WRITING IN PRACTICE VOL 11

ABSTRACT

‘Not Only To Write Well’ responds to a question I was asked by a student in an undergraduate creative writing workshop some years ago: “why do we have to write the critical reflection?” 

What follows is a both an act of curious attentiveness to that question and where it might have come from and a critical reflection of my own on the ways in which I have taught reflectiveness in undergraduate Creative Writing. I consider three key models of reflectiveness, (Schön 1991, Mezirow 1991 and Hunt 2013) and also consider more recent work (Chavez 2021) on the necessity of reflective practice on the part of both teacher and student as part of the necessary work of decolonialising the creative writing classroom. I further suggest that it can be helpful, when communicating the value of this assignment to students, to consider the critical reflection as a distinct genre of writing related to memoir and life writing and foreground what we know of the potential of composition within these genres to enable (Dunn 2025) and not merely report on ‘transformational learning’ (Mezirow 1991). 

This essay also makes several practical suggestions about how to foster reflectiveness in workshop teaching. These suggestions have emerged from the adjustments I made to my own teaching practice triggered by my reflective engagement with my student’s original question and the ‘disorientating dilemma’ (Mezirow 1991) it provoked in me.

KEYWORDS

Critical reflection, Reflective writing, Reflective workshops, Transformational learning, Problem-based learning, Reflective commentary, Exegesis, Practice-based pedagogy. 

HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE
Ashworth, Jenn. (2025) Not Only To Write Well. Writing in Practice. 11  DOI: 10.62959/WIP-11-2025-02