Zana Barden

I personally learned how this worked after meeting a well-known learning expert, and educator, Susan Ambrose. Ambrose is Senior Vice Provost for Education Innovation at Northeastern University in Boston.

She started by explaining how often people assume that they are reflecting or even learning, when in reality they’re not absorbing information. In many U.S. schools and colleges, the assumption is that if you put information in front of a student, it will enter their brain. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

This is where reflection in the learning process comes in. As it turns out, the more information you are exposed to, and the more you are trying to learn – the more important reflection becomes. As part of her role as Vice Provost at Northeastern, Ambrose supports an internship program that encourages students to engage in this sort of reflection.

Students are required to write, and answer questions about their internship experience overall, both during, and at the end of their time working with an organization.

Ambrose told of a female Northeastern student who offered a strong example of the progress these writing assignments facilitate. The college student in question worked with a Human Rights non-profit in Cambodia for one summer. She reported that writing about her experience, in the course of living it, made an enormous difference.

Writing helped her to reflect on what she was learning, and how the experience was pushing her to grow. It led her to thinking what she wished to accomplish in the remainder of her time in Cambodia. The space given by the writing assignment was a chance to take a step back, and witness the experience from a new perspective.

This is the promise of writing to reflect, and writing to learn. Write to learn is both a mindset, and a toolset that can be used in virtually any context to improve reflection and comprehension. Whether it is an ER surgeon improving his practice, like Mark Bernstein, losing weight, or interning in Southeast Asia, the results are consistent.

In a classroom context, writing has the radical potential to position students as active participants in their own learning. Rather than regurgitating information, writing offers students a chance to create, and use higher order thinking.

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