Honesty and autonomy

There is a discussion in the Journals Forum about whether or not it matters if a student fabricates a piece of reflective writing where they are supposed to be talking about an incident drawn from their own practice.

This raises for me the question of the purpose of reflective writing and who owns it.

In their book 'Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education', McDrury and Alterio (p.170) discuss Sumsion's (2000) account of reluctant reflectors. According to this account 'two influences highlighted in this research were lack of student commitment to their profession .... and lack of commitment to reflection'. Under these circumstances a student might well fabricate a piece of reflective writing.

But a student might fabricate their writing for other reasons, not least for maintaining some sense of ownership over their reflective processes and some sense of privacy. If this is the case then I can relate to it and feel sympathy for it.In addition, who's to say that fabricating a piece of reflective writing can't be a powerful learning experience.

Could a piece of fabricated reflective writing demonstrate that the student is fit for practice? I would answer this with another question. Can any piece of writing demonstrate effective practice (as for example in the case of nursing or teaching)? Having a background in teacher training, I would argue that the only way you can determine that a student is fit for practice is to see the practice itself, not the writing about the practice.

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