LEAD 6011 Module 4 Reflective Journal Pattern Analysis Example

Eighteen Entries, Four Levels: Coding Six Weeks of a Leadership Journal for Depth of Reflection and for the Habit It Was Meant to Change

Student Name

American College of Education

LEAD6011: Leadership as a Reflective Practice

Module 4 Assignment

Instructor Name

November 2, 2026

Introduction

Since the start of this course I have kept a leadership journal, three short entries a week written on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, about the decisions and conversations of my working week. Module 3 identified a specific habit to change: I consult people after I have already decided, which colleagues rated as weak balanced processing. This paper analyzes eighteen entries from six weeks for two things: how deeply I reflected, using a published coding scheme, and whether the new practice of stating my view last actually appeared in my week.

The Coding Scheme

Kember et al. (2008) proposed a four-category scheme for assessing the level of reflection in students' written work. The lowest level, habitual action or non-reflection, describes writing that reports what happened without thought about it. Understanding shows comprehension of concepts without relating them to personal experience in a way that changes anything. Reflection relates concepts to one's own experience and considers alternatives. Critical reflection, the highest level, involves a change in perspective, in which the writer recognizes and questions an assumption that had been taken for granted. The authors designed the scheme so that a whole piece of writing receives the level of its highest sustained category. I coded each entry myself and then asked a classmate to code six at random; we agreed on five.

Depth of Reflection

Of the eighteen entries, five were habitual action: lists of meetings and tasks with no interpretation, mostly written on Friday nights when I was tired. Eight reached understanding: they named a course concept, such as balanced processing or relational leadership, and described an event in its terms without asking what it meant for me. Four reached reflection: they connected an event to my own habits and considered what I might do differently. One reached critical reflection. Most of my journal, in other words, is a well-organized account of my week, not an examination of it.

The single critical entry, from week four, describes a budget meeting where I noticed that I described the community health workers' input as "helpful" and the epidemiologist's as "the data." I wrote that I had been treating one kind of knowledge as decoration and the other as evidence, and that this assumption, not a scheduling problem, explained the June heat meeting. That is the kind of shift in perspective Kember et al. (2008) describe, and it happened once in six weeks.

What the Lower Levels Looked Like

Examples make the categories concrete. A typical habitual entry, from a Friday in week two, read in full: "Grant call at 9. Two classes. Budget sheet to deputy. Rosa out sick." It records a day and nothing more. A typical understanding entry, from week three, described a staff meeting where an educator questioned the order of the school vaping lessons, and I wrote that this was "a good example of balanced processing, since I let her finish before responding." The entry uses the concept correctly but never asks whether letting her finish changed anything; in fact the lesson order stayed exactly as I had planned it. A reflection-level entry from week five went further, asking why I had defended the lesson order so quickly and wondering whether my own authorship of the curriculum made me protective of it. Reading the three side by side shows how small the steps between levels are, and how easy it is to mistake naming a concept for reflecting on one.

Why Critical Reflection Was Rare

Mezirow (1997) described transformative learning as the process of changing frames of reference, the habits of mind and points of view through which adults interpret experience, and argued that it requires critical reflection on assumptions, often prompted by an experience that does not fit existing frames. My journal suggests that the daily rhythm of entries works against this. Most days contain nothing that disturbs my frame, and writing about them produces description or, at best, understanding. The critical entry followed a moment that did disturb it, my own choice of words in a meeting. Journaling three times a week may matter less than noticing and recording those disturbing moments when they happen. Timing may matter too. Every entry is reflection-on-action in the classic sense (Schön, 1983), written hours or days after the event, and by Friday the discomfort that might have prompted questioning has usually faded.

Did the New Practice Appear?

Module 3 committed me to stating my view last in planning meetings and to asking someone likely to disagree for the strongest argument against my plan. The journal records nine planning meetings in six weeks. I stated my view last in five, all of them in weeks four to six, after the critical entry. I asked a likely critic for the counterargument twice. In one of those meetings, an educator argued against moving the diabetes prevention classes to a new clinic, and the move was postponed after she showed that the clinic's bus route did not run on class evenings. The practice appeared late, appeared incompletely and, at least once, changed a decision.

Patterns Across the Entries

Three further patterns emerged when I read the entries together. First, entries about meetings with my own staff were more reflective than entries about meetings with my supervisor, which were mostly descriptive; I appear to examine my behavior downward more readily than upward. Second, entries mentioning time pressure were almost always at the habitual level, which echoes the June incident: when I am rushed, I stop thinking about how I lead. Third, the word "should" appeared in eleven entries, usually about what others should have done, and in only three about what I should have done.

Limits of the Analysis

Coding my own journal has obvious limits. I knew the scheme while writing, which may have pushed some entries toward concepts in a way that inflated the understanding category. Eighteen entries is a small sample, and six weeks includes a grant deadline that was not typical. The classmate's agreement on five of six coded entries is reassuring but informal. The patterns are worth acting on; they are not findings about leaders in general. A fairer test would be to have a colleague code all eighteen entries without knowing which weeks they came from, which I plan to do before the next review.

Changes to the Journal

The analysis suggests three changes. I will replace the Friday entry, which was nearly always habitual, with an entry written within a day of any moment that surprised or troubled me. I will end each entry with one sentence beginning "The assumption here was," to push toward the questioning Mezirow (1997) placed at the center of adult transformation. And I will add a weekly note on meetings with my supervisor, the relationship where my reflection is thinnest.

Conclusion

Six weeks of journaling produced one entry that changed how I see my own leadership and seventeen that mostly recorded it. That ratio is not a failure; it shows where reflection actually happens for me, in moments that unsettle an assumption, and it suggests how to arrange the journal around them. The new practice of stating my view last is taking hold, slowly, and has already changed one decision for the better. The next module asks for a growth plan, and this analysis tells me what it must include.

References

Kember, D., McKay, J., Sinclair, K., & Wong, F. K. Y. (2008). A four-category scheme for coding and assessing the level of reflection in written work. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(4), 369-379. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930701293355

Mezirow, J. (1997). Transformative learning: Theory to practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 1997(74), 5-12. https://doi.org/10.1002/ace.7401

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.