Reflection is a cognitive process that promotes self-awareness and encourages self-assessment. The cognitive process of reflecting on one’s authentic knowledge, practice, and beliefs/attitudes is important to developing professionalism. Reflection allows one to think critically about one’s ability to effectively join content knowledge with practice to reach diverse populations of learners.

Self-reflection provides a means for practitioners to identify issues; state opinion, inferences, and predictions; and express feelings, beliefs, and attitudes. The practitioner’s responsibility in self-reflection is to support personal opinion, inference, and prediction by inclusion of relevant content knowledge presented in published works.

By asking the following questions prior to writing self-reflection, one will more effectively integrate the inclusion of relevant content knowledge from published works:

How has the idea or theory either supported or changed your authentic knowledge, attitudes, and/or beliefs? Give specific examples from the published work.

What trends are apparent about this topic and how do these trends either support or negate your inferences and/or predictions? Give specific examples.

What new knowledge or new understanding of previous knowledge have you acquired from this topic that you perceive will influence your practice? Give specific examples.

Where did you disagree with the author on this topic? What is your counter argument? Give specific examples.