Reflective Quizzes and Personal Development

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of the impact of self-reflective writing assignments have on self-awareness and self-compassion. Several current research efforts in Transformative Learning indicate students lack of sense of personal understanding, illustrating a need for classroom experiences to build into more than merely disseminating information about a subject (Christie, Care, Robertson, and Grainger, 2015). This project attempted to use reflective writing exercises to increase personal depth and transformation in the students. It is the goal of this study to identify whether the assignments increase course knowledge and or classroom engagement. This research is comprised of students on the first day of class being introduced to the study, consented, and given Neff’s Self-Compassion Scale, Emotional Self-Awareness Scale, demographic survey, and a five conditioned Q-sort of 18 adjectives which can be used to define aspects of personality. Though each student completed the assignments, only those who provided consent were included in the study. At the end of the course the students completed the assessments again, and analyses were ran on each assessment to ascertain growth. We expect to find such assignments will inspire reflective thinking about perception of self.