Reflective Interviews Research Articles

Adapting Complicated Grief Therapy for Use With People With Intellectual Disabilities: An Action Research Study.

There is established evidence of complicated grief among people with an intellectual disability. This paper describes the process of adapting complicated grief therapy (CGT) for this population. Action research documented the adaptation of CGT. Qualitative methods included analysing meeting notes, reflective interviews with two members of the team involved in adapting the materials, and interviews with six professionals working in disability settings who reviewed the adapted materials. Key processes included adapting the standardised tools that form part of CGT and developing adapted approaches to abstract concepts related to death, dying and bereavement. Key therapeutic components such as imaginal revisiting and the role of significant others required adaptation for implementation with people with intellectual disabilities. The importance of adapting evidence-based therapies for people with intellectual disabilities is emphasised. This research provides an adapted form of an established therapy for piloting with this population.

Using Psychophysiological Data to Facilitate Reflective Conversations with Children about their Player Experiences

Given the ubiquity of videogame play by children, concerns about the impacts of videogames, and increasing evidence of the benefits associated with digital play, it is important to evaluate the player experience (pX) of children. Moreover, it is essential to include children's voices in research about technologies designed for their use. However, eliciting rich, first-hand data on their experiences and perspectives is challenging because it requires children to articulate opinions in a pre-established context of general positivity towards games, alongside potential social desirability bias. In this paper, we present a methodology which uses children's psychophysiology as a prompt for reflective interviews, with two commercial off-the-shelf computer games (Rocket League and LEGO Builder's Journey). We consider the utility, reproducibility, reliability and validity of the method. In assessing the method, we discuss children's experience of wearing the sensors, the insights generated from the psychophysiological data, and the understanding that emerged when prompting children to reflect and comment on their own psychophysiological data.

Healthcare interpreting as relational practice: Understanding the interpreter’s role in facilitating rapport in health interactions

This article explores the extent to which healthcare interpreting can be considered “relational practice.” It describes an interactional sociolinguistic study conducted in Australia, based on video recordings of two naturally occurring interpreted general practice consultations. Participants were hearing Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/English interpreters, deaf patients, and hearing doctors. Analysis of these recordings was supplemented by reflective interviews with participants. The study examines the ways in which interpreters facilitate good working relationships between participants, and to explore the extent to which their decision-making is driven by relational considerations. The analyses presented in this article provide evidence that relational work is an important aspect of the healthcare interpreter’s role. Some of the ways in which it is achieved, however, may challenge our ideas about “appropriate” interpreter behaviour. Thus, the skilled and experienced interpreters in the study were seen to modify face threats, directly influence the flow of interaction, and actively facilitate social talk and humour, occasionally even engaging in it themselves. It is argued that interpreters’ decisions can only be understood within the discursive context in which they occur, and such behaviour can highlight interpreters’ attentiveness to the maintenance of good rapport.

When Learner-Centered Teaching and Learning Goes Online: Zooming into Linear Algebra Tutorials During the Pandemic

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic shifted higher education online, drawing attention to synchronous learning and instruction on digital communication platforms. Learner-centered teaching practices in the tertiary level, such as mathematical discussions, have been shown to benefit student learning. The interactions involved in online synchronous mathematical discussions have been studied less. Most research taps into these aspects drawing on students’ academic outcomes and reflective interviews. This study explores instructional practices as they unfold online, with a focus on student-instructor and student-student interactions. We zoom-in to online synchronous teaching and learning processes on a popular communication platform by analyzing Linear Algebra tutorials in the first pandemic year. Using the commognitive framework, we characterize instructional interactions with the construct of a learning-teaching agreement. The analysis resulted in three interactional patterns, where in all cases, the tutorial transformed at some point to the one dominated by the instructor.

Towards a suicide-responsive police culture: police experiences of working with suicide

ABSTRACT Across the globe suicide rates are creating concern, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) argues that suicide is the responsibility of everyone. The WHO recognises that police have an important role in suicide prevention and the management of mental health crises. We suggest that police officers and staff are inevitably impacted by the emotional labour of meeting the demands of this aspect of the role. We argue for more research attention on the experiences and views of police who work with suicide. This study comprised qualitative reflective interviews with police in the UK, Guyana and New Zealand, with the focus on identifying commonalities in experience across the three locations. Four themes were generated through reflective thematic analysis: (1) the context; (2) the traumatic impact; (3) the difficult aspects of this work and (4) organisational opportunities for supporting police officers and staff. Our data illustrated that suicide is qualitatively different from other forms of death, and the nature of the work did have considerable emotional and traumatic impact on police. We conclude our paper with several recommendations for police forces to build their welfare support for staff. These recommendations could help promote a healthier workforce and recognise the specific issues associated with this part of the role.

Strengthening inclusive leadership: insights from a professional development programme for school and childcare leaders

This study aims to answer the following research question: What were the participants’ perceptions of how their engagement in a professional development programme contributed to their advancement in inclusive leadership behaviour? To this end, we followed 17 school and childcare leaders collaborating in Dutch child centres for education and childcare, who participated in a dedicated professional development programme on inclusive leadership. The programme which consisted of four sessions, spread over five months, was tailored to develop inclusive leadership, and built upon six design criteria derived from literature. Data analysis was conducted by triangulating qualitative and quantitative data from interviews and pre- and post-programme self-evaluations. The main finding suggests that participants’ involvement in the professional development programme resulted in an augmented awareness of their role in creating an organisational climate through inclusive leadership, which was manifested through an increased application of inclusive leadership behaviours. Organising collective learning was considered a crucial element, recognising that the role of a school leader is sometimes perceived as isolated. Self-regulated learning via learning logs and reflective interviews provided opportunities for learning through reflection and showed that participants follow their own unique learning paths, tailored to their individual needs and contextual factors that they deem important.

Care in crisis: Entangled dimensions of care work during war

In this essay, we draw on two reflective interviews with Yosh, leader of the Ukrainian gender-based activist organization Feminist Workshop, illustrating her views on providing care-based services to displaced women during the full-scale invasion by Russia. Situating the interviews within the scholarly literature on care and the contemporary realities of the Russia/Ukraine war, we surface Yosh’s experiences and her consideration of more disruptive alternatives of care. In doing so, we assert the need for scholars (ourselves included) to be more willing to reframe feminist assumptions of care.

A Long-Term Study on the Effect of a Professional Development Program on Science Teachers’ Inquiry

In this study we explore the effect of a professional development (PD) program on four science teachers’ views and practices nearly a year after its completion, regarding inquiry implementation in everyday school practice. The PD program aimed to familiarize participants with current trends in science education (SE), putting emphasis on the inquiry approach. The basic research question guiding this study is whether science teachers’ inquiry practices and views changed, and to which extent, long after their participation in the PD program. Teachers’ practices were recorded, both during and after the PD, through non-participatory observation and were analysed through a semi-quantitative method. Teachers’ views were also recorded both during and after PD through structured questionnaires and reflective interviews, producing qualitative data that were analysed. Findings are encouraging concerning the preservation of guided inquiry practices obtained during the program, while more open inquiry practices proved to be limited. Teachers’ views concerning inquiry remained positive, also maintaining their innovative character.

Assessing the equivalency of face-to-face and online simulated patient interviews in an educational intervention

BackgroundIn adapting to COVID-19, many health professional training programs moved abruptly from in-person to online simulated patient interviews for teaching and evaluation without the benefit of evidence regarding the efficacy of this mode of delivery. This paper reports on a multi-methods research project comparing in-person and online simulated patient interviews conducted by allied health professionals as part of an educational intervention offered at a large university teaching hospital.MethodsTwenty-three participants conducted two 15-min interviews with simulated patients using previously validated scenarios of patients presenting with suicide risk. In order to assess the equivalency of the two modalities, physiological and psychological stress were measured using heart rate variability parameters and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory respectively, and then were compared across cohorts using t-tests. Reflective interviews elicited qualitative impressions of the simulations that were subject to thematic qualitative analysis.ResultsThere were no statistical differences in measures of psychological stress or physiological arousal of participant health care professionals who engaged with in-person versus online simulated interviews, suggesting they were equally effective in eliciting reactions commonly found in challenging clinical situations. In reflective interviews, participants commented on the realism of both modalities of simulated patient encounters and that simulated interviews provoked emotional and physiological responses consistent with actual patient encounters.ConclusionsThese findings provide developing evidence that carefully designed online clinical simulations can be a useful tool for the education and assessment of healthcare professionals.

Pedagogical intentions behind teacher written feedback: The perspectives and practices of an English language teacher educator in Argentina

This paper examines, with specific reference to English language teacher education in Argentina, the pedagogical intentions which underlie and inform the written feedback practices of an L2 writing teacher educator. The study is part of a larger exploratory-interpretive investigation which adopted a within-site, embedded, multiple-case design, and used data obtained from document analysis and a range of interview types (background interviews, stimulated recall interviews, and reflective interviews). The findings demonstrate the influence of multiple pedagogical intentions on the teacher educator's written feedback practices, some with immediate relevance to L2 writing and others which extended beyond this field. This reinforces the conclusions drawn in previous studies that discuss the impact of pedagogical intentions which are broader than the specific content being taught. Additionally, however, the results expand on our current understanding of how pedagogical intentions operate at different levels by illustrating how micro-level, discipline-specific technicalities are embedded within and signified by macro-level pedagogical intentions. The findings thus highlight the need to imbue feedback with educational principles that go beyond feedback itself, and have implications for L2 writing instruction and assessment, and L2 teacher education.

Fostering philosophy teachers' disciplinary writing practice: A multiple-case design study

In this design study, we designed an instructional unit open to contextual modifications with the aim of fostering secondary school students' philosophical writing. Three philosophy teachers developed innovative source-based writing tasks and provided discipline-specific writing strategy instruction in their 10th grade class. In this study, we focused on change. We explored teachers' interaction with the instructional design and studied teachers' views on how the intervention had changed their practice since a change of beliefs is crucial to successful, durable innovation of teaching. Moreover, we studied the effects of the changed practice, by exploring change in students' writing. An external jury analyzed students' texts to determine students' actual learning achievements. Teachers' insights into student progress were obtained from reflective interviews that featured comparisons between the observed and expected results. The results showed that teachers judged the design to be feasible, valid, and effective for students' philosophical writing development. After the intervention, students' texts showed similar or even more independent philosophical thinking than before, while the tasks became more complex. Implementation drove teachers to contemplate writing instruction, indicating a change in their belief system, which is necessary for genuine improvement in teacher practice.

French and language ideologies in a multilingual European Union institution: Re-constructing the meaning of language choice at work

This qualitative study investigates stances in reflective interviews to identify cultural patterns that shape the meaning of language choice within an international unit of an EU institution in Luxembourg. We employ the analytical concept of “language cringe” and propose a complementary concept, “language push,” to showcase the effects and reproduction of language ideologies in day-to-day talk about languages at work. Our analysis reveals that, within a workplace culture that encourages flexible and convivial use of multiple languages, French speakers have to deal with the effects of the “logic of honour,” which is culturally associated with the use of French in France. Based on our findings, we suggest that language choice should be considered a cross cultural dimension in multilingual environments, and that language-sensitive management scholarship should broaden its considerations beyond the traditional issues of language proficiency, namely by inspecting relational and affective factors that shape language use in multilingual workplaces.

Engaging in classroom discussions: Academic socialisation of Chinese international students in the UK

This study reports on a qualitative multiple-case study that investigates Chinese international students’ academic socialisation through classroom discussion. It explores how these students navigate their classroom participation and socialisation process. The participants included six Chinese international postgraduate students, studying in the UK for the first time. Data were collected over eleven months through multiple means, including formal interviews, classroom observations, and reflective interviews. The findings reveal that the students underwent academic self-socialisation mainly through negotiating prior and present academic experiences, negotiating competence and identity, and making efforts towards improvement. In the process of academic self-socialisation, they exerted different types of agency to drive the process, such as strategic, defensive, and reflective agency as well as agency for improvement. The study has important implications for academic staff and international students in a study-abroad context.

The Moderating Role of Organizational Structure Between Quality Management Systems and Organizational Resilience

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif;"><strong><span lang="EN-US">Purpose:</span></strong><span lang="EN-US"> To realize the benefits a Quality Management System (QMS), an organization needs to effectively implement its principles. This includes embracing these principles within an enabling environment. Hence, organizational structure is a critical success factor for adopting quality management systems. </span><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">This paper aims at understanding how the organizational structure impacts ISO 9001 QMS implementation and vise versa, besides exploring how quality management initiatives affect organizational resilience through parts.</span> <span lang="EN-US">Design/methodology/approach: The research deploys a qualitative methodology, with an outsider-insider approach. 32 semi-structured interviews were conducted, plus one final reflective interview. Interview questions dealt with structural constructs: communication, employee engagement, employee empowerment, process/routine-orientation, multidisciplinarity, cross-functionality, expertise-utilization and change-readiness. The questions also dealt with how the organizational structure impacted ISO 9001 implementation and vice versa. <strong>Findings: </strong>The results show that ISO 9001 implementation was more successful and fruitful under process-orientation and to some degree under semi-process orientation, while it looked inconsistent under routine-orientation. This indicates a significant role played by the organizational structure when it comes to ISO 9001 implementation. More importantly, the results also demonstrate that ISO 9001 implementation managed to improve organizational resilience by consistently driving the organizational structure toward higher levels of process-orientation for process-oriented units, whereas it failed to realize such impact for routine-oriented units. <strong>Originality/value:</strong> This study is unique as it is the first - within the reviewed literature - to examine the moderating role of the organizational structure between the ISO 9001 standard and organizational resilience. It draws a roadmap for the successful realization of organizational resilience through quality management systems, considering organizational structure constructs.</span></span></p>

Sceptical teacher and silent students: a case study of teacher changes during a teacher professional development programme

ABSTRACT This study focuses on an intervention programme designed to foster collectivity in classroom dialogue during sixth-grade language arts lessons, incorporating a coaching-based approach grounded in real classroom experiences. Specifically, we examine how this programme affected the beliefs and practices of a sceptical teacher in relation to increasing the participation of all her students in the classroom discourse. Centred on a case study of one teacher, the research uses multiple data sources, including video-recorded lessons and reflective interviews. The analytical approach is interpretative, taking into account the role of the researcher in influencing the observed phenomena. The intervention involved a video-stimulated reflection on a lesson leading to an impasse because the teacher could not work with all of the students due to her deficit beliefs about the students. In our analysis, a distinctive cyclical model encompassing six steps was introduced to delineate the evolution of the teacher’s beliefs. This model emphasises the crucial role a researcher plays in teacher learning, particularly in providing emotional support and aiding in the collaborative construction of teaching methodologies. Video recordings combined with ‘reflexive noticing’ made it possible for the teacher to recognise alternative interpretations of silent student interactions, thus challenging the previous deficit models. Recognising an impasse – an emotionally intense point of confusion – is essential in the process of belief alteration. The research suggests that while reflection is important, it alone is not sufficient; genuine change arises from teachers’ efforts to address and navigate confusion and impasse in their practices.

How important is integration to the successful ‘roll out’ of specialist hospital discharge schemes for people who are homeless?

In 2021, we published research funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research that demonstrated the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of specialist hospital discharge schemes for people who are homeless. A key finding of the research was that areas that had a specialist homeless hospital discharge scheme had fewer delayed discharges and could reduce their emergency readmissions among homeless patients by 14%. This positive outcome attracted the attention of national health policy makers who allocated £16 million funding to 17 local authority areas to “roll out” new schemes. This paper reports the preliminary findings of an implementation evaluation. We assess how important integration was in those areas that successfully translated the evidence about “what works’ into practice. This presentation is targeted at academics and commissioners of integrated care.
 The evaluation employed a positive deviance (appreciative enquiry) methodology. This approach seeks out exceptionally performing sites, investigates the underlying factors contributing to the successful behaviours and strategies, and plans an appropriate means to replicate these with the aim to effect a change. The rationale behind appreciative inquiry is that solutions to common problems mostly exist within clinical/practice communities rather than externally with policy makers or managers.
 The first step of the evaluation was to collect audit (performance) data from the 17 local authorities taking part in the programme. Audit data was then used to select three case studies sites that demonstrated high performance against key metrics such as having a shorter length of stay in ‘step-down’ services (longer stays being indicative of housing shortages and difficulties maintaining flow through the system). In the case study sites, reflective interviews and focus groups then sought to establish what factors underpinned this successful implementation. This included interviews with a range of key stakeholders including people with lived experience of homelessness and transitions out-of-hospital (over sixty stakeholders in total).
 Integration was found to be a key factor in understanding successful implementation at many different levels - from building the initial strategic vision to delivering quality in frontline service delivery. Often this was ‘relational’ integration where building social networks in strategic places was the main factor in determining routinization and sustainability. Often boundary spanning was key where ‘homeless commissioners’ needed to cross the divide into the unfamiliar world of health service commissioning. Relational working required a dedicated project manager with highly developed skills in business planning, evaluation and policy literacy to negotiate the many hurdles that stood in the way of the routinization of specialist care. Successful sites also involved people with lived experience of homeless in meaningful rather than tokenistic activities, integrating their knowledge of services and practice to ensure compassion was at the forefront of practice. Taking an in-depth qualitative perspective on successful implementation is important as very few of the 17 test sites managed to sustain their new services once the initial programme funding had run out.

“Together, I Don’t Feel so Alone”: Collaborative Teaching as Third Space in University/School Sites

This qualitative study foregrounded four teacher educators’ perceptions of teaching collaboratively at shared school sites over the span of two years. As we reconvened to reflect on our experiences both individually and collectively, we retrospectively examined the affordances and challenges from this shared experience. Our data collection was guided by Pinar’s method of currere which involves four “steps or moments that are temporal and reflective.” These moments are “the regressive’' as past experiences are revisited; “the progressive” as the future was anticipated; “the analytic” to seek understanding of the past and future together; and finally, “the synthetical” to mobilize for action based upon these understandings. In considering the demands of university/school partnership work, methodologies such as currere, an autobiographical curriculum theory and method to support a context for reflection, is one that is rarely afforded due to the demands of higher education in general, and in field-based teacher education in particular. In analyzing these reflective interviews, we began to make sense of how these relationships shaped our perspectives of the past and led us to understand our present. Findings suggest that collaborative teaching created a third space that transformed our relationships with our teaching partners, enhanced our relationships with our students, and informed curricular revisions.

The patient’s first point of contact (PINPOINT) – protocol of a prospective multicenter study of communication and decision-making during patient assessments by primary care registered nurses

BackgroundA major challenge for primary care is to set priorities and balance demands with available resources. The registered nurses in this study are practice nurses working in primary care offices, playing a large role in initial assessments. The overall objective of this research is to investigate practices of communication and decision-making during nurses’ initial assessment of patients’ health problems in primary care, examine working mechanisms in good practices and develop feasible solutions.MethodsProject PINPOINT aims for a prospective multicenter study using various methods for data collection and analysis. A purposive sample of 150 patient‒nurse consultations, including 30 nurses and 150 patients, will be recruited at primary care centers in three different geographic areas of southwest Sweden. The study will report on outcomes of communication practices in relation to patient-reported expectations and experiences, communication processes and patient involvement, assessment and decision-making, related priorities and value conflicts with data from patient questionnaires, audio-recorded real-time communication, and reflective interviews with nurses.DiscussionThis research will contribute to the knowledge needed for the guidance of first-line decision-making processes to best meet patient and public health needs. This knowledge is necessary for the development of assessments and decisions to be better aligned to patients and to set priorities. Insights from this research can empower patients and service providers and help understand and enhance feasible person-centered communication strategies tailored to patients’ level of health literacy. More specifically, this research will contribute to knowledge that can strengthen nurses’ communication, assessments, and clinical decision-making in primary care. In the long term, this will contribute to how the competencies of practice nurses and other professionals are organized and carried out to make the best use of the resources within primary care.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT06067672.

An exploration of human and platform intra-actions in a digital teaching and learning environment

ABSTRACT This study uses a sociomaterial critical posthuman paradigm to examine possibilities, constraints, and tensions that come into view in the ‘intra-action’ between teachers and a digital environment. It considers how teacher subjectivities may be reimagined in new digitised visuospatial environments. This qualitative study utilises reflective interviews with things to illuminate general issues of subjectivities in human/digital contexts in a newly adopted Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) at a university in the Middle East. The interviews reveal several diffractions from the new entanglement created by introducing the new VLE. This highlights what it means to be a higher education educator in the digital age. This study contributes to critical research on digital assemblages to counteract the wholly positivist and non-problematized discourse of instrumentalization of technology use in education that often accompanies them. It also creates more openings for discussing posthuman subjectivities in sociomaterial contexts.

Better spiritual support for people living with early stage dementia: Developing the diamond conversation model.

People with early-stage dementia could benefit greatly from on-going spiritual support. However, health care professionals working in dementia care often do not have a clear idea of what such support might entail. There is a lack of tools that can help professionals provide such support. The Diamond conversation model used in palliative care could provide such a support. Aims: To develop the Diamond model for early-stage dementia so that professionals can provide better spiritual support. Participatory research was conducted. Reflective interviews with chaplains, case managers and health psychologists identified frequently occurring existential and spiritual issues of clients and family members. A core participatory group consisting of chaplains, a psychologist and a researcher further analysed these issues thematically and co-developed the Diamond model for early stage dementia over three co-creation sessions. Researchers with Diamond model expertise provided feedback to the core participatory group in between these sessions based on the session output. Central existential and spiritual issues were found to be: self-confidence and -worth, adaptability and capacity, security and loss, burden and enrichment of memory and faith and meaning. The five polarities of the Diamond model were found helpful to understand tensions surrounding these issues. Specific tensions were identified between maintaining a self and being valued, finding direction in what to do and a way to bear changes in ability, a strong need for attachment and letting go of past ways to relate to one another, the renewed intensity of long term memories and decline of the short term ones and surrendering to one's life situation and wanting certainty and meaning. The newly developed Diamond model for people with early-stage dementia offers a valuable framework to help professionals provide conversational support. More research needs to be done to further test and develop the model in practice.