A study of an exploration of reflective practice through journal writing for elementary school principals

This was a qualitative study conducted to investigate whether personal reflection through journal keeping is a technique that promotes reflective practice. Ten techniques for journal keeping, culled from the literature of process writing and journal keeping, were presented to six elementary school principals who kept journals for four months and responded to a four-part interview on their journal keeping experience. The journals were analyzed through the framework of Schon's reflective practice, a process of reflective conversation with the situation of concern. The interviews were used to support the data from the journal entries. This study aimed to describe the virtual world of journal keeping as a technique for reflective practice.The findings indicated that the six journal keepers engaged in the process of journal keeping in six different ways, with each journal keeper experiencing personal reflection as well as periods of reflective practice. Although a few experimented somewhat with the journal writing techniques and others simply reviewed and rejected them, there seemed to be so little attention to the journal writing techniques that they did not influence the extent to which the journal keepers were able to create personal reflections that lead to reflective practice. Although the subjects valued reflective practice and journal keeping, they valued reflective practice to a greater extent than they valued journal keeping.Journal writing promotes reflective practice in different ways for different journal keepers. Qualities such as voice, sense of mission and topic selection help determine the journal keepers' serious stance toward journal writing which governs the extent to which journal writing can access reflective practice for the principal. Journal keeping is an introspective, synthesizing tool which allows for the application of experience and knowledge. Journaling techniques may increase the power of experience, but are not mandatory for achieving reflective practice. The value of reflective practice is meaning that emerges when the journal writer draws upon his or her own resources to reframe a situation and create a new order.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio