Leadership Toolkit

Reflective journals

Writing reflective journals encourages students to think and consider their experiences and observations, so why not ask students to document their own experiences as leaders by reflecting on and writing about their observations and understanding about leadership. This will contribute to their self-development and encourage them to be critical, analytical thinkers.  Their journals can either be structured or open-ended, assessed, or not.  Either way, students will recognise the complexity of the leadership experience.

Even if you do not assess the students' journals, the process of regular reflection and self-critique can be very valuable.  You could provide students with some prompt questions to guide their writing, along the lines of:

• what was the context or situation?
• what happened?
• what did you do?
• how did you respond?
• what were the main things you learned?

For the more analytical component of the journal, you could ask questions such as:

• what were the important elements of the experience?
• why did you act as you did?
• what were you thinking or feeling at the time?
• what do you need to remember if you have a similar experience in the future?
• what did you learn?
• how can you apply your understanding of leadership theory to your own experience?
• what and how did you change as a result of your experience?
• how can you apply what you learned as a leader to other life experiences?

Adapted from: Lucas, N., Komives, S.R., & McMahon, T.R.  (1998)  Instructor's Guide to Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want to Make a Difference.
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 30 October, 2006:
http://www.academy.umd.edu/publications/leadership_education/exploring_curriculum.htm; and

Writing a Journal
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 30 October, 2006:
http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/learningconnection/student/learningAdvisors/journal.asp

Other useful resources

Additional useful information on the use of reflective journals can be found at:
Good practices in teaching and learning:
Retrieved from the World Wide Web on 30 October, 2006:
http://www.ucd.ie/teaching/goodPracticeT&L_sub/learningJournalsLogs.html

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