Guide to Writing a Reflective Assignment for Health and Social Care Students

Outline the Key Elements of Your Assignment

1. You mustinclude a front sheet on your assignment (Available on Course Resources).  

Start with an introduction which gives a brief outline of the key elements of your assignment.

For example, “This assignment will…”

You will outline what you are going to discuss within your work. The reader needs to know what they are about to read about.

It might be useful to outline what reflection is, and why it Is important in Health and Social Care.

It might be useful to identify which reflective model you are using; why this model and not a different one?

You will then want to follow the structure of your chosen reflective model; you can use sub-headings if you find this useful. Remember sub-headings are not a usual requirement of academic writing – unless an assignment brief outlines this.

If you choose to write in the 1^stperson make sure you are not ‘telling a story’, and that your writing is not descriptive.

Re-visit the resources on BB about critical analysis to support your writing.

The topic, subject, incident you choose to reflect on must be either related to your work in health and social care, or relate to something about starting/undertaking this Health and Social Care Programme at University.

2. Make sure you are consistently supporting your work and the points you are making with underpinning evidence. (A minimum of 7 sources required, however the more reading you do, the easier you will find it to do your work).

Students often struggle to use supporting evidence when they are reflecting upon personal ‘things’. An example of doing this would be: If you are reflecting upon an incident which involved communication, you could highlight the incident and then suggest why communication is an important skill when working in H/S Care.

Give a conclusion at the end; this can briefly summarise your introduction, ensuring you have covered what you initially highlighted.

Start your reference list on a separate page at the end of your work and title it ‘Reference List’.

It is important that you use paragraphs and show these clearly by either:

leaving a line space between paragraphs

indenting the first line of the paragraph (6 spaces)

Use an appropriate font such as Arial and font size 12.

Use 1.5 line spacing

It is crucial that you use Harvard Referencing System and provide a Reference List.

3. It is important that you think about the presentation of your work as part of your personal and professional development.  An assignment that has been hurriedly put together is likely to look like it has been hurriedly put together. Manage your time well to ensure that you have time to proof-read your assignment (for grammar, spelling and correct referencing and so on) and make amendments before submitting.

4. Academic work is not descriptive.  It has an element of critical analysis. It is important that you do not just give a descriptive list of what was done and when. The rationale and process needs to be underpinned by theories, concepts and other research relating to the issues.