The retrospective is a crucial component of the agile software development process. In previous studies of retrospectives in undergraduate team software development projects, students exhibited limited and shallow reflection. We speculate that this is due to students’ limited exposure to these practices and the absence of clear guidance for engaging in reflection. This study presents an empirical comparison of a standard retrospective model against an enhanced retrospective model that scaffolds deeper levels of metacognition and critical thinking. While both models facilitated team discussion on similar software development topics, we identified statistically significant differences in the reflection quality of students who used the enhanced retrospective model, which promoted higher levels of justification, consideration of more critiqued and discussed strategies, and more nuanced discussions. These findings contribute to improving software engineering education and agile processes by demonstrating the efficacy of an enhanced pedagogical model for team retrospectives. In addition, our findings identify opportunities to further enhance reflection in team software development projects through more frequent and focused metacognitive prompting at strategic points in the process