Reflective Writing Strategies and Their Effects on Grade 11 Students’ Reflection Skills and Academic Achievement: An Action Research

Reflection is a core affective-domain competency emphasized in the Philippine Professional Standards for Teachers (PPST), yet few studies have examined structured reflective writing in Philippine public secondary science classrooms. This action research examined whether Reflective Writing Strategies (RWS) embedded in Physical Science lessons were associated with changes in students’ reflection skills and achievement, and explored the relationship between the two. One four-week action research cycle (Kemmis & McTaggart, 1988) was implemented with one intact class of 29 Grade 11 students in Ilocos Norte, Philippines, using a single-group pretest-posttest design without a control group. Reflection was measured with the 16-item Questionnaire for Reflective Thinking (QRT; Kember et al., 2000) and rubric ratings of journals, essays, and artifacts; achievement with a 20-item teacher-made test. Experts reviewed the instruments for content validity. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson product-moment correlation. The self-reported composite QRT mean rose from 2.31 (disagree with reservation) before the intervention to 4.09 (agree only with reservation) after it. Mean achievement rose from 6.07 (SD = 2.05) to 12.31 (SD = 3.05) out of 20 (gain = 6.24). Posttest score distributions shifted toward higher performance bands relative to the pretest, and reflection journals, essays, and artifacts were rated from satisfactory to exemplary across rubric criteria. A statistically significant, moderate positive correlation was found between students’ reflection skills and academic achievement (r = .43, p = .020). Embedded reflective writing was associated with higher reflection and achievement scores, adding school-level evidence where it is scarce. Thus, findings support integrating structured reflective writing into science instruction. Controlled, multi-cycle studies involving embedded reflective writing are needed.