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MGTS7621 Professional Development Reflective Journal Task Guide
Title: Professional Development Reflective Journal - Assessment
1
Type: Reflective Report
Length: 2000 words
Learning Objectives: 1,2,3,4
Weight: 50% Total
Course Coordinator: Dr Jan Ferguson
Assessment Task Description Summary
There are three important outcomes of your Professional Development Reflective
Journal (PDRJ):
• To generate self-awareness of your strengths, attributes, and abilities.
• To identify your career preferences and choices, leading ultimately to career
decisions and identity.
• To prepare you for reflective writing in your profession in performance appraisals,
promotion, and career changes.
This assessment contains two parts:
The detailed requirements for this assessment task will be discussed in the seminars and will be
outlined in the Professional Development Reflective Journal Task Guide provided.
PART 1 – Summary
• You are required to complete a self-evaluation questionnaire/activity before or during the
seminar weeks 2-6.
• Using the self-evaluation questionnaire/activity you are required to reflect on your results.
Then you will complete your Professional Development Reflective Journals on the
template provided week by week. They are to be around 600 words.
• It is important that you do this every week as you will have the time, support, and guidance
in the seminar workshops.
PART 2 - Summary
After writing your weekly Professional Development Reflective Journals you are required to
assemble, compile, and integrate the small stories in your 5 weekly PDRJs into one coherent
2000-word reflective journal. You are required to review all your Professional Development
Reflective Journals and the feedback you received.
• You will submit a 2000-word overall Professional Development Reflective Journal. You
will use and combine all of the small stories from your weekly PDRJs. You will make one
story of your career progress to date.
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• Each of the 5 weekly reflections must be REVIEWED, SUMMARISED AND DISCUSSED
within the 2000 words.
• You will be expected to draw upon the underpinning theories and concepts for each of
the career self-assessments to support your reflections, using at least five relevant
readings from the course reading list.
• Suggested headings and format for the report will be provided.
The marking criteria and grade descriptors are in the marking rubric. Use the
marking rubric, the Course Profile (ECP) and this document to guide the
preparation of your submissions.
Task Description:
Your overall task is to write a 2000-word final Professional Development Reflective Journal
(PDRJ) drawing on what you have learned about yourself, through writing weekly Professional
Development Reflective Journals are based on self-evaluation questionnaires and activities in
seminars 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 combined with the ongoing feedback provided in discussion.
Each week from 1-6 you will write your Professional Development Reflective Journal (PDRJ) of
around 500 words. The first PDRJ will be a practice one. You will use a Professional
Development Reflective Journal Template which will be provided. You will improve on your
PDRJs using the developmental advice and feedback given in the workshop discussions.
This assessment will assist you to develop the professional skill of reflection, self-profiling and
career planning and management. These evaluations and journals are essential for completing
Assessment Task Two, your Career ePortfolio or website. Also, professional reflections and
evaluations are used in employment, for example, in recruitment, in performance reviews,
promotion applications and may be useful as you make your many career transitions.
Part 1 The weekly self-evaluations and reflective journals
Your task is to form a perspective of your career choices and decisions from all your self-
evaluation questionnaires/activities
• You will reflect on all your Professional Development Reflective Journals and produce
one Final Professional Development Reflective Journal discussing:
o what you have learned about yourself through those self-evaluation
questionnaires/activities and weekly Professional Development Reflective
Journals
o how these self-evaluation questionnaires/activities and Professional Development
Reflective Journals have influenced your thoughts about your career
o the career choices you have made or changed because of these Professional
Development Reflective Journals
o how reflective professional journaling has assisted you now and for the future
o how you have incorporated the research to inform and assist your journaling
A. Starting Your Journals
1. Read this Professional Development Reflective Journal Task Guide. READ
THOROUGHLY and have it available for Seminar One.
2. Download a copy of the Professional Development Reflective Journal Template which is
provided. Have it available for your use in Seminar One. YOU WILL USE THIS
TEMPLATE MOST WEEKS DURING WEEKS 1-6.
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3. During each of the first six seminars, there will be a Professional Development Reflective
Journal Workshop.
4. During this Professional Development Reflective Journal Workshop, you will complete a
set career self-evaluation questionnaire/activity. These will be provided in the seminars
and where possible, posted under the Learning Resources section of Blackboard. Each
of the self-evaluations will focus your attention on what is important to you in your
career.
5. During the Professional Development Reflective Journal Workshop, you will be guided to
reflect on what you discovered about yourself in the self-evaluation and how this
affects your personal career choices.
6. You will be guided on how to write reflectively and complete the template. This will be
aspects you have learned about yourself that influence your thinking about your career
plans now or in the near future.
7. After completion of these self-evaluation questionnaires/activities, you will write a ‘small
story’ about your career thoughts, your career evaluation, your aims, and any plans.
8. You will be expected to complete your first formal PDRJ during week two of the semester
after practicing and working on the feedback from week one discussions. You will
complete each of the remaining PDRJs during the subsequent seminars with the advice
and guidance of the seminar leader and the facilitators and in discussion with others. The
five PDRJs will be reviewed and discussed in your overall Final Professional
Development Reflective Journal (Part 2).
IN SUMMARY: YOU WILL INCLUDE YOUR REFLECTIONS FROM THE WEEKLY
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT REFLECTIVE JOURNALS IN YOUR FINAL REPORT
(INSTRUCTIONS LATER)
B. Why Professional Development Reflective Journaling in MGTS7621 Career
Transition?
We have chosen Reflective Career Journaling for this course. Reflective Career Journaling
and reflective writing are professional practices within many professions including teaching,
the health professions and aviation. Reflective writing is also a management skill (Sen, 2010)
in performance appraisals and promotion rounds for example.
Your career management is what will make you competitive and employable. Other research
indicates that reflective writing and journaling can empower individuals to increase their career
competence and develop employability. Reflective Career Journaling is therefore also used in
developing employability skills (Wharton 2017). Reflective Career Journaling helps people
dialogue about the steps they might take to explore career choices, choose an employer,
achieve job satisfaction, progress and competence explore what motivates them, aim for
promotion, and to navigate career decisions and opportunities.
In this Assessment Task, the self-evaluations assist you to develop the skills of self-profiling
and self-awareness to craft your story about your strengths, your career identity, and your
career plans. Additionally, this assessment builds essential self-knowledge and career
competencies for completing Assessment Task Two, your Career ePortfolio.
C. Reflective journaling in comparison to academic journaling
Reflective journaling is different to academic journaling as it is a personal account, not an
academic account where you ONLY consider the views of others or construct an argument.
Reflective journaling helps us to recognise OUR experiences from a range of viewpoints.
For example, our past self, our current self, and our future self, or our ‘hoped for’ self (Ibarra,
1999). Hence, it is useful for thinking about our career identity, vision, and goals. We may
incorporate the views of other researchers and writers on careers to support our reflections
and plans.
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The key to reflective journaling is to describe what happened in the self-evaluation to provide
the context for your learning from the self-evaluation, then move beyond just describing. The
journaling is not reflective if you have not considered why things happened and demonstrated
what you have learned from a particular experience, and how you will apply this learning into
the future. Thus, Reflective Career Journaling is useful tool for exploring:
how the self of yesterday became the self of today and will
become the self of tomorrow (Savickas, 2005).
Finally, Lengelle and Meijers (2012) advocate personal story telling which is what you will do
when you apply for a job, get an interview and when you progress in your career. You will tell the
story of your capabilities and how you got them:
The narrative career methods that have proliferated in past decades
offer a wide range of counselling-based approaches to career learning.
In addition to the storytelling approach of McMahon and Watson (2012),
the storyboarding method of Law
(http://www.hihohiho.com/storyboarding/sbstockroom.html), the life
design perspective of Savickas et al. (2010) and the contributions of
Cochran (1997), Peavy (1998) and Amundson (2010) to narrative
counselling, writing might be included as a developing method with an
evolving practical and theoretical foundation.
D. Weekly Reflective Career Journaling – how to write reflectively
Each weekly career self-evaluation questionnaire/activity is viewed as an experience that
enables you to learn something about yourself. Reflective career journaling becomes a useful
approach to interpret and explain our reactions to our findings, leading to new understanding
about ourselves and our career choices. For example:
o Using personal pronouns (I, we, my)
o Reflecting on what you have learned about yourself through those self-evaluation
questionnaires/activities and weekly Professional Development Reflective Journals
o Showing how these self-evaluation questionnaires/activities and Professional
Development Reflective Journals have influenced your thoughts about your career
o Reviewing the career choices, you have made or changed because of these self-
evaluation activities and Professional Development Reflective Journals
o Demonstrating how reflective professional journaling has assisted you now and for the
future
o Explaining how you have incorporated the research to inform and assist your
journaling
o At least 600 words are expected
o We will expect to see your use of relevant theory in using TWO readings from the
related weekly Course Readings on Blackboard.
o Use AMJ referencing style.
E. Your reflective journaling process and development
Journaling is an iterative process of journaling, revising, and journaling again. The more you
read over your drafts, consider your research, and improve them, the better the mark you are
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likely to achieve. To support your learning about reflective journaling, there will be
opportunities for discussion, facilitator support and peer-feedback in the seminars.
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Part Two – Final Professional Development Reflective Journal (2000 words)
After completing your weekly Professional Development Reflective Journals, you are
required to compile and integrate each of these separate but related ‘small stories’ into one
coherent 2000-word reflection. More detailed instructions are outlined in the following
sections and in the seminars.
F. Final Professional Development Reflective Journal (2000 words)
After writing your weekly Professional Development Reflective Journals you are required to
assemble, compile, and integrate the weekly PDRJs into one coherent 2000-word
reflective journal. You are required to review all your Professional Development Reflective
Journals and the feedback you received.
Your task is to form a perspective of your career choices and decisions from all your self-
evaluation questionnaires/activities.
• You will reflect on all your Professional Development Reflective Journals and produce
one Final Professional Development Reflective Journal discussing:
o what you have learned about yourself through those self-evaluation
questionnaires/activities and weekly Professional Development Reflective
Journals
o how these self-evaluation questionnaires/activities and Professional
Development Reflective Journals have influenced your thoughts about your
career.
o the career choices you have made or changed because of these Professional
Development Reflective Journals
o how reflective professional journaling has assisted you now and for the future.
o how you have incorporated the research to inform and assist your journaling
Step 1. Assemble your PDRJs side by side in front of you. These PDRJs show different
aspects of yourself in relation to your career choices. Think about what you learned
about yourself from all your self-evaluation s in the PDRJs.
Step 2. Reflect on the details of the self-evaluations and what you learned about
yourself
Step 3. As you complete your Final Professional Development Reflective Journal, review and
integrate the readings related to your self-evaluation questionnaire findings. You will
refer to the readings that you discussed in each of your PDRJs.
Clearly articulate and explain how and why the readings that you have chosen over
the weeks are relevant to your reflection. You will need to use and refer to 8 readings
from the source material provided.
Step 4. Provide a final statement about what you discovered about yourself to inform your
career now and into the future.
Show how this learning has led you to your career choice or developed some options?
State your career choice or options.
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Step 5. Reflect on your experience of journaling about your career. For example, what
aspects of the process did you find most useful and least useful. Also, consider
how you might use this reflective journaling approach professionally in your future.
Step 6. Revise and review your work and edit and re-edit for clarity and perfection.
Step 7. Using your weekly readings and any others you have researched; finalise your
Reference List in AMJ style. Readings cited in your PDRJ must be in your reference
list and alphabetized by first author. Readings in your reference list must be cited in
your reflection.
Word Count - the Professional Development Reflective Journal is 2000 words (+/- 10%).
Word count must be shown on your Cover Page, otherwise it will be assumed the assignment
is over word limit and incur a 10% penalty. All words (except Cover Page and Reference List)
are included in your word count.
G. Source material.
• Use the reading list provided for you.
• Each week we focus on specific readings in the seminar. Others will be added as the
literature becomes available. These are particularly useful for your weekly PDRJs and
the Final Professional Development Reflective Journal.
• You will have read and incorporated relevant readings in your weekly Professional
Development Reflective Journals. If you use additional reading beyond the Course
Reading List, your assessor will expect to see relevant, quality, scholarly sources, such
as those obtained using Library resources. DO NOT CITE BLOGS OR INAPPROPRIATE
WEB PAGES.
• Your assessor will be looking for how well you use scholarly sources to support your
reflections. Integrate your sources into your reflections, rather than drop in references
here and there.
• Please use Academy of Management Journal (AMJ) referencing style. The UQ Library
Guide for AMJ can be found here: https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/amj
• We STRONGLY DISCOURAGE “cutting and pasting” or “borrowing” from sources and
then simply changing the words around, as this constitutes plagiarism.
H. A. Submission requirements.
• The Final Professional Development Reflective Journal is worth 50%
• It is your responsibility to ensure that you have submitted your work
correctly.
Before submitting your final Professional Development Reflective Journal, ensure that it
complies with the following:
• Cover Page - your name, student number, your Group Facilitator’s name, and total word
count.
• Professional font such as Calibri or Arial keep it consistent and 1.5-line space.
• Number all pages and section headings and tables.
• Margins are 2.5cm on all sides.
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• Proof-read for spelling, typographical, and grammatical errors.
• Use readings from the related weekly Course Readings on Blackboard.
• All sources are cited correctly using AMJ referencing style and are well-integrated (rather
than dropping in references here and there).
• If you use readings beyond the course textbook and course reading list, we will expect to
see relevant, quality, scholarly sources, such as those obtained from peer-reviewed, or
business journals accessed via Library resources.
• The AMJ Referencing Style Guide provided by the UQ Library can be found
here: https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/amj
• The reference list is not included in the word count.
• Review your Final Professional Development Reflective Journal against the criteria in the
marking rubric.
• Students are required to check their work is accurate and submitted correctly
• Check your similarity index for similarity highlighted in your paragraphs and edit this
until the highlighting is gone
• Please be aware that The University of Queensland takes plagiarism seriously. All
assessments will be checked for plagiarism and all instances of plagiarism will be
managed according to the university plagiarism policies and procedures.
Please note
• A late penalty of 10% per day will apply if you do not submit an assessment item on time,
or you do not have an approved extension or valid reason for an extension with supporting
evidence.
• Take a copy of the submission receipt and keep it.
• Refer to the ECP for the late penalty policy.
Grade Centre informs the Course Coordinator and markers that assessments
have been submitted and the date and time of submission.
END OF INSTRUCTIONS
References in AMJ
Ibarra, H. 1999. Provisional selves: Experimenting with image and identity in professional
adaptation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(4): 764–791.
Lengelle, R., & Meijers, F. 2014 Narrative identity: writing the self in career learning. British
Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 42(1), 52–72.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03069885.2013.816837
Savickas, M. 2005. “The theory and practice of career construction”. In Career development and
counselling: Putting theory and research to work, Edited by: Brown, S.D. and Lent,
R.W. 42–70. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Savickas, M., Nota, L., Rossier, J., Dauwalder, J.-P., Duarte, M. E., Guichard, J., Soresi, S., Van
Esbroeck, R., & Van Vianen, A. E.M. 2009. Life designing: A paradigm for career
construction in the 21st century. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 75(3), 239–250.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2009.04.004
Sen, B. A. 2010. Reflective writing: a management skill. Library Management, 31(1/2), 79–93.
https://doi.org/10.1108/01435121011013421
Wharton, S. 2017. Reflection in university and the employability agenda: a discourse analysis
case study. Reflective Practice, 18(4), 567–579.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2017.1323734