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This paper explores how reflective practice can act as a catalyst for change and ‘add value’ to the learning process of the partners involved in professional development programmes. The concept of added value is widely used in business and education but to what extent can the concept be articulated and realized? This paper provides some insight into how the process of reflection was introduced and sustained within professional development programmes. We evaluate and reflect upon four key interventions designed as a catalyst for change with the aim of enhancing the transfer and articulation of learning across the educational and the work community. We question if reflecting upon learning can add value and whether the partners involved in the learning process can support the transition from reflection, to action in order to maximize the change process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, two adult educator professors share reflections on their dialogues, spanning 15 years, focusing on their journey of work and learning at a research-intensive university. Authors refer to intrinsic principles, values, and a shared commitment to contributing to a community shaped and influenced by an intentional focus on 'relationality' in support of individual and collective well-being. By reflecting on dialogues, past and ongoing, an enduring commitment to co-creating learning spaces sustained by care, compassion, and positive regard for colleagues and students is realized. Authors advance a commitment to community as essential to support work and learning spaces that thrive. This discourse is located in the current neoliberal milieu where a focus on performance germane to teaching, securing research funding, scholarship productivity, and compliance pervades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on research that has taken place with trainee teachers using web blogs for reflective practice at Sheffield Hallam University and Nottingham Trent University, in the UK. The research identifies how reflective blogs provided trainee teachers with an opportunity to develop as reflective practitioners in a more evolutionary way – something we might term ‘e-flection’ encompassing as it does reflections that are both evolutionary and online. This is in line with contemporary ideas of reflection on action as the research indicates that trainees were using the blog after teaching, to reflect on their teaching and learning as a past experience. The research also explores how reflecting as part of a community can benefit students in developing the reflective aspect of their professional identity. [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]

In this paper we explore some of our cross-cultural experiences of learning to teach in three different contexts. Drawing upon a conceptual framework of narrative inquiry we see individual lives as stories lived and told. In this sense our teaching practices are conceived as having been composed over time as our lives unfolded in various contexts alongside and in relationship with different people. Learning to teach in new settings and finding hope in our lived experiences occurred reflectively and relationally. In this paper we inquire into how spaces of hope can be developed and sustained for teachers practicing in contexts different than their own cultural and/or educational backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which the reflection presented in student teachers' teaching practicum contributes to the development of their professional knowledge. The paper addresses the task of investigating the quality of teacher reflection in its guided forms. By using the procedures of guided reflection, this paper builds a conceptual account with which to structure and describe the forms of reflection presented in student teachers' reflective talk. Based our results, there is a need to investigate more closely what creates changes in teachers' knowledge and what kind of reflective processes can contribute to such changes. We hope that the procedure of guided reflection opens new opportunities for studying the development of teachers' professional learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Portfolio assessment across the disciplines can be enhanced by the addition of vital reflective pieces. While many instructors include reflection as a part of their practice, fewer utilize critical steps necessary to further students' responsibility for their own learning. This article reviews a number of guidelines to aid in this process. They are as follows: creating a safe and supportive environment for candid reflection, the development and design of strategic prompts to enhance learning and move students toward metacognitive independence, use of a shared discourse so students and teachers are able to develop reflections from common understandings and vocabulary, and the construction of concise rubrics to ensure knowledge of required tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the beginning of a journey of learning. Drawing upon the writer's reflective and creative experiences over the past three years, the writer uses the analogy of a journey. Potholes in the road, hills to climb and needed breaks occur on her journey in developing and reflecting upon the introduction of a reflective activity in the first year of an undergraduate nursing degree. Drawing upon some of her students' work, the writer shares her experiences of introducing the media of story writing, poetry and collage, which enabled members of the class to reflect on an experience and highlights the personal practice knowledge that students bring with them into the tertiary setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Nurtured as a teacher and mentored as a mathematics education researcher, the reflective voice of a teacher-researcher-educator is portrayed in this paper. While drawing upon experience of creating teaching-learning environments, the author outlines the growth of praxis within her practice. She then outlines her coming upon narrative as a deployable unit of analysis with which to grasp teaching-learning practice. With narrative inquiry as strategy, she finally outlines examples of educational action research she is able to conduct. She argues in favour of empowering the praxis of teachers, recognising their language of practice and urges us to listen to their individual voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pre-service teachers in the Faculty of Education of the University of Malta compile a Professional Development Portfolio (PDP) which includes artefacts and reflective writings. The process of developing their PDP enables student teachers to grow and develop professionally. This paper explores whether the reflective learning skills which teachers acquire in their pre-service education are retained in their first year of teaching. The study suggests that these skills are internalised by teachers and used in an informal manner to help them reportedly cope better with their new role as effective teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of health professional groups have been looking at alternative models to the traditional 1:1 model of practice education in order to meet the increasing shortage of practice placements for pre-registration students. One such model that has been explored recently is the 2:1 or collaborative model where one practice educator takes responsibility for the education of two or more students. This paper presents the findings of a small research study undertaken to explore facilitation of learning in 2:1 collaborative models of physiotherapy practice education, and focuses on the potential for reflection with particular emphasis on peer reflection within the collaborative model. The study adopted a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirteen educators and eighteen third year physiotherapy students at a number of different NHS practice sites in southeast England. Additional focus groups were held with academic tutors and students at the end of the placement period. Findings from the study indicated that learning was facilitated in a variety of ways with students benefiting from peer learning and teaching approaches. Opportunities for peer reflection appeared to be increased in the 2:1 model. However, some practice educators highlighted the need for further guidance when promoting reflective practice. Further research into the role of reflection within 2:1 models and the facilitation of reflection during clinical education placements is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces the June 2005 issue of the "Reflective Practice" journal, a celebration of the third Carfax international conference called "Reflection as a catalyst for change," held in Gloucester, England in June 2004. Paper presentations and workshop activities.

When language teachers enter a classroom to teach in their early career years, they hold many different beliefs and feelings about how to conduct their classes that for the main part remain at the tacit level of understanding. However, it is important for early career language teachers to become aware of these beliefs and feelings so that they can critically reflect on their significance during this challenging period. Metaphors can offer early career teachers a rich means of identifying their experiences and beliefs that underpin their understanding of teaching and learning a second or foreign language. This qualitative study sought to contribute to the discussion of the experiences of four early career English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers through their use of metaphors to describe their personal understanding of their beliefs and feeling. Specifically, the case study examined the metaphors used by one teacher in her 2nd year, another in his 3rd year an additional teacher in his 4th year, and one in his 5th year of teaching. Results indicate that teachers in their 2nd and 3rd years chose personal metaphors that 'diagnose' deficits and thus must be in control, while in their 4th and 5th years the teachers wanted to motivate and facilitate the learning process rather than control it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to examine the affordances of images to prompt reflective processes of preservice teachers writing in a digital environment. The study was conducted over three academic years and a total of 180 preservice teachers were asked to write a blog post to reflect on how they learn to write and their approach on teaching children how to write. This study analyses the type of images used in the blog posts and the logico-semantic relationships between the images and the written text. The core data were gathered from the preservice teachers' blog posts, and then triangulated with the individual written reflections and with the group recordings analysing their respective posts. The results indicate that the blog posts in which preservice teachers use images either connected to personal experiences or with a metaphorical effect, the image-text relation enhances their reflections; whereas the most neutral images that illustrate the act of writing give no added value to their reflections. The discussion addresses the issues on how to help preservice teachers to use images in digital writing in a meaningful way that can deepen their reflective processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to understand processes related to the development of student teachers' professional identity, by using a Systemic-Functional Linguistics-based methodology to analyze the written reflections of 33 student teachers. Participants were enrolled in the science teaching tracks of two teaching colleges in the country and reflected on their recent exposure to Project Based Learning. Three linguistic markers were observed: 1) personal references forming group- and self-focused narratives; 2) verbal phrases forming future-oriented narratives; 3) intensifications forming emotionally-colored narratives. The findings demonstrate that the suggested methodology enables the identification of messages conveyed implicitly throughout the reflective reports and, thereby, affords a better understanding of the student teachers' concerns, expectations, and hopes during the process of their professional identity development, as they study to become teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher candidates (TCs) must navigate personal, experiential, and theoretical discourses of learning to teach to establish a teaching identity. This article describes a critical case example of digital storytelling to imagine a future classroom. The qualitative research design situates the TCs' digital stories as a performance and analyzes the art form to consider how they might use these texts to imagine and make visible this negotiation. The critical case shows how the TCs used the digital story to make sense of personal experiences, their image of an ideal teacher, methods coursework, and the personal struggle inherent across these sometimes disparate voices of learning to teach. Findings indicate that digital storytelling expands TCs' reflective practice in the supportive environment of a teacher education program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociocultural theory and its intersection with Boud and Walker's model of reflection is used as a framework to understand a surprisingly positive teaching and learning experience in a course on critical race theory. Classroom climate, learner expectations, and cognitive and emotional learner outcomes seem to have played key roles in the success of the course. All learners could point to direct and indirect experiences with racism which seems to support sociocultural theory's emphasis on the consideration of learners' personal, cultural context and its influence on the teaching-learning transaction. The authors write this reflection to push their own understanding of what they, and the participants, considered a unique environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over time, reflective conversations seem to have disappeared from everyday academic practice, yet such conversations have the potential to influence teachers' sense of self as well as their teaching practice. To investigate the question - how can university teachers develop a community where conversations about learning and teaching continue to flourish? - this article analyses a case study of three groups of university teachers who took up the challenge to Talk About Teaching And Learning (TATAL). Each group employed social models of reflection to construct teaching philosophy statements and teaching portfolios through a process of writing stories as reflective inquiry. The investigation suggested three factors - connection, engagement and safety - facilitated these small groups of university teachers to build conversation communities. Further interrogation of these factors suggested a model to support the construction of ongoing teaching and learning conversations within and beyond higher education settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This reflection, using auto-ethnography as method, explores the value of attunement to feedback in the teaching of a professional postgraduate course for allied mental health professionals. This is, therefore, a story of two halves: a narrative of my learning based on my reflections of my own teaching, and a story of how I have integrated feedback from students and their clinical supervisors to refine my teaching and course development in the programme. The resulting model of teaching and learning I have developed involves a process of 'creative attunement'. 'Attunement' is a psychodynamic concept involving 'contact' or a quality of relationship based on availability, presence, empathy, respect and selective disclosure. The learning activities of the programme aim to develop an awareness of the students' own 'craft knowledge' as graduate social workers and occupational therapists during their intern year in the health services. Through a process of growing the students' awareness of self in the clinician's role by attuning to students' feedback, learning from undergraduate education becomes more available to be applied in a new field of practice. Designing learning activities that incorporate stories of practice and align with clinical supervisors and service user narratives provides access to a variety of learning experiences. I explore the implications for developing critical-reflective practice within a 'community of learners' model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This sequential QUAL → qual study examines: Phase 1 how reflective practice was implemented in a diversity course in a teacher education program by one teacher educator, and Phase 2 how two of the teacher candidates implemented reflective practice in their diverse student teaching contexts. Data included observations of the course and the student teaching of two teacher candidates (TCs), interviews of the course instructor, three TCs, and two high school students, as well as analyses of key course assignments. This study concludes: (1) cultivation of a reflective practice in TCs is critical to the teacher preparation process; (2) support for TCs in this process is strengthened when led by an instructor who also engages in reflective practice; and (3) teacher reflection on diversity, assumptions and inequity, with opportunities to transfer these course reflections to their teaching practices is central to preparing teachers to teach diverse student populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years teachers have been encouraged to take up reflective practice because of its perceived ability to improve teaching and learning, but this has largely been limited to the West. The emphasis has not been widespread in developing countries and many educators are largely unaware of reflective practice and its perceived potential as a teacher development strategy. This article reports a study undertaken to understand and explore the process and consequences of engaging teachers in reflective conversations in Karachi, Pakistan. It describes how two English language teachers and a reflective coach reflected through conversations on their practices. The findings suggest that teachers in such contexts need to engage in reflective conversations if their practices are to improve. Also, the role of the reflective coach in this context appears to be fluid and evolving. The article also presents possibilities and tensions that are likely to emerge if reflective conversations are implemented as a teacher development strategy and a framework for using reflective conversations as a teacher development strategy in developing country contexts. Finally, implications of the study for schools and teacher development in Pakistan and similar contexts are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The matters of mind are not easily solved. Even if most philosophers and educationalists of today are convinced of the wrongness of the dualistic theory articulated by Descartes (following a line with ontogenesis from Plato), it continues to infect discussions of learning and teaching, often in a subtle manner. The questions involved are multiple. For instance, questions concerning the relation between consciousness and control, the relation between desire and control, but also the question of how the categories ‘body’ and ‘soul’ function in language and in society. In this text the author uses the theoretical framework of Merleau-Ponty to discuss the ‘Cartesian ghost’ of Ryle in the form it is revealed in Newman’s analysis of Schön’s reasoning and exemplifications of reflection-in-action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]