The linguistic construction of critical ‘self-reflection’ in social work and business

The use of reflective assignments such as critical reflection essays, learning journals and reflective journals is widespread in higher education. These tasks are used to uncover critical thinking in action and assess how students’ knowledge-in-waiting transforms into knowledge-in- practice (Gulwadi, 2009). However, there is little consensus about how to teach and assess these types of assessment. This paper, as part of an ongoing study on knowledge practices of critical thinking (Szenes, Tilakaratna and Maton, 2015), reports on how successful students demonstrate the capacity to critically reflect on practice in a manner that is valued within their disciplinary contexts. Drawing on the APPRAISAL framework from Systemic Functional Linguistics we show, through analyses of high-scoring student assignments, that successful students draw on the resources of negative AFFECT and JUDGEMENT to target and manage their emotions and opinions to demonstrate critical self-reflection within reflective assignments. By making explicit the evaluative resources by which these students construct critical ‘self-reflection’ in reflective assignments, this study intends to contribute to demystifying the linguistic demands of demonstrating critical thinking in applied disciplines.