Abstract

This study evaluates the impact reflective writing has on high school students’ understanding of scientific concepts and their attitudes and opinions toward learning science. Reflective writing is a part of the writing-to-learn movement (Connolly, 1989), the aim of which is to incorporate informal writing into all disciplines. Reflective writing is a hermeneutic process during which a student writes, metacognitively on a paper, his or her ideas about a specific scientific topic, in an informal manner. The research done on the use and impact of Reflective Writing involved post-secondary students. This study aims to shed light on how reflective writing affects high school students’ understanding of science. Participants in this study are high school students, from a Montreal school, who were asked to complete reflective writing tasks as a part of their science course work. Their writings are analyzed and compared to their attitudes and opinions toward the subject as probed by interviews conducted towards the end of the course.