We are in the final week of the course. Assessment of reflective practice is the topic and although it is only Wednesday and there is time yet, this doesn't seem to have grabbed people's attention. Participants are already beginning to leave the course.

I have been thinking about this and wondering why. There is no doubt that people are interested in assessment. It always comes up in the first week of the course as something that people want to know more about. How should we assess our students' reflective writing and practice? This was also my experience when I ran a face-to-face workshop on reflective learning. I had planned for people to discuss assessment at the end of the course, but it came up within the first five minutes and was what people wanted to discuss straight away. It was the issue that was at the front of their minds.

The problem is - how can you discuss assessment if you might not know enough about the process that you want to assess? So why is it that when we finally get to assessment in the final week of the course, there isn't a lot of engagement.

I'm wondering if it's to do with the tension between personal practice and other people's practice (in this case our students' practice). On this course, in the first three weeks we take people deep into their own personal practices. They are not working individually. They are interacting with others and in Week 2 working collaboratively on a task. But the tasks involve deep introspection. I'm wondering if it's just too much to expect people to come out of this at the end of Week 3 and turn their attention outwards to the needs of their students. Or it may be that the first three weeks of the course implicitly answers the questions about assessment that are written into the Week 4 content.

It definitely seem as though the first three weeks cover what people need and after that they don't feel the need to continue. It'll be interesting to see whether we get any feedback on this.

Source of image: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3614/3319240981_b471f38beb.jpg

Feeding back on reflective writing

We had accounts from nearly everyone on the course last week, which was wonderful. It's quite a time consuming task, in selection, reflection and writing. The idea was that this would be a follow on task to the identification of shifts through four levels of writing that we did in Week 2. Through writing our own tasks we would learn what it means to make the shifts and how difficult this might be.

I know from when I wrote my own accounts, when I was on the course, that it's very difficult to stand back and see whether one account is more reflective than another and to know whether you can write reflectively or not. I remember on that course that I was disappointed that I did not get more feedback. But now I understand why and I have seen that some participants on this course have been reluctant to provide feedback on each other's accounts. How do you provide feedback on something so personal? From being a tutor on this course, I know that it's no easier as a tutor than it is as a course participant.

Jenny Moon has pointed out in one of the forums today, that the accounts seem to work better if they are based on something that is very significant and personal for the author - a critical incident - but this requires quite a lot of self exposure.

So as tutors, how are we to assess our students' working, when they will be writing about highly personal critical incidents to which there may be a lot of attached and possibly highly charged emotion. Perhaps we'll be able to get to grips with this week.

Source of image: http://i338.photobucket.com/albums/n405/SeemzTv/feedback.jpg

Reflective writing to order

This week the course task is to write two accounts (two pieces of reflective writing) which show progression in the depth of reflection from the first account to the second account, ideally demonstrating some of the shifts identified in the Week 2 task and summarised by Jenny Moon as being

• from description to reflective account
• from no questions to questions to responding to questions
• emotional influence is recognised, and then handled increasingly effectively
• there is a 'standing back from the event'
• self questioning, challenge to own ideas
• recognition of relevance of prior experience
• the taking into account of others' views
• metacognition - review of own reflective proceses

The accounts have all been very different and each in their own way, very moving. Peter called them 'beautiful'. I think what is 'beautiful' is that the course participants have been willing to share their reflections in this way.

What I have been wondering today is whether it is reasonable to ask people to 'reflect to order' this way - here is the task, get on with it, you have one week in which to do it. When I was asked to do this task when I did the course, there wasn't a burning issue that I wanted to reflect on and share. I had to hunt around and find something. Most things I rejected as being far too personal to share with a group I hardly knew and ultimately I selected to write the accounts from an alternative perspective to protect myself even further.

So if as tutors we have these difficulties, what can we expect of our students?

Source of image: http://normblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/tom-ford.jpg

Reflective writing

The accounts are starting to come in and it is such a privilege to be able to witness this. I always get a thrill out of reading the accounts and seeing how people take on board what has been learned in Weeks 1 and 2 of the course and maybe even before.

I think what I haven't quite sorted out in my own head, is the relationship between experience, reflective writing and reflective learning. When we read the two accounts is the second account more reflective because the person can now reflect on their learning more effectively, or is it because the person knows more about how to write reflectively, or is it because there is a time lapse between the first and second account and therefore the person has learned from experience? Or is it all three? And more?

I think the time lapse is important for developing reflective writing and the reflective process. The need to revisit reflective writing and accounts has already been discussed on the course and the evidence to support this is already being seen in the accounts that are being written this week. But how long should the time lapse be and how much relevant experience is needed in the intervening time to make a difference to a subsequent account or learning?

I can't help thinking that there's a lot more to supporting students in their development as reflective learners than helping them to write more reflectively.


Source of image: http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/22/mt-rainier-sunset-reflections_8723.jpg

Barriers to reflection

There has not been as much wider discussion this week. Most people have had enough to do contributing to the group work. But there has been some interesting discussion in the Journals forum.

On reading this through this morning, it seems to me that much of this discussion has focussed on 'barriers' to reflection. So it has been suggested that people may not be able to reflect if the topic for reflection makes them feel too uncomfortable or will release emotions that are too strong to handle. Or they may not put time into reflection because it appears too self-indulgent.

There is also the issue of assessment and whether this makes students into 'strategic learners', i.e. they jump through the required hoops to pass the course and if reflection is one of those hoops, they will do as much as is required. But is this really what we mean by reflection and what we want from our students?

And then there is the whole question of 'audience'. Is this an enabler or disabler? It has also been suggested in the Journals forum that establishing communities of reflective practitioners who share their reflections might assist the reflective process, but how much would people be willing to share?

It has occurred to me, whilst writing this post, that thinking about enablers and disablers for the reflective process could be useful - but will these enablers and disablers be any different to those for the learning process as a whole?

Source of image: http://www.accelerated-personal-development.com/image-files/barriers-to-personal-growth.jpg