herrera-Theut K, Yee E, Allen LA, Hasan A, Lindenfeld J, Calhoun E, Carnes M, Sweitzer NK, Breathett K. Pool N, et al. Front Public Health. 2023 May 9;11:1014773. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1014773. eCollection 2023. Front Public Health. 2023. PMID: 37228737 Free PMC article.
• Anti-Black racism in clinical supervision: asynchronous simulated encounters facilitate reflective practice. Calhoun AJ, Martin A, Adigun A, Alleyne SD, Aneni K, Thompson-Felix T, Asnes A, de Carvalho-Filho MA, Benoit L, Genao I. Calhoun AJ, et al. MedEdPublish (2016). 2023 Apr 14;13:4. doi: 10.12688/mep.19487.2. eCollection 2023. MedEdPublish (2016). 2023. PMID: 37123251 Free PMC article.
• Master of nursing specialist experiences of an internship through the use of written reflections: A qualitative research study. Zhan TT, Wang LL, Yan Wang, Sun CJ. Zhan TT, et al. Heliyon. 2023 Jan 28;9(2):e13299. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e13299. eCollection 2023 Feb. Heliyon. 2023. PMID: 36814604 Free PMC article.
• Baker LR, Martimianakis MA, Nasirzadeh Y, et al. Compassionate care in the age of evidence-based practice: a critical discourse analysis in the context of chronic pain care. Acad Med. 2018;93:1841-1849.
• Phelan SK, Ng SL. A case review: reframing school-based practices using a critical perspective. Phys Occup Ther Pediatr. 2015;35:396-411.
• Ng SL, Lingard L, Hibbert K, et al. Supporting children with disabilities at school: implications for the advocate role in professional practice and education. Disabil Rehabil. 2015;37:2282-2290.
• Schön DA. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York, NY: Basic Books; 1983.
• Cheng A, LaDonna K, Cristancho S, Ng SL. Navigating difficult conversations: the role of self-monitoring and reflection-in-action. Med Educ. 2017;51:1220-1231.
• Search in MeSH

Grants and funding

• CIHR/Canada

LinkOut - more resources

Full text sources.

• Ovid Technologies, Inc.

• Citation Manager

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.