Journal Keeping: How to Use Reflective Writing for Learning, Teaching, Professional Insight, and Positive Change (review)

If Dannelle D. Stevens and Joanne E. Cooper had been students in one of my writing classes and had proposed a text designed "to inform a broad audience in education: teachers, faculty, staff, students, and administrators" (xvii), I would have counseled them to narrow their audience, cautioning that it would be difficult to meet the needs of five groups in a single text. I would have been at least partly wrong in that advice.

While Journal Keeping: How to Use Reflective Writing for Learning, Teaching, Professional Insight, and Positive Change is not a book I would recommend for students, it does an excellent job of addressing the questions that faculty, staff, and administrators might have about the uses of journals in their classrooms and professional lives. In doing so, it makes a clear and compelling argument for what the authors call an "underused and sometimes misunderstood" (xv) educational tool.

The book has three parts: "Journal Writing and Its Theoretical Foundations" (Chapters 1–3), "Using Journals in Classrooms and Professional Life" (Chapters 4–8), and "A Collection of Case Studies" (Chapters 9–10).

Chapter 1 defines both the process and the product of journaling. Stevens and Cooper provide a brief historical context, identify both the key and ancillary benefits of journaling for students, faculty, and administrators, and discuss a rationale for the practice.

In Chapter 2 the authors examine the relationship between reflection and experiential learning. They draw upon the theoretical perspectives of John Dewey (1933, 1938, 1944), David Kolb (1984), and D. A. Schön (1983, 1987), allowing these noted scholars to provide a rich theoretical justification for the practice of journal-keeping for learning and professional growth.

Chapter 3 provides even further theoretical support by examining the role of reflection in adult developmental theory and making connections between journaling, meaning-making, learning, and self-knowledge.

Chapter 4 addresses basic questions about the use of journals in the classroom. It identifies writing principles that support the practice, suggests some ways faculty can communicate their expectations about journaling to students, and discusses possible journal formats at some length.

In Chapter 5, the authors enumerate eight classroom-appropriate journal writing techniques. They also identify which of these are most appropriate for encouraging students to read course materials, improving student thinking and writing, and fostering student engagement in servicelearning projects.

Chapter 6 addresses the fraught issue of assessment, commenting, "There is little agreement in the literature about grading student journals" (p. 110). However, they do a good job of presenting the reasons for this lack of agreement, making a case for feedback (if not grading), offering approaches to assessment, and providing tips for handling the volume of work that grading journals often generates. They also provide a succinct discussion of issues related to privacy and "the ethics of reading student journal writing" (p. 124).

Chapter 7 considers the role of journal writing in professional life, particularly in regard to faculty (and administrative) productivity, research, and teaching. Like Chapter 5, Chapter 7 identifies potential uses for journals, techniques for journaling, and possible formats for professional journals.

Chapter 8, the only chapter by an outside contributor, Rebecca L. Shulte, deals with journalkeeping in the 21st century, "the computer age" (p. 163). (See discussion below.)

Chapters 9 and 10 provide a series of case studies focusing on faculty and administrators who have used journal-keeping for teaching in a variety of disciplines (Chapter 9) and in professional development (Chapter 10). The studies serve as both examples and generative tools.

Each chapter is clearly arranged around a set of guiding questions which are answered completely and concisely in jargon-free prose. Chapters are introduced with relevant quotations from keepers of journals, ranging from Socrates and Confucius to Laura, a graduate student, and Jean, a university dean. They conclude with brief synopses of the key points. Supplementing the prose...