The use of reflective journals for student learning and development

For three years, undergraduate freshman through senior participants were required to submit a reflective journal each week during a design project. In our first implementation, we found that reflective journals were meaningful as assessment tools because they communicated how the participants learned. We show in this three-year study how subsequent use of reflective journaling leads to intellectual development on the part of one student. The form of this paper is a first-person autobiographical narrative of a third year (junior) student through which different and multiple identities and knowledge unfold. The authors of the study create a narrator based on knowledge, experiences, concepts, and ideas that a chemical engineering student constructed, reconstructed, and deconstructed in his journal entries. Through these stories, the student showed a deep understanding of teamwork, developed empathy and a sense of belonging, and demonstrated the ability to explain, interpret and apply chemical engineering content knowledge