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The main aims of this report and the associated ‘pack’ are as follows:
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to describe the project that we undertook and set the context for the resources produced
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to provide those involved with staff development with a set of resources and suggested activities that can be used with colleagues who wish to include reflective tasks such as reflective journal writing, process analysis or critical incident analysis within their practice
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to provide resources for colleagues who may wish to include reflective activities within their teaching.
The Project
This project was undertaken with the support of an Escalate small grant. The main aim of the project was to develop materials that would support staff in HE institutions who wish to develop reflective abilities in their students. A second aim was to test these materials on a group of colleagues within our institution who have been or are beginning to be involved in the development of reflective abilities in students. The project was based on work already begun within one of the degree programmes in UHI.
Background to the project: UHI and the module
UHI has, from the beginning of developing new courses, encouraged the development of abilities and within that the development of the ability to reflect on learning (UHIp, 1999).
Constructivist and social constructivist principles of learning are seen as underpinning the development of the new curriculum. As a result of this, degree programmes, and modules within such programmes, have been developed to include the reflection on the process of learning as part of the summative assessments.
The BA Social Science degree which was validated in 1998 with delivery started in September
1998, contained one module entitled Enquiry Skills. This module aimed to develop basic research skills, the ability to work as part of a team and reflective abilities in relation to these other two skills. The module therefore included assessed reflective journals. The assessment of journals is in itself contentious (see Moon, 1999 for a discussion of these issues); however, the module team decided that in order to ensure that all students participated in this important experience it was essential to award some of the final marks (25%) to this aspect of the module.
This model of journaling is more fully described in the resources developed (Resource 1: Model
1) – the details of it will not be described further here.
The use of this model was thoroughly evaluated on several occasions. As with any new development that is unfamiliar to many (including staff), the use of assessed journals, and the type of feedback provided, generated discussion and debate about their use. A number of students recognised that assessed journals made them take the task seriously and as a result felt that they had benefited overall from the whole journaling experience; other students did not agree and felt that assessing the journals made it more difficult for them to engage in the task.
Apart from the debate over assessment, another key feature of the journals was that each journal was commented on by a facilitator who was not necessarily the student’s tutor. This required the development of an ability in facilitative commenting in those of us who were involved in delivery of this module. The two tutors who were initially involved (from 1998) in delivering this module decided to develop this skill by embarking on an experience that was
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similar to that of the students’. One of us was an experienced journaller who had used it in other settings, the other was new to the experience. We kept journals on a weekly basis and commented on each other’s journals in the same manner as we engaged with the students.
This experience and our discussions with both students and lecturers within our institution and other institution led us to realise the importance of the style of commenting on reflective writing.
We also recognised the need for such commenting on a regular basis when developing reflective abilities. It is also worth noting, that in our context, all the contact between the commenter and the student is via email. This led us to seek funding from Escalate to explore this further and to provide us with an opportunity to disseminate our own ideas to a wider audience. All of our commenting takes
In 2002 it was decided to make a change from the hitherto open-ended reflective journals to process analyses which aimed to encourage timeous reflection on specific aspects of the research process. The main reason for this change was that the reflective journals required commenting on, on a weekly basis for nine weeks (out of a 15 week programme), which created an excessive workload for staff as the number of students increased. In addition, there was a tendency for students to focus the reflection entirely on aspects of the group process at the expense of the process of research. The move was therefore made to shorter, fortnightly process analyses that focused on specific aspects of the research process. This is described in
Resource 1: Model 2 and will therefore not be further described here. It is noteworthy though that this new model of developing reflection has not yet matched the previous model, which, when well used by the students, provided for greater, in-depth reflection. The second model, however, did encourage a focus on the research process; and in the judgement of some of the lecturing staff involved, the final report which was produced benefited from this. An informal comment from a student when completing a second, individual project was that the reflection on the research process that she was encouraged to undertake when using the process analyses had been invaluable.
The organisation of the project
An initial review of our existing documentation led to the creation of a small number of additional resources. The complete set is listed in Section 2. We then recruited five colleagues across the network of colleges that form UHI Millennium Institute (UHI) to help us with the testing of the materials, both at a workshop and in commenting on a small number of students’ process analyses. This group of ‘commenters’ was joined by a sixth member of staff who asked to be included in the project as he saw it as beneficial to the development of a new degree programme that he was involved with. These six volunteers came from a range of backgrounds: one was a staff developer but also involved in delivery of programmes at postgraduate level, one was a part-time, relatively inexperienced lecturer but had been a student on the module that this project focuses on. The remainder were either involved with undergraduate or post-graduate degree delivery but had a special interest in the development of capabilities. These ‘commenters’ agreed to attend a 24 hour workshop in June 2002 and then to comment on up to a maximum of 15 (from three students) process analyses over a period of ten weeks from October to December 2002. They also had to agree to take part in an evaluation of the experience and of the resources at the end of the commenting period. The commenters were all paid out of the project fund for the work undertaken. The commenters were finally asked to take part in an evaluation of the materials and their experience; this has been incorporated in the evaluation of the pilot workshop.
The ‘Pack’
The ‘pack’ presented here is not intended to be prescriptive nor does it claim to contain the only way of developing these kind of abilities. What we do offer here are a range of resources, most of which have been tested by us in our own particular setting. In addition to these resources we
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offer a programme of activities: one is based on a workshop that we actually delivered to some lecturing staff; the other two are based on that programme but revised in the light of the evaluation and our experiences. Resources 1 - 6 are intended for both staff development and individual colleagues who wish to use them for their own purposes; Resources 7 and 8 provide suggestions for staff development activities.
Our main approach to the development of reflective abilities in students is that students require support during the developmental process. For that reason we argue that the manner in which tutors interact with students in this process is important. We have dealt with this by commenting in writing on reflective journals or logs and have adopted a style of commenting that is based on social constructivist principles.
We would strongly suggest that tutors who do wish to engage in developing students’ reflective abilities should test out the methods that they will use with their students. For that reason we would recommend that tutors undertake some limited journal writing. This can be achieved, for example, by encouraging tutors to work in pairs and comment on each other’s work and this is included as a recommended activity in the workshop programme.
The following resources are included
– it should be noted that the student journaling activities are suitable for both face to face and online delivery:
1. Resource 1: Three models of reflective writing. Models 1 and 2 summarise the two approaches that we have used over the past five years. Model 1 uses reflective journals and was our model up until 2001 delivery. Model 2 uses process analyses and is our new approach which is still being developed. Model 3 is derived from Model 1 but uses a critical incident approach. This model has not been tested within the context described in this project, but has been used by one of us.
2. Resource 2: Student documentation. This includes the guidance given to students on how to tackle the writing of a reflective journal and an explanation of how the journal will be assessed. It also includes guidance on the rationale for process analyses and how to tackle a specific process analysis.
3. Resource 3: Rationale for commenting on reflective writing . This document was produced in order to explain our approach to the development of reflective abilities to our
‘volunteer’ commenters. It was used as a discussion paper at the workshop to ensure that the approach we wished to be used for the purpose of this project was understood by the commenters.
4. Resource 4: Commenting on reflective journals . The first page of this document provides an overview of our suggested approach. The remainder of this document gives more detailed explanation of how to use our approach to commenting. This document was also provided for the workshop and participants were encouraged to make use of it during the workshop in an exercise on commenting on journals.
5. Resource 5: Making judgements on reflective writings . One such document is included here: it deals with making judgements on process analyses. The main purpose of this document is to provide a set of descriptions or headings which identify the key areas against which judgements are made and also include a brief description of what is expected under that heading. A similar set could be produced, according to the remit to students who might not be asked for process analyses.
6. Resource 6: Establishing effective relationships in reflective practice. This document is new and has not been used up until now. However, we are increasingly aware for the
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need to engage with students in such a way that trust is developed between the student and the commenter and also that the purpose of tasks are clear to the student. For that reason we are including a number of suggestions in this document that may help to develop what we could call a community of reflective practice.
7. Resource 7: Pilot workshop programme . This was the programme that we developed for the workshop that we organised for the commenters that participated in this project.
8. Resource 8: Suggested programmes for two workshops . We would suggest that a selection of the resources provided here could be used for two different kinds of workshops: one to be provided for staff who are committed to engage in reflective writings with their students; and one for those who wish to explore the possibilities that reflective writings might offer but who are not fully committed. We have called the first type of workshop an ‘induction’ workshop and the second an ‘exploratory’ workshop.
If you would like to engage in a discussion with us about the resources in this pack or the issues it raises in your setting we would like to hear from you – you can get in touch with us on the following emails: Elizabet.Weedon@perth.uhi.ac.uk
or John.Cowan@hw.ac.uk
or on the Learn
Unit website: www.learn.uhi.ac.uk
References
Moon, J. 1999 Reflection in learning and professional development. London, Kogan Page.
University of the Highlands and Islands project (1999) Towards a learning strategy for the university of the Highlands and Islands, UHI Millennium Institute, Inverness
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