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Whether novices can be guided to produce valued critical reflections is a subject widely-discussed in fields of practice where placement is essential. This research enters into this conversation. However, the question is considered with a new framework by deconstructing evidence of successful critical reflection using an increasingly significant social realist framework, Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). Students and teachers involved in fields where critical reflection writing is important can be guided to notice how semantic gravity from Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) makes more visible what is valued by experts evaluating novice critical reflections. The findings discussed in this paper stem from an interdisciplinary collaboration between academic literacy and nursing experts. Over ten months from 2018 to 2019, analyses of 200 first year student nurse critical reflection assignments were conducted. General patterns distinguishing high and low scoring critical reflection assignments were observed. A high and a low scoring paper reflecting these general patterns are discussed in detail in the results. The research seeks to contribute to both research on improving the practice of critical reflection in higher education, and approaches exploring Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) in educational research to better understand knowledge practices in applied disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand the experience of reflective activity from the perspective of Teacher Learners (TLs) encountering reflective ideas for the first time. By identifying elements of a pedagogic reflective task they found most valuable and plausible, the study seeks to provide insights to improve educators' presentation of reflective ideas. It investigates the experiences of 20 language teachers writing reflections on classroom teaching during a programme of formal instruction. Writers' decisions are examined intensively to identify which phases/elements of an idealized cycle they chose to extend while engaged in a reflective task. Writers' commentaries on their writing, collected after the period of their instruction, were also analysed to discover the elements they found plausible and valuable beyond their utility for the course. The study found that writers looking back at their accounts tended to locate most value in practical, 'descriptive' sections of their writing rather than those linking to academic theory, or more 'critical' modes of reflection. Nevertheless, interviewee responses indicated that many had a nuanced sense that such higher-level modes of reflection might have value outside the formal circumstances of the programme. The paper finally offers practical suggestions that respond to these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper is a conversation with the implicit and explicit expectations of the academy, namely that as doctoral students we must achieve a high degree of intellectual autonomy and generate new knowledge. We contest the implications of this view of learners and learning - that learners are autonomous intellectual agents, that knowledge is a private possession, that cognition is an individual process, and that learning is a static and singular path. We propose instead an understanding of learning as pathmaking, which suggests a creative, richly textured, open-ended, collaborative and passionate process through which new possibilities emerge. This paper comes out of our shared experiences of doctoral studies in Education. We began with initial conversations about our learning in an Ontario Faculty of Education, which then unfolded into a decision to write a paper together. Our process oscillated between individual writing, shared discussion, and analysis. After jointly identifying six keywords, each of us wrote a reflection about a different one - then we merged our individual reflections into a larger whole. The authorial voices in the paper vary between 'I' (representing individual reflections of six authors) and 'we' (representing the collective voice). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The English Language Teacher's ability to examine his/her own practices and beliefs is always an area of language-teaching research worth exploring because the findings have an impact on classroom practice. However, while research on teaching the macro-skills is a rich area in the discipline, teacher beliefs in this aspect remain underexplored especially in developing countries such as the Philippines. This paper examines beliefs of teacher effectiveness in implementing lessons in the macro-skills among ESL teachers in the Philippines. Using data from reflective logs and interviews of 16 teachers of English in the Philippines, data reveal that the main beliefs among teachers center on learner centeredness, instructional skills in teaching the macro-skills and professional development. This paper argues that among the macro-skills, writing and speaking pose challenges in lesson implementation. In addition, the findings suggest that beliefs in effective teaching of the macro-skills are related to learner centeredness, instructional effectiveness and culture contribute to a nuanced account of teacher belief research in English language teaching in the Philippine context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of written reflections as a source for creating awareness, evaluating and decision making for classroom instructional and managerial decisions is synonymous with student teachers, especially during the practicum. However, there is the reality of these written entries being denigrated to detached descriptive pieces of journal entries, especially if the practicum stretches over a period of time. How then does the student teacher move beyond the level of personal recounts and achieve a higher level of awareness of self-efficacy? This paper proposes the reflection model which considers three elements: reflective writing, reflective dialoguing and self-efficacy to be necessary for critical reflection. As a preliminary report, the paper concentrates on one element – reflective dialoguing. Excerpts from the sessions show that when provided with opportunities to critically evaluate and talk about these reflections with their peers and lecturers on a regular basis, the student teachers are able to sharpen and target their observations to build local funds of knowledge bases, e.g. on the students, the school, the community, and at the same time to critically reflect on their own beliefs and practices, which in turn helped inform them of their own pedagogic choices and practices in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the effectiveness of using reflective journals in a university language program, through written student feedback, in-class discussion, and the author’s observations and experience of their use over a period of three college semesters. Students in the English Languages Studies Program at Mahidol University International College primarily had used journals for recording course content with a view to revision for the final exam, and journal entries were therefore mainly descriptive. The paper assesses the lessons learned from incorporating reflection into the curriculum during this period and the author’s attempts to provide a more effective framework for critical reflection during this time. Factors that may contribute to the quality of student reflection include defining reflection and clarifying its purpose, and providing scaffolding, such as feedback and guidelines on assessment. Teachers need to apply flexible frameworks for reflection depending on the contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports on an enquiry into how practitioners working in healthcare environments bring mindfulness, a particular type of practice of reflection, into their professional and personal lives. Nine participants engaged in group discussion, Haiku poetry writing and the recording of personal audio diaries. Thematic analysis of the diaries indicates a transcending theme that being in the here and now can highlight discomfort, pain and uncertainty. Within this, sub-themes illustrate that mindfulness can act as a support to personal and professional development, to the content and process of clinical work and as a means to support dealing with work-related stress. A final theme illustrates participants' experiences of using the research process to facilitate their ongoing reflective practice. The paper concludes with a note on what has been identified as 'mindfulness-based reflective practice': a practice that can bring vitality and fluidity to critical reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper offers a reflective account of experiences encountered during the first year of full-time teaching within the academic domain of sport and exercise sciences. Using a first person writing style alongside confessional and creative non-fiction vignettes, I critically reflect on several issues that have led me to re-assess my teaching practices and thus arrive at my current teaching philosophy. Major themes of reflection include initial hopes and fears, changing my mindset of what constitutes skilled teaching and also on finding my 'own' style, which seeks to incorporate a humanistic element to my practice. I close by taking stock of what my reflections have taught me and by offering some reflections on the unfamiliar reflective processes that have underpinned the writing process. Despite my initial reservations, I now believe that the process of reflection and specifically, that of reflective writing, provides an invaluable tool by which to assess and improve one's teaching practices, irrespective of whether this form of writing conforms to the traditional scientific paradigms inherent of physiology disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflective journaling is common practice in teacher preparation and often utilized as a tool to cultivate teacher candidates' dispositional development. This paper details a study that implemented a methodology of teaching self-coding to 45 preservice teacher candidates as a pedagogical tool to support reflective practices within a field-based course. Analysis of teacher candidates' codes and written reflections on the process suggest that the authors' self-coding method helped teacher candidates develop concrete understandings of the relationship between professional teaching dispositions and pedagogical decision-making. Further, findings suggest that two cycles of self-coding facilitated a continuum of reflection wherein teacher candidates initially gained tangible awareness about professional teaching dispositions, and over time translated their new understandings to deeper analysis of their reflections, which elicited asset-based views of diverse learners. Findings suggest that by sharing the tools of a researcher, teacher educators can enhance candidates' reflective capacities, which in turn can support dispositional growth, deeper reflection and reflexivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the results of an 18 month study of a variety of participants involved in written reflection on their learning, both in classes at two universities in the Southern US or in voluntary focus groups. The purpose of the study was to analyze the effects of including autobiographical tools in written reflection. Participants used three tools from the genre of autobiography as they reflected on their learning inside either course content, internship experiences, experiential learning, or goal-setting. Over 500 samples were gathered, offering a large data set for analysis of what kinds of best practice produce quality reflective writing. Through analysis of the data and student surveys and interviews, results show increased attention to critical thinking and metacognition; expressed flexibility, adaptability, and ability to handle ambiguity; and value in connection to others/empathy-building as a result of incorporating autobiographical tools in reflective prompts. The study indicated that reflections using the same autobiographical tool over the course of several sessions seemed to produce deeper levels of reflection and more engagement with the autobiographical tool. Of the three autobiographical tools used in the study, the tool that seemed most helpful to participants was reflection as storytelling that revealed aspects of the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a self-directed, transformative, learning journey triggered by the writer-researcher's experiences of change management which led to widespread redundancies within the vocational education sector in Queensland, Australia. The creative-practice led research focussed on writing narrative comedy screenplays, titled Fighting Fit. Critical reflection was embedded in the research methodology. Reflective writing was documented in a reflection journal and triangulated against external feedback to improve screenplay drafts. Critical feedback on scripts provoked a cycle of inquiry into the lived experiences which inspired the screenplays and highlighted concerns about diminished professional agency and alienation in the workplace. These concerns were then reframed within a humorous perspective by parodying discourses surrounding organisational change management. In doing so, the creative practice-led research enabled the writer-researcher to examine her professional disquiet in response to workplace changes, crystallise values in conflict with neoliberal approaches to education and performed a kind of creative resistance to the corporatisation of vocational education. Moreover, critical reflection embedded in creative writing processes shifted the writer-researcher's perspective towards an increased sense of agency and openness to change; arguably, a desirable outcome for practitioners operating within increasingly precarious employment situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notions of praxis, or practical action, and phronesis, or practical wisdom, are engaged with from two perspectives in this paper – with examples from author’s classroom studies across various Grade schools in Sweden on one hand and the theoretical exposition of these notions across a selection of existing literature on the other. A persuasive case is made for having praxis and phronesis be regarded as units of analysis suitable for grasping as well as furthering practitioner inquiry. The results of such research, conducted as a practice, are aimed at informing the vicarious and the experiential, upon which any reader can in turn base actions. In their ability to examine the practical, particular and local, the pursuit of such a social science is argued as being one that matters to the practitioners themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the space between familiar and new storying of professional identity in the author’s migration from counsellor/psychologist to lecturer/researcher. Value is given to reflecting on the complexities and multiplicities which exist in this in-between space, particularly at points of difference and discomfort. Reflective practices of writing as inquiry and autoethnography are used to examine this migration of professional identity and are suggested as useful processes for undertaking socially responsive research. In this context, writing as inquiry and subsequent meaning-making/deconstruction leads me to places not yet known, and gives per(form)ance to the complex and multiple possibilities that open up in this process. The benefit of autoethnographic writing and meaning-making as a pre-cursor to participant-observation research is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the author’s experience of using self-reflective practice within an action inquiry in order to improve both her personal practice in engaging in academic writing and her work as a teacher educator. As such, the study could be viewed as an example of simultaneous first- and second-person action inquiry. The focus is on the expression of the author’s voice in academic writing with specific reference to the use of the passive and active voice and the first person pronoun ‘I’. The reflective process illustrates the author’s considerable uncertainty about personal voice, while supporting an emerging understanding of her own writing practice and her role in relation to supporting student writing. It is suggested that self-reflective practice can uncover some of the complexities of this writing and educational phenomenon and the social processes in which it is situated. A dual font approach is adopted with italic font used to present personal reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Assessed reflective writing is increasingly common in UK higher education. Students writing in this mode are typically required to narrate their experiences, evaluate their performance, investigate associated emotions, and comment on what has been learned. In this paper I focus on assessed reflective writing by students on an MA TESOL course who are required to write individual reflections on a process of working in a group to produce teaching materials. This task places particular demands on the writer. Like other students writing reflectively, they need to manage complex self presentation: to appear honest about relative successes and failures, to show evidence of appropriate reflection, and to indicate desirable learning. Because they are reflecting on a group experience, they also need to differentiate themselves from their work group in their account, and to reflect critically on others as well as on themselves. My focus in this paper is on the ways they manage these additional demands. I first examine the relative frequency with which writers refer to themselves and their work group, and then examine the content of self-referential and group-referential statements. Finally, I examine semantic patterns in the data and draw conclusions regarding possible reasons behind student writers’ choices about how to represent themselves and others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of reflective journals with students is a popular form of pedagogy across a range of academic disciplines. The literature is replete with anecdotal and research-based evidence of the benefits, issues and challenges associated with this type of teaching and learning. While the benefits of journaling are certainly noteworthy, there are also striking issues and challenges. However, it appears the 'evidence' of these issues and challenges, while recognized in principle, is often pushed aside in light of the 'facts' related to the positive benefits journals provide. The purpose of this paper is to reopen the case of reflective journals by examining the interdisciplinary literature on the positive and negative aspects of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents a 'trialogue' between three individuals, all professors in a Faculty of Education, each at a different stage of the doctoral process: one, a recent graduate, one in the process of writing the final draft of her dissertation, and one just beginning. Evident throughout this article is the guiding assumption that learning is something that is experienced through reflective and collaborative practice - it is a journey rather than something that is acquired as a product or a destination. Three individual voices recount personal anecdotes; come to terms with dissonance through dialogue, valuation (valuing of), validation, and consonance. It is our hope that those who read this article will find within its pages their own dissonances, recognizing that a search for consonance brings with it important insights and understandings that will resonate for a lifetime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates an attempt by the author to operationalise the theory of reflective practice within the context of initial teacher education. Whilst an integral element of many teacher education programmes, the problematic of ‘how’ to reflect on practice remains a concern. In response, and taking inspiration from the work of Deleuze and Guattari, specifically their critique of representational thought and common understandings of text, the author experiments with a method for reflecting called implicated reading. The method involves the reading of students’ lived experiences as beginning teachers (recorded in written form), against a variety of other texts. The author draws on interview data to analyse and discuss the merits of the approach. The paper concludes that the method of implicated reading has the potential to unsettle the common tendency to focus on meaning and interpretation when reflecting on events and experiences. It is argued that the student teachers involved in the project instead begin to experience reflection as a process of connectivity, rethinking pedagogy as a result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the way in which postmodern emergence was used to assist a group of undergraduate students come to new understandings of research practice as they participated in a reflective component of an Undergraduate Research Summer School. Students were encouraged to ‘write the (researcher) self’ through a collaborative writing group based on the theoretical and pedagogical work of Somerville. Postmodern emergence highlights three stages of learning; firstly, assigning time for wondering, then a liminal space for becoming and finally an opportunity for generating new knowledge. This article is both the tangible product of this emergence reflective writing process and a recommendation about the capacity of undergraduate students to engage with their own professionalisation and meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the efficacy of narrative in reflective practice across a range of creative disciplines. As practitioners within the creative industries, the authors internalise experience and re-contextualise it as stories, designs, music videos, fiction and non-fiction films and dance. They are uniquely placed to examine narrative in critical reflection through the prism of their creative practice and in so doing offer insights into reconceptualising professional practice. The authors demonstrate how engagement with and reflection on and in their stories enables wider reflection. Their purpose in reflection is not just to learn from mistakes but to develop an epistemology of practice that enables them to apply rigorous academic inquiry to articulate their tacit professional knowledge and establish new methods for dealing with uncertainty in creative practice research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fewer teachers are available globally for nursing education positions, a fact exacerbated by retirement of ageing colleagues. As two late career nurse-teachers, we use Arts-Informed Narrative Inquiry to explore experiences of Canadian contemporaries to discern the legacy we have to share with nurse-teachers who come after us. Narrative Inquiry is a research process that reconstructs personal and professional experience to reveal learning and knowledge construction in researchers and teachers. It involves lifelines, stories, metaphors, collage-making and reflective dialogue to reveal what experienced nurse-teachers have learned about teaching-learning over their professional trajectories. As an outcome of this study, we offer a letter to new teachers as a legacy arising from conceptualizing teaching-learning practice as humanness of care; the creative processes for self-directed, site-specific faculty development are transferable to any professional and geographical contexts. The paper illuminates how research, education and practice are mutually informing and how emergent inquiry approaches are significant for faculty and curriculum development, as well as transformation of practices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes the process followed by a group of four primary and secondary teacher educators at a university in Sydney, Australia, to develop a collective understanding of the nature and value of reflective practice. The project developed a framework and set of indicators to assess the quality of pre-service teachers’ reflective writing and provide targeted feedback to support their ability to reflect on classroom practice. The process of developing the framework highlights the value of collaborative coding and collegial discussion as methods for establishing common understanding and shared practice of reflective writing in teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Setting the tone for reflective writing – should the first person, populated approach that currently dominates be ethically questioned? An active voice is recommended to enhance ‘power’ and emotional investment in reflection, but often presents practical difficulties for students conditioned in ‘scientific’ depopulated ways. Beyond the practical, being instructed to employ a personal tone could exacerbate the emotional risks involved for vulnerable students. Ethical questioning is an area of reflection and teaching that has been largely neglected. The current paper responds to this gap, discursively considering the impact of requiring students to reflect using the first person and how this could intersect with emotionality components, located within the experiences of MSc Forensic Psychology students. Six students that had recently undertaken a reflective practice assignment volunteered to take part in a semi-structured interview about their experiences. For some students the themes of personal pronoun use and emotionality intersected, whereby at deeper levels of analysis the emotional impact was compounded by first person usage. Assessing the risk of enhanced vulnerability to psychological discomfort, implementing practical strategies to mediate this and the support procedures followed when requiring students to reflect are reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With the introduction of cultural safety into nursing curricula, educators are grappling with ways to take their own understanding of the concept to create culturally safe places in their educational environments. The purpose of this paper is to share a process of writing as inquiry to surface new meanings in what might ontologically be understood as culturally safe environments. The writing illuminates individual and collective meanings of cultural safety from the perspectives of eight Canadian nurse educators. Using aesthetic texts and hermeneutic approaches, the meaning of cultural safety is exposed. Fluid depictions of the self as other, along with politicized taken for granted practices and multiple fields of meaning, bring clarity to a view that knowledge is always partial. Since knowledge is co-constructed, situated and socially produced, the representations of our evolving stories and cycles of reflection hold to an element of partiality in epistemological privilege The various texts shared offer insight into thinking about culturally safe spaces as horizons of new meaning. The implications for nursing education are in recognizing locations for both the educators and the learners. These writing and interpretive processes can be integrated into curricula to strengthen reflexive and relational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The use of and reflection on writing prompts in mathematics education can allow pre-service teachers to enhance their own mathematical knowledge and broaden their understanding of students’ learning needs. In this paper, we share results from a study with secondary pre-service mathematics teachers who were asked to respond to writing prompts related to various mathematical concepts, reflect on their responses, and then give the same prompts to a group of college algebra students. Our analysis of the data shows that the prompts helped the pre-service teachers to reflect on their role as learners, student thinking and needs and classroom practices. We relate these findings to a framework for looking at pedagogical content knowledge and discuss the usefulness of writing prompts with pre-service mathematics teachers for expanding such knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research investigated the use of poems for reflection. Participants (n = 16) were enrolled upon a Foundation Degree in Sports Coaching. Part modular assessment saw the students create an action plan that provided key indicators as to their ability within a range of study skills. The entire cohort failed to implement the plan. Whilst there exists a prevailing wind of poetic embrace within the social sciences, limitations are evident within the domain of sport and physical activity. The research questions whether poems may be implemented as a means to initial reflection and reorientation and as a consolidation of prior learning. Findings suggest poetry may aid initial reflection and reorientation and a consolidation of prior learning, that the writings were enjoyable, at times frustrating, developmental and that such creativity might be advocated elsewhere across the HE curriculum. Implications for the learner are discussed and I suggest a framework for practitioners (‘Reflective Facilitation’), which considers how we may assist our learners in a process of guided discovery in which their reflections may become critical and self-governed. The paper then considers the limitations of the research process and offers considerations for future practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a research study that aims to describe and analyse how caring assessment is learnt in the Specialist Nursing, Prehospital Care Programme for educating specialist ambulance nurses. The study is based on a contextual and didactic model for learning. The focus was on the final course, Prehospital Emergency Care, with clinical studies and clinical practice amounting to 15 credits, plus one of two theoretical examinations. We are testing the model to explore what characterises the students’ learning when the model is applied. The informants were 37 students (registered nurses). Written data from all 37 examinations were analysed by means of the phenomenological Reflective lifeworld research approach. The results stress the significance of a didactic model constructed according to the specific circumstances prevailing in the learning context. With the help of the model an attitude of reflective awareness is adopted, showing that knowledge in caring science and medical science are equally valuable and, are applied simultaneously. Furthermore, the model generates knowledge that underlines the significance of the encounter with the patient in the care-giving context of the prehospital environment, in order for the student to be able to develop understanding and to learn caring assessment in prehospital emergency care. Thus the result reveals that it is the encounter with the patient that is most effective for the student’s learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper the authors provide a summary of educational thinkers’ conceptualizations of the process, characteristics, purposes, and outcomes of reflection in education. Furthermore, they describe the process of conceptualizing a developmental continuum for analyzing reflective thinking, reflective communication, and cognitive processes of teacher candidates. They present the Developmental Continuum of Reflection on-/for-Action Rubric (DCRo/fA Rubric) and discuss the approach they used in testing and refining the instrument. The purpose of the DCRo/fA Rubric is twofold: First, to analyze the reflective dimensions evident in candidates’ work samples they develop during coursework and student teaching such as reflections on lessons, classroom observations, digital stories, or philosophies on education. And second, to analyze the level of sophistication of the dimensions of reflection within artifacts for the purpose of assignment revision and to allow teacher educators to identify the dimensions of reflective practice that need to be nurtured. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the question of how to assess academic discourse on reflection from a dialogical point of view. The starting point of this research was Schön’s well-known ‘reflection-in-action’ model, which was expanded to include aspects of discursive analysis. A corpus of two sets of reflexive reports (26 in total) was analyzed along four analytical dimensions: self-reference, modality, meta-discourse and domains of reflection. These dimensions were subsequently subdivided into 13 variables. Statistical analysis of these variables resulted in the construction of five different modes of reflection, two of which highly correlate with an independent rating of perceived ‘good reflection’. This research gives evidence for the proposition that there are sensible patterns to be discovered in reflective writing, and that these patterns provide insights into the narrative styles used by the authors of reflection reports. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As continuing professional development is now mandatory in the UK for health and social care professionals, teaching reflection skills is commonplace in many higher education institutions. However, getting health and social care students to engage with activities developing their reflection skills has been problematic at one Scottish university. This paper describes action research carried out to improve first-year university students’ enthusiasm and engagement with reflection on an inter-professional module. Teaching and learning activities were based on the principle of constructive alignment. Students were given an interactive lecture and two tutorials; each successive tutorial consolidated knowledge and skills gained from the previous learning activity. Responses from a small percentage of students to an online questionnaire indicate students saw the reflection activities as advantageous, however, a majority felt both tutorial activities did not improve their confidence, with peer feedback having less impact than tutor feedback. Further iterations of the action research cycle will be undertaken to improve students’ engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a thought-piece that offers a reflective account of my journey to learn more about reflective practice. Introducing reflective practice as a pedagogy deployed within post-experience education, it explores a way to translate this into a meaningful and positive encounter for a younger generation of students. Through an analysis of the purpose, process and assessment of reflective practice it seeks to enhance my personal practice. The thought-piece concludes with an illustration of my practice of integrating reflective practice into a first year course in a leading Chinese University. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present paper offers a reflective account of experiences I gained through my MA and PhD studies. I reflect on several critical events that led me to become the teacher-student I was and became. I discuss three major themes of my reflection – relationships, voice and confidence – and conclude by drawing on a few points to highlight the significance of student-teacher relationship to construction of student identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the beginning steps of the author as a special education teacher in a large Southwest public school district in the US. The author discusses his first year of experience in a large US middle school as an inclusion teacher by using self-reflective practice in the form of excerpts from his learning journal to become aware and understand the complexities of becoming a special education teacher. The metaphor of the maze is introduced and used as the lens through which the author experienced his becoming a special education teacher and how the metaphor of the maze dominates the professional growth and identity of the author in the field of special education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the concerns which prompted the introduction of an innovative Masters level module designed for practising teachers at a university in the UK. The module was intended to offer an alternative to positivistic modes of reflectivity and to introduce reflective writing practices that acknowledge the constitutive force of writing. Experimentation with writing styles is not usually associated with continuing professional development offered to teachers. We explain why we view writing as a legitimate and valuable reflective research method for practitioners and why we support efforts to challenge the sedimented assumptions that inform teacher training and professional development activity directed at practising teachers. Our adopted pedagogic strategy was to introduce teachers to reflective writing that simultaneously promotes self-reflexivity and highlights the creative and constitutive power of writing. We sought to challenge pervasive dualisms or binaries (e.g. teacher: student, creative-analytical, cognition: affect) and featured the work of Laurel Richardson in support of this agenda. It is argued that practitioners may be better served by reflective writing practices that foster ethical sensibility through recognizing the intuitive or affective dimensions of the writing process. Previous contributors to this journal have called for an expansion of the modes of reflectivity that qualify as reflective practice in higher education. The introduction of the module can be read as a response to that call. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to examine student teachers' opinions of changes to reflective practice requirements during a five-week teaching practice placement as part of a one-year postgraduate initial teacher education programme. The results highlighted that prior to the changes, students saw little relevance in the reflective writing requirements while on teaching placement. Students saw the new requirements as more beneficial as they provided them with more time to reflect and greater opportunities to explore issues relevant to their professional development. Teacher educators need to consider carefully the reflective practice requirements of professional placements in order to ensure that they foster critical reflection and that students do not see them as mandatory paper exercises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every working life will have a number of subjugated places, an 'immense remainder' of human experience that 'does not speak'. Auto-ethnography, an evocative and analytical form of writing which is itself an art, connects personal and cultural worlds by 'writing in' these ordinary everyday experiences. This auto-ethnographic study re-inscribes the everyday world of practice, which was 'written out' of my publications on the practices of a youth-specific occupational therapy project undertaken in the 1980s at Camperdown Children's Hospital. The paper evokes the hospital's 'under-life' as I experienced it. An assemblage of sense impressions and memories evokes the particular place where my writings are set and a gender analysis of hospital spaces in the early 1980s portrays the experience of a woman working in that place at that time. Auto-ethnographic accounts of practice can contribute to the field by revealing subjugated knowledges in professions populated by women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I have been writing plays for 15 years so that reflection of the heart as well as the mind can be part of equitable and fair health and social policy development. In this paper, I critically reflect on my new play Calcedonies, including the writing of the script and why I had to write it. I include the first section of Calcedonies for the reader to have a sense of the play's construction, characters, and the issues that will be personalized and unpacked over the course of the play. In the decade it took me to have the courage to begin writing this play, I realize that my reflection was as much about how I let the woman down who asked me to write a play about her, as it was about how our health and social support systems let her down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflection is thinking about, pondering upon something that we have learnt. It is something that one consciously looks at in great depth – contemplating, analyzing in order to learn from it. Reflection aids everyday life in formal learning and informal learning. Reflection is used widely in the field of education, especially healthcare curricula throughout the world in which clinical practice is a huge component. This study aims to identify whether there is an improvement in students’ clinical grades with the use of a reflective journal. Before students were exposed to clinical posting, they underwent a Workshop on Reflective Writing to teach them how to write a reflective journal. They were introduced to Kolb’s four-stage model of reflection: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization and active experimentation. The students were asked to write a minimum of three journal entries each week, but they were encouraged to write as much as possible. Students were then sent on clinical placement. A one-to one interview with each student revealed that students felt that writing reflective journals improved their clinical practice. Findings revealed that there was improvement in their clinical practice. Hence knowledge of reflective writing is fundamental to healthcare educators, and they themselves need to be reflective practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The practice of reflecting on work-based experiences has received an increasing amount of attention from management and leadership writers in recent years. Yet, few empirical studies have been conducted into the use of reflective methods in the workplace. In response, this study explores the reflective practices of nine managers working in the higher education sector. Three broad methods of practice are identified. Whilst characterised by a number of shared features, significant variations were also evident in the way individual practitioners employed each method. These variations and the initial choice of reflective method can be explained as a response to the circumstances practitioners operated in, along with their personal preferences – the latter an outcome of a process of experimentation. Indeed, each method profiled was subject to continued evolution, as reflective practices were themselves reflected upon. Although time had been invested in the development of these practices, all were positive about the benefits and certain that reflective practice constituted a highly effective use of time. Whilst these findings help underpin the value of reflecting on work-based experiences, it is hoped that they also offer an insight into the means by which such practices may be pursued by others. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reflective journals are used to develop students' writing skills, assess reflection level, gather research data, promote teachers' professional development, promote instructional practices, and affect students' learning. However, little research explored the impact of reflective journals on undergraduate students' learning and its challenges in an English writing course. The current study fills the gap in the literature by exploring Qatari female undergraduate students' perspectives of reflective journals in an English writing course and identifying their challenges with using reflective journals. Social constructivism and Gibb's reflective cycle informed the theoretical framework of the study. Using a case study methodology, the researcher designed a reflective journal based on Gibbs' reflective cycle. Accordingly, reflective journals, written by 55 Qatari female undergraduate students, were collected and qualitatively analysed using thematic content analysis. Findings revealed that students experienced the following learning moments in their English writing course: engaging, invaluable, surprising, challenging, novel, perplexing, worrying, enlightening, and transferrable. Moreover, participants reported a number of benefits and challenges of using reflective journals that are peculiar to the Qatari context. Implications for using reflective journals in higher education are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflection has a long history as an assessment mode in teaching and learning for higher education, and particularly for teacher education. However, past studies have not systematically analysed how attributes of students, content, and feedback are linked to the quality of students' reflections in journal writing. To fill the gap, this exploratory study examines 1,210 journal entries by 121 university students in a General Education course. We apply multilevel, cross-classification, ordered logit analysis to test the explanatory model. Results show that entries written by young women (vs. young men) written later in the course, with personal content (vs. academic or societal), or following teacher or student feedback had higher teacher ratings for reflection, compared to other entries. These results suggest the importance of gender, time, journal content, and feedback to raising reflection quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflective teaching is considered as the optimal approach to teacher education and it is suggested to be taught before the practicum starts. However, there is a lack of research investigating whether large classes constitute an obstacle to the implementation of reflective practices in teacher education programs. Engaging 60 third-year English as a foreign language (EFL) student teachers in reflective practices through the procedures of self-monitoring, peer-observation, and journal writing in a campus-based course, this study aimed to find out what benefits and problems student teachers would experience throughout the process. Participants acknowledged that involvement in reflective practices helped them develop self-awareness, criticality and reflective mindsets while also expanding understanding of new content. They also indicated three major challenges in observing self and peers, and writing journals: lack of reflective skills, time pressure, and repetitive process. The researchers conclude that implementing reflective practices is demanding but attainable in large classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, two art educators discuss their understanding and applications of transformative learning theory (TL) and the Reggio Emilia approach (REA) as art practitioners by exchanging arts-based letters, which they see as a type of duoethnographic method for qualitative research. They share a teaching philosophy that stresses art as a transformative tool for learning through verbal and written dialogues, despite teaching different age groups of students. One is an art instructor in higher education; the other is an early childhood art teacher. The two art educators believe that art significantly transforms their teaching practices and their students' learning. In the process of sharing the arts-based letters, they learn TL and REA from each other's perspectives. They anticipate that their reflexive research can provide educators and qualitative researchers a different lens to reflect through which to view teaching and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflective writing is a proven way to increase the quality of learning and knowledge construction. However, its use in computer science education has received little attention. In this mixed-methods study, we investigated the effect of reflective writing practices, including peer review, on students' reflective writing and writing quality scores in a computer science education context. Three reflective writing assignments were required in a Human Computer Interaction course and two peers reviewed each assignment to give feedback. Rubrics were used to measure the reflective writing and writing quality characteristics of student work, and a peer feedback coding scheme was used to determine the characteristics of the feedback students provided to one another. Results revealed that students' reflective writing and writing quality did not differ across projects and they offered solutions as their most common type of feedback. Our results revealed further studies need to keep investigating new approaches in terms of timing, guidelines, and supportive tools to promote reflective writing to determine which activity designs facilitate student improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflective journals are used in the literature to promote students' learning, develop writing skills, assess students' reflection level, promote teachers' professional development, and gather research data. However, the current research bridges the gap in the literature by exploring the impact of students' reflective journals on informing instructional practices in an EFL writing context at a university in Qatar. Informed by Gibb's reflective cycle (1988) (i.e. description, feelings, evaluation, conclusion and action) and social constructionism, the researcher developed a reflective journal to help students reflect on the instructional practices. Using a case study methodology, the researcher collected seventy-eight reflective journals, written by bilingual female university students in Qatar. Data was analysed qualitatively using thematic content analysis. Findings revealed that students preferred the following teaching strategies: gradual teaching, exemplification, discussion, comprehension checking, cooperative learning, and graphic organisers. Findings also showed students' reported challenges such as strict classroom management, lack of teacher's electronic feedback, teacher's frequent questioning, recurrent turn-taking, time mismanagement, lack of handouts, cooperative learning problems, mocking students, ringing mobile phones, unpunctual students and dealing with disruptive students. Implications for instructional practices are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I use the method of ‘talking to myself’ as a mode of critical reflection about the practices of art making and art writing. This ‘reflective conversation’ manifested the multiple voices of the dialogic self who either thwarted me or spurred me on, in the process of writing. The article presents reflection as a conflict between an authentic reflection which is true to one’s sense of lived being with the requirements to fit within a particular writing genre suitable for a disciplinary tribe that may reject or support the particular method of reflection. I suggest that attending to, and critically reflecting upon, our internal dialogue and acknowledging its conflictual nature can be a sustained process of reflection where different points of view are explored, questioned, reinterpreted and reshaped. The conversation with my multiple selves is presented in the form of a play script as an authentic format to capture multiple selves interacting. In so doing, I reflect upon artistic practice and its relationship to thought, reflection and action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Patchwork Text is a creative approach to learning and assessment based on short pieces of reflective writing to promote deep, meaningful reflection. A five-year study was undertaken to explore whether this approach supports postgraduate students’ personal and academic development and the factors that influenced student experience, within one UK university. Our adapted approach encompasses patches of reflection, a structured Reflective Journal, formative feedback, and action learning within a constructively aligned curriculum. Between 2010 and 2015, 100 students attended the MSc Leadership Development programme and 71% (n=71) completed a questionnaire at the end of the first module. The questionnaire contained mainly open questions. The overwhelming majority of responses (89%, n=63) reported their experience of action learning was extremely positive. Eighty-five percent (n=58) reported that the Patchwork Text approach supported their academic development. Seventy-five percent (n=52) agreed the approach was helpful in relation to their summative assessment which comprised a reflective integrated portfolio. Thematic framework analysis of the qualitative data suggests the Patchwork Text approach increased self-awareness and insight; deepened and promoted on-going reflection; and facilitated critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis thereby enabling completion of the summative assignment. Findings suggest the adapted Patchwork Text approach increased students’ self-awareness as well as supporting them with both their summative assignment and the development of academic writing skills. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this reflective study, I perceive the impact of my own written feedback on students’ academic writing skills in particular and on learning in general. Anchored on Schon’s reflection-on-action (ROA) framework, my reflection arose from a content analysis of my written feedback on 80 student drafts and 44 feedback responses. I found that my written feedback is of two types:focus on formandfocus on meaning. Coding the feedback led to an identification of six feedback functions: instructive/using imperatives (18.36%); suggestive (15.31%); asking questions/probing (23.98%); stating a personal opinion (6.12%); corrective (29.59%); and affirming/negating (6.63%). The categorisation of feedback according to these functions was influenced by Wolsey’s feedback functions (2008) which was adapted by Alvarez, Espasa and Guasch. Results revealed that I employ corrective feedback, probing questions and instructive feedback more frequently than suggestive feedback, personal statement or affirmation/negation. I also found that my feedback on form (59%) is higher than my feedback on meaning (41%). I explain the relationship of these findings by identifying some confounding factors that enabled me to interrogate my assumptions, along with a discussion of their implications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents the case for self-managing and self-regulating learners to link their various forms of reflection explicitly, and to do so within an ePortfolio, in order to support the development of higher-level abilities such as problem-solving, critiquing, decision-making, empathising and resolving conflicts. It explores the reflective options for self-managed experiential learning, and concentrates upon what three forms of reflection (reflection-for,-on- andin-action) entail, and could contribute to learning and development. It also addresses how linking previous reflections (composted reflections) can contribute to the development of higher-level abilities. An ePortfolio is taken as a natural and effective location for this integration. Guidance is offered, requiring modest tutorial activity to generate and maintain learner involvement in the development of linked reflections in a learner’s assorted records and reflections housed in an ePortfolio. Suggestions for gathering learner constructive feedback on such initiatives are included. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From an anecdotal rumination, the authors make the case for consideration of past reflections, in what they call 'composting', to inspire and enrich new, different and currently ongoing reflective activity and initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]