Reflective Practitioner Research Articles

Family dyads, emotional labor, and holding environments in the simulated encounter: co-constructive patient simulation as a reflective tool in child and adolescent psychiatry training

BackgroundPatient simulation has been used in medical education to provide a safe and supportive learning environment for learners to practice clinical and interpersonal skills. However, simulation involving pediatric populations, particularly in child and adolescent psychiatry, is rare and generally does not reflect the child-caregiver dyad or the longitudinal aspects of this care, nor does it provide learners with an opportunity to engage with and reflect on these dynamics.MethodsWe organized as an educational opportunity a series of seven observed patient simulation sessions with a cohort of a dozen child and adolescent psychiatrists (eight fellows approaching graduation and four senior educators). In these sessions, we utilized the co-constructive patient simulation model to create the simulation cases. We included the use of at least two patient actors in most sessions, and two of the case narratives were longitudinally followed across multiple simulation sessions. We approached the data collected during the simulations and their respective debriefings by using thematic analysis informed by a symbolic interactionist approach.ResultsBased on data from the debriefing sessions and longitudinal narratives, we identified four overarching themes: (1) Reflecting on dyadic challenges: role reversal and individuation; (2) Centering the child, allying with the parent, and treating the family system; (3) Ambivalence in and about the parent-child dyad; and (4) Longitudinal narratives and ambivalence over time.ConclusionThe emotional experience of the simulations, for interviewers and observers alike, provided an opportunity to reflect on personal and professional experiences and triggered meaningful insights and connections between participants. These simulated cases called for emotional labor, particularly in the form of creating holding environments; in this way, the simulated encounters and the debriefing sessions became dialogic experiences, in which the patient and provider, parent and child, and learner and instructor could co-construct meaning and foster professional development as reflective practitioners.

Designing Outdoor Education Units for the Block

In 2018, Victoria University in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia implemented the VU Block Model® for the teaching of undergraduate degree programs. This was a radical shift from a traditional 12-week semester approach and required a complete overhaul of how outdoor education units would be taught moving forward. However, there is a lack of literature on the block mode delivery for outdoor education. The aim of this discussion paper is to identify the challenges of designing and delivering outdoor education in an intensive block mode. To explore this issue, the paper examines unit design and delivery practices undertaken in outdoor education curricula at an Australian university. A reflective practitioner case study research method was applied, with two units being evaluated. This approach was adopted due to the broad range of variables influencing program delivery and student engagement. The discussion is formed around the three years of experience that the authors have in designing, delivering, and reviewing the two units. The outcomes, observations and feedback presented in the discussion suggest that this process has improved the quality of teaching and learning and the student experience. Findings provide practical solutions for delivering and assessing tertiary curriculum outcomes consistent with a nationally recognised framework.

Social impact assessments (SIA) in larger infrastructure investments in Sweden; the view of experts and practitioners

ABSTRACT This paper, by highlighting the experiences and reflections of experts and practitioners, aims to increase knowledge of how social impact assessment is managed and handled at various stages of the planning process in major infrastructure investments in Sweden. Interviews were conducted with nine experts and practitioners working with issues of transport planning and social sustainability. The informants represent the national and regional level and three established consultancies. The results largely confirm earlier research, and the area of social impacts assessment in transport planning in Sweden can be seen as being fragmented. Many fundamental issues in the field remain to be addressed for future development, including issues such as public procurement, the role (and competence) of the client, the role (and competence) of the practitioner, how SIA should be included in the whole planning process taking into account the different stages (including how the SIA should be documented, delivered and monitored), how methods should be managed and included, and how the genuine experts should be included, i.e. those living and working in the affected areas.

Examining Professional Training and Continuing Education of Teachers in the Junior High Schools of the Upper West Region of Ghana

Purpose: Policy document on continuing education and training of teachers after entering the workforce emphasizes that teachers are expected to partake in their career professional training. However, the Ministry of Education (2018), explained that the policy implementation challenges make the policy only good on paper and, make it appear ineffective in Ghana. The study examined the avenues for continuing education, the determinant variables, and the outcomes of continuing education in the region.
 Methodology: Survey Design, qualitative and quantitative approaches, and Multi-Stage Cluster Sampling technique were used in addition to an interview guide and a questionnaire for the data. The analysis was done with the help of the Statistical Package for Social Scientists in the form of charts, percentages and quotations from key informants.
 Findings: Avenues for continuing education were teacher licensing, inductions, schools and field visits, promotions, workshops, seminars and conferences, collegial discussions, peer group teaching, mentoring, and teaching portfolio. The determinant variables when correlated affected the avenues of continuing education. variables like gender, current educational qualification, the necessity to have incense before being qualified to teach, and being licensed as a teacher were positively related but statistically insignificant. However, marital status was negatively related to teachers’ opinions but positively related to promotion. The outcomes of professional training and continuing education included enhanced certification, reflective practitioners, lifelong learning, progressive schemes of service, and subject specialisation. Also, the teachers’ marital status had a consequential positive relationship with promotion, current education qualification, and license as a teacher.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Policy and Practice: Continuing education, professional training, and continuous education skills are intertwined, an indication of its importance to the teacher and a wakeup call to the government for effective implementation of the policy and put in strategies to improve teachers’ skills. Also, the Human Capital Theory has been tested ant it reinforced the use of professional training and continuing education avenues for the career growth of the teachers, The Change Theory of In-service Training was also in consonance with the findings of the study and therefore, be upheld. These are significant contribution to knowledge. Teachers should give attention to continuing education and training in order to acquire more knowledge in the Region also, a call for vigorous sensitisation crusade by the study to persuade all teachers in the region to go for further education and training is in the right direction.

Towards a Pedagogical Model Applying Commedia dell’Arte and Art Workshops in Higher Education Design Studies

Abstract This study introduces a pedagogical model: “the parallel co-inquiry cycles with performative inquiry for character related design” for higher education design studies that focus on characterization. The disciplines benefitting from cross-fertilization provided by the model include game design, fashion design, graphic design, theatre, and actor’s art. Besides the model, the article discusses curriculum integration of a shared thematic denominator Commedia dell’Arte in higher education design studies. The model synthesizes progressive inquiry, drama pedagogical methodologies, and theories on theater with hands-on art workshops to create tangible and digital knowledge vessels for characterization. The research design relies on parallel co-inquiry cycles, participatory ethnography with elements from participatory design tradition. The model identifies three major components within the single 3E-inquiry cycles, namely exercise, experiment and experience. The entire process acquires complexity as each single inquiry cycle enters the next loop of Observe–Plan–Act–Reflect and more time and resources are allocated to the process. The pattern of action and reflection has an iterative cycle format in this model. Reflection has two distinguished purposes: first, to internalize reflective design and to become a reflective practitioner. Second, to see the importance of reflection as distancing oneself from the current process, to allow a reflective mind to linger on the process and learn from mistakes to turn them into assets. Reflection as a metacognitive skill has an all-encompassing purpose in both design and learning processes. The model distinguishes two types of knowledge vessels. Knowledge objects are abstractions that condense knowledge in the co-design process, whereas knowledge artifacts are concrete items, such as masks, outfits, and accessories in both digital and tangible formats. The model connects maker-culture, practice-based inquiry, and performative inquiry in the inquiry cycles. The drama method with performative inquiry acknowledges shared knowledge building in a collaborative, dialogical inquiry that fosters both argumentative and reflection skills.

Teaching cross-cultural and comparative perspectives of teacher development online: A reflective practitioner inquiry.

In this reflective practitioner inquiry, a course instructor and a graduate teaching intern examine the experience of teaching a graduate-level course about cross-cultural perspectives of teacher development. We inquire along three dimensions: assisting doctoral students to become effective and reflective university instructors; responding to course students’ questions and concerns about developing a meaningful academic community in an online learning environment; and conceptual issues of teaching comparative, international, and development education (CIDE) in university settings. Our key argument is that in order to succeed in the above three dimensions, professional reflexivity in CIDE higher education courses can be both conceptually and pedagogically multidirectional, by which experienced and novice instructors learn from each other as much as they learn from their students in an engaging and enriching online environment.

Academic development through course enhancements – becoming reflective practitioners

Working in Communities of Practice (CoP) when developing student support in courses, may also have an impact on the academic learning. In CoP’s scholars can meet up to discuss, solve issues and develop new solutions. It is an arena for reflection on action, retrospective reflection and for meta-learning. In this paper we will present how two lecturers have co-developed knowledge through knowledge sharing, discussions and projects with students. The two lecturers have different background regarding education teaches within the same main area; organizational theory and development, and Knowledge Management. By sharing tacit and explicit knowledge when co-developing support for students learning, their own reflections support our learning process. Through reflection before action when developing the initiatives that we want to test out on students, reflecting in action when we deploy the initiatives, reflect on action when we evaluate the initiatives and reflect retrospectively together longer after deploying the initiative, we learn and develop not only as academics but also as reflective practitioners. This is also what we want for our students. Through several years we have developed the courses in the study programme of Knowledge Management at the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. The development has exclusively been to support students learning outcome and work relevance of the different courses. The latest initiative is about video-feedback and how this can support the students enhanced learning outcome. We are investigating what the students claim will provide them with yet another tool for learning and that will improve their academic skills. Through the process of working with this project and utilizing our knowledge of the different ways of reflection, knowledge sharing, cooperation and collaboration, we have learned from the project and our process. Hence, our meta-learning may also benefit our students as we as reflective practitioners can help our students become reflective practitioners, too.

Race and the space in between: Practitioner reflections on anti-racist practice in one Froebelian early years setting

The rise of ‘Black Lives Matters’ has brought to the fore a need to unsettle early years praxis that positions race as separate from the individual, as a problem to be solved through the tokenistic provisioning of resources. In this paper, we explore how a team of early years practitioners were able to bridge the space between themselves and the multicultural community in which they worked. An interpretative onto-epistemology supported the crafting of the research design as a case study that provided insight into multiple meanings through participants’ narratives during weekly informal anti-racist reflective meetings, focus group discussions and individual interviews. “Political correctness”, social justice and children’s rights emerged that highlighted the importance of intra-actions arising between practitioners, their history, society and the environment. Consequently, new conceptualisations of race and anti-racist praxis emerged that transformed their practice and their way of being in the world.

Rethinking Harlow Gale: The Psychical Influences on His Contributions to Advertising and Their Enduring Reverberations

Harlow Gale is often depicted as the first experimentalist in advertising thought. This positioning elides influences which impacted upon his thinking. In this article, we outline Gale’s involvement with psychical research and its implications for advertising. These narratives are situated within a genealogy of subliminal processes across advertising and marketing theory from the late nineteenth century through to social cognition studies today. Gale’s connection with psychical research, in conjunction with early practitioner reflections on the unconscious, formed the enabling conditions for his major contributions to advertising. Psychical scholarship spotlighted the centrality of the “multiplex self” to human functioning. While psychical framings scaffolded Gale’s empirical, conceptual, and theoretical work, it also limited greater engagement with his insights. However, subsequent modifications of advertising theory and practice are underwritten by levels of continuity and discontinuity that facilitate the identification of psychically indebted bodies of thought from Gale’s time to the present day. Taken together, these analytic associations provide a substantive reorientation of historical and contemporary accounts of advertising theory and practice.

What Is It Like to Make a Prototype? Practitioner Reflections on the Intersection of User Experience and Digital Humanities/Social Sciences during the Design and Delivery of the “Getting to Mount Resilience” Prototype

The digital humanities and social sciences are critical for addressing societal challenges such as climate change and disaster risk reduction. One way in which the digital humanities and social sciences add value, particularly in an increasingly digitised society, is by engaging different communities through digital services and products. Alongside this observation, the field of user experience (UX) has also become popular in industrial settings. UX specifically concerns designing and developing digital products and solutions, and, while it is popular in business and other academic domains, there is disquiet in the digital humanities/social sciences towards UX and a general lack of engagement. This paper shares the reflections and insights of a digital humanities/social science practitioner working on a UX project to build a prototype demonstrator for disaster risk reduction. Insights come from formal developmental and participatory evaluation activities, as well as qualitative self-reflection. The paper identifies lessons learnt, noting challenges experienced—including feelings of uncertainty and platform dependency—and reflects on the hesitancy practitioners may have and potential barriers in participation between UX and the digital humanities/social science. It concludes that digital humanities/social science practitioners have few skill barriers and offer a valued perspective, but unclear opportunities for critical engagement may present a barrier.

Transformative research journey from frustrated learners to critically reflective practitioners

The conventional linear model of pedagogical practices promotes subject-centric memorizing, considering learners as knowledge recipients rather than generators of knowledge. This pedagogical practice degrades educational values by ignoring alternative inquiry-based visionaries and meaning-making approaches. Different forms of art in pedagogy, such as poetry, autobiographical reflection, and visual arts (i.e., paintings and cartoons) that capture learners' personal experiences, on the other hand, might be considered as one of the alternative models for a meaningful and critical understanding of the core and complex phenomena of the diverse world. Thus, the paper investigates the traditional linear pedagogical model and the critical transformative model utilizing Habermasian Knowledge's consecutive interests (technical, practical, and emancipatory) as the theoretical referent and metaphors for critical discourses of such pedagogical practices.

Enhancing critical reflective practice in science education through a STEAM approach

This article aimed to explore teachers’ beliefs on reflective practice in their professional life and envision perspectives for transforming their practice. I used auto/ethnography as a research methodology for critically reflecting on the self and others’ lived experiences of teaching science, mathematics, and technology in the context of Nepal. I explored that reflective practice is required for understanding and transforming our deep-seated dominant cultural practices. On becoming a critically reflective practitioners, we can incorporate a trans-disciplinary STEAM approach while designing and implementing a curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment system that helps understand learners’ sociocultural backgrounds, beliefs, values, assumptions, and feelings for authentic, inclusive, and meaningful learning.

HEI employer-engagement – a practitioner's reflections using institutional logics lenses

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are increasingly engaging with businesses to provide opportunities for their students whilst also promoting their own relevance and impact in society. However, this engagement often involves navigating multiple internal processes and practices. This paper presents an employer-engagement practitioner's reflections on HEI employer-engagement, using the lens of two institutional logics – professional and corporate logics. This paper considers how these logics are shaping HEI employer-engagement, the challenges for employer engagement middle managers (EE-MM), and tensions with senior leadership teams (SLT). This paper is framed and located from the point of view of a middle manager working within employer engagement, reflecting the challenges being faced by myself and seven other EE-MM across five English HEIs as part of my doctoral research. It explores the tensions between EE-MM and HEI-wide SLT; highlighting the competing demands between day-to-day management and strategic overview.

The Structure and Characteristics of Chinese University English Teachers’ Identities: Toward a Sustainable Language Pedagogy

This study investigates the enacted identities of Chinese university English teachers in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching. The aim is to explore the underlying structure and characteristics of these teachers’ identities and examine their alignment with the principles of sustainable learning in education (SLE), which goes beyond knowledge acquisition in a chosen discipline and aims to nurture life-long and resilient learners that are able to reflect upon, renew, relearn, and assess what has been taught and orient themselves for future learning processes. A questionnaire was used to gather perceptions of enacted identities in teaching practice from 326 Chinese university English teachers. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) revealed four distinct dimensions of identity: Advocate and Motivator for English Learning, Facilitator of English Learning, Reflective Practitioner and Researcher, and Book Teacher. Interviews were conducted with a subsample of 12 teachers to further explore the contextualized meanings of these identity factors. The findings indicate that these identity dimensions align with the four tenets of sustainable learning in education, reflecting the teachers’ orientations toward sustainable language teaching practices. This study contributes to our knowledge of language teachers’ shared identities and offers important implications for language teacher professional development.

Centering the Marginalized: Creating a Coalition to Enhance Retention Initiatives in the Workplace

Purpose: This practitioner reflection provides a narrative of how I intervened to make Utah State University (USU) a more socially-just workplace for graduate students, by creating a coalition to establish the Graduate Students of Color Association (GSCA). I argue that graduate students are not only professionalizing scholars but are also often university employees. I extend conversations in the field by centering multiply marginalized or underrepresented (MMU) students' perceptions of inclusive spaces while offering a solution to Popham's (2016) argument that recruitment efforts may not be enough when trying to diversify knowledge in the workplace. Method: By taking a descriptive narrative approach to this reflection, I offer insights into the different methods to establish GSCA and the stakeholders involved. I provide readers with ways to enact transformative diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their workplaces while promoting reciprocity for all involved. Results: The continuous commitment to enhance workplace environments through social, academic, emotional, and culture-affirming support has proven to be a major impact to USU thanks to GSCA. The association has become an integral retention initiative that USU's graduate programs can promote and use alongside their recruitment efforts. Conclusion: I provide readers with insights on how to create cultural spaces for professionalizing scholars while centering their lived experiences and their need for belonging. This reflection provides readers with divergent ways to creating an infrastructure that helps MMU scholars persist in the workplace.

MYSTERY OF A SUPER BALL: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT ON A CHEMISTRY GAMIFICATION IN PROMOTING SOFT SKILLS AMONGST PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

Gamification becomes trending to increase learning engagement. Yet it is rarely attempted by teachers for flipped classroom approach due to time constraint, the need for creativity and technology literacy. In this paper, I share my experience in gamification design to promote communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity (4Cs) among students. Faced with stagnancy in using traditional cooperative strategies, I took on the challenge of designing the game “Mystery of Super Ball” for the Polymer topic, involving a group of pre-service teachers as Agents in a mystery-mission game. The study design was motivated by the gap in action research’s reflective practitioner philosophy. Data was gathered through video recording, semi-structured interviews, and student reflections. The findings indicate that students demonstrated strong communication and collaboration skills while immersing themselves in their detective roles. Triangulating with quantified episodes, communication (31.01%) and collaboration (25.58%) were substantively prevalent in the students’ problem-solving tasks. However, critical thinking (22.79%) and creativity (20.62%) showed relatively lower occurrences, suggesting the need for revising my strategies. Among the 24 subconstructs of the 4Cs themes, two were minimally observed: ‘Create new and worthwhile ideas (both incremental and radical concepts)’ and ‘Analyze and evaluate major alternative points of view’, falling under creativity and critical thinking, respectively. These insightful findings strongly advocate for reevaluating the current critical essay assessment on the Polymer topic. A more innovative approach is needed, one that challenges students to showcase their creative and critical problem-solving abilities. Noteworthy, students’ perceptions of my creativity shed light on my strengths and weaknesses in game design, providing valuable insights for future research recommendations. This study highlights the importance of being a reflective practitioner, both for my pre-service student-teachers and myself as a lifelong learner.

Trend Topic in School-based Lesson Study for Learning Community in Transformational Program

Implementation of lesson study encourages Reflective Practitioners to get used to collaborating in learning practice. In Indonesia, educational programs have been designed with collaboration in mind, promoting a reflection process within the learning community. This research focuses on trending topics/themes of reflective practitioners in supporting the sustainability of their learning communities. The participants involved in this study were 75 reflective practitioners consisting of school principals (P), school supervisors (SS), and learning committee teachers (T). Through the Facilitating School Program (FSP) Questionnaire, information was obtained that two topics were becoming trends by all reflective practitioners in Learning Community for Reflective Practitioners (LCRP) activities in schools, namely, commitment to improving quality sustainably 85.3% and conducting research collaboratively 841%. Schools must collaborate with teachers and principals to design straightforward school programs so that these two topics can be implemented smoothly

Reclaiming the Narrative and Re-professionalising the Teacher: Responding to the Homogenous and Prescriptive Policy in ITE in England

The aim of the Department for Education's recent market review of England's initial teacher training (ITT) was ostensibly to enable the provision of consistently highquality training in line with the ITT core content framework (CCF). Its intention may possibly have been welcomed had it built on the judgments from Ofsted at the time, which concluded that every single teacher education partnership was already 'good' or better. However, this was not meant to be. The outcomes from the review led to a chorus of concerns voiced across the sector. A move to a single, potentially homogenous national approach to the ITT curriculum, its delivery and its assessment was considered detrimental and central dangers were cited, such as the loss of autonomy and the investment partner schools have in ITT. Nevertheless, these concerns fell on deaf ears, with all ITT providers being required to undergo formal reaccreditation despite their long track records of teacher training success. In this paper, we consider the prescriptive, homogenous nature of the ITT CCF to which providers must demonstrate fidelity in order to secure accreditation. We offer the University of Manchester's Secondary Postgraduate Certificate of Education with Qualified Teacher Status programme (PGCE with QTS) as a case study. The paper illustrates the capacity of an academic and professional teacher training programme to extend beyond providing the prescribed minimum entitlement and to develop trainee teachers as research informed, critically reflective practitioners.

Non‐formal peace education founded on European youth work: A practitioner's critical reflection

AbstractThis article is a critical self‐reflection on this author's practice of non‐formal peace education. Such critical reflexivity is considered integral to avoid pitfalls that could lead to the peace education activity inadvertently perpetuating structural violence – a phenomenon known as poststructural violence. Examples include unexamined assumptions about key concepts such as peace, inclusion, and rights. The article drives at the idea of discussing a concrete practice against a theoretical framework of critical peace education, exposing tensions between the two to lay the foundations for an improvement of my peace education practice. The discussion is informed by a positionality description of my own journey to become a peace education practitioner, a thematic analysis of the Erasmus+ programme, which is a key funding source, and a description of a concrete peace education project, all of which highlight influencing factors of my practice.

Drawing the line: Opening up and closing down the siting of a high voltage transmission route in the Netherlands

This paper describes the decision-making process regarding the siting of a high voltage transmission line in the southern part of the Netherlands by TenneT, the Transmission System Operator responsible for the electricity infrastructure. TenneT started this siting process by deploying conventional decision-making procedures, which have the tendency centrally to pre-scope, and select the technical, spatial and societal characteristics of such projects. Following the resistance of activist groups and local authorities, a new siting process was set up based on community engagement (CE) and the upfront involvement of local stakeholders, so to include new frames and perspectives and by reconsidering the workings of standard procedures. With that, TenneT opened up decision-making processes. In our paper, we will identify the practical and institutional tensions and challenges that emerged from these attempts to ‘open up’. The work is based on an ‘inside out’ description of the case: one of the researchers undertook an ethnographic study of the siting process, while the employees of TenneT directly involved in the siting process have been invited as co-authors, so to add details and the reflections of practitioners.