Engaging with student teachers on reflective writing: Reclaiming writing

Reflective writing is an integral part of the training of teachers. The aim is to support future teachers in thinking about the learning and teaching process that they engage in. Reflective writing is seen as balancing the positivist technicist approach to learning and teaching that now characterises the educational systems. However, there is still the danger that reflective writing is rendered as a routinised writing that only replicates the performative discourses that it tries to escape. This chapter engages with the works of Jacques Derrida on writing to challenge ideas on reflective writing. Through an action-research project that looked at the reflective writing, this chapter highlights the complexities, yet the rewarding nature, of engaging with reflective writing that escapes closure by drawing upon philosophical ideas from Derrida.