The Efficacy of Reflective Practice and Coach Education on Intrapersonal Knowledge in the Higher Education Setting.

Given the need for coach education to develop the essential skill of reflection in coaches (Cushion & Nelson, 2013; Gilbert & Trudel, 2001), the purpose of the current study was to understand how and why 21 coaching students enrolled in a practicum course at a southeastern United States institution engage in reflective practice. This research draws upon Schön's (1983, 1987) work on reflective practice, which underpinned a set of online structured reflective journaling prompts (ORJ) used as an intervention. Each week, for 12 weeks of the practicum course, students were asked to respond to a theoretically informed prompt. We collected data from the Self-Reflection and Insight Scale (SRIS; Grant et al., 2002), Powell's (1989) levels of reflection rubric, and the students' weekly journal responses. The quantitative results revealed that time had significant influence on levels of reflection (p < .01), but not SRIS. The qualitative findings resulted in 15 themes which were categorized as: students' role frames, students' self-identified weaknesses, students' dilemma identification, and students' responses to dilemmas that describe what students reflected upon in their practicum. These findings are discussed in relation to existing research on reflective practice, student learning in higher education, intrapersonal knowledge development, and the use of technology. Implications for future research and coach educators are offered by considering the prompts influence on the students and the use of technology to facilitate learning in coach education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]