Autobiographical Reflective Writing in Higher Education: Framing Intercultural Awareness and Civic Consciousness
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22333/ijme.2025.9980Keywords:
Reflective writing; Autobiographical sketch; Multicultural awareness; Civic Conciseness; Higher education; Transformative learning; Inclusive pedagogy; Awareness-Action gapAbstract
Autobiographical reflective writing is a powerful yet underexplored pedagogical and diagnostic tool in higher education. This study investigates how such writing develops as a medium for fostering and evidencing intercultural awareness and civic consciousness among Georgian university students. Based on 122 autobiographical sketches produced between 2009 and 2024 across four universities, through thematic coding and rubric-based assessment (Braun & Clarke, 2006), the analyst traces movement from descriptive self-narratives toward theoretically informed, critically reflexive, and action-oriented reflections. Grounded in transformative learning, intercultural maturity, and civic learning theories, the study validates reflective writing as a longitudinal indicator of developmental growth, capturing how empathy, critical incidents, and reflexivity consolidate into inclusive and civic dispositions. Findings reveal consistently high empathy and cultural awareness, with later texts demonstrating stronger theoretical integration, narrative coherence, and planned inclusive action - evidence of maturation in reflection quality and pedagogical design. The study concludes that systematically scaffolded autobiographical writing offers higher education a sustainable means of assessing reflective depth, monitoring developmental change, and embedding intercultural and civic learning outcomes within quality assurance frameworks. Contributions are threefold: conceptually, it integrates reflective pedagogy, intercultural development, and civic learning into a framework for progression from awareness to enacted responsibility; methodologically, it provides a replicable combination of rubric-based assessment, thematic coding, and narrative citation adaptable for programme evaluation; and practically, it outlines design principles for prompts, rubrics, feedback, and QA alignment to transform reflective writing from a private exercise into a structured social practice with demonstrable outcomes.
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