The futile quest for honesty in reflective writing: recognising self-criticism as a form of self-enhancement

Reflective writing tasks are commonly employed across higher education programmes, yet despite their use, they are often accompanied by concerns that students simply performance manage by constructing positive accounts of their practice in their reflections. To address this, students are encouraged to be ‘honest’ in their reflections based on the assumption that reflections that engage in greater self-criticism are more honest. Through a presentation of a spectrum of techniques used for self-enhancement in student reflections (ranging along a continuum from self-criticism to self-praise), the paper contends that self-criticism and self-praise are two sides of the same coin. Both approaches can be used by students in reflective writing to performance manage. Therefore, efforts at promoting ‘honesty’ and ‘authenticity’ in reflective practice need to pay greater attention to the performative nature of both self-praise and self-criticism in reflective writing.