Tool For Reflective Practice Research Articles

Positive impacts of the take-home timeline as a reflective practice tool on teacher development: an exploratory study of novice public school teachers in China

ABSTRACT This study explores the impact of the take-home timeline as a novel reflective practice tool for novice public school teachers in China. Spanning one and a half years, the research tracked 16 novice teachers across three schools, examining how the timeline influenced their personal and professional development. Our findings, distilled from a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews, reveal significant enhancements in reflective practice among these teachers. The take-home timeline proved instrumental in helping teachers catalogue significant events, critically assess their teaching decisions, and plan their professional futures. This process not only deepened their reflective engagement but also bolstered their confidence and commitment to teaching. This study concludes that the take-home timeline is particularly valuable for novice teachers, enhancing their ability to navigate the complexities of teaching and accelerating their professional maturity. Hence, the study recommends broader adoption of take-home timelines in teacher education, emphasising their benefits in fostering a reflective mindset and supporting continuous professional development.

Extending higher education recognition programs through a dedicated post-award reflective practice tool

ABSTRACT Higher education professional recognition programs, which lead to the awarding of such accolades as teaching and learning fellowships, offer participants opportunities to reflect carefully on their practice. However, few resources exist to help participants engage in reflection after the award-receiving stage. This reflection is important in helping participants not rest on their laurels and, instead, build on the practices for which they received recognition. Through a process of collaborative reflection, a group of fellowship-recipients, from different disciplines and higher education institutions, addressed this gap as stakeholder-participant-researchers by developing a transdisciplinary approach to undertaking post-award reflective practice. From this collaboration, a novel two-stage tool was developed using an iterative design methodology. The tool presented in this paper as the result of this research can be understood as a means of supporting self-paced, continued post-award reflective practice; the tool’s first stage guides users through retrospective reflection, looking back on previous achievements, while the second stage leads users through anticipatory planning, looking towards the future, to achieve fresh goals. The tool thus deepens the reflective practice of recognition program awardees and supports their ongoing professional development. This paper reports on the development of this bespoke tool, which may be enacted in varied settings.

“Clinical café meeting” - a clinician peer support and case discussion meeting: A tool for reflective practice and consolidation of resilience

Introduction Previous studies have shown that Peer Support Programs (PSPs) promote workforce wellness by supporting clinicians during times of heightened stress and vulnerability (Keyser, et al., 2021). Inclusion of case discussions in PSPs can provide opportunity for reflective practice, quality improvement, and professional development, in addition to strengthening clinicians’ resilience.ObjectivesTo describe the experience and perceived benefits reported by participants (psychiatrists) of a peer support and case discussion group meeting, of a clinical department of psychiatry (DOP) in Cape Breton, Canada, which the group calls “clinical café meeting”.MethodsQualitative data collected, were informal comments (with focus on the participants’ experience and perceived benefits) from the group participants during the once a month, one-hour clinical cafe meetings.ResultsFrom September 2015 to September 2021, attendance ranged from 2 to 10 participants. All participants voiced that, they see each meeting as an opportunity to “analyze their feelings and knowledge relevant to clinical practice situations, especially those associated with uncomfortable feelings (Atkins & Murphy reflective model, 1993), and challenges they face, in relation to the healthcare system. Many participants voiced how input from group participants help them with gaining a new perspective on practice situations that were discussed, and ideas on how they could deal with similar clinical situations or challenges, in a more robust way, in the future. Many participants also find the clinical café meetings to be helpful in consolidating their resilience.Conclusions PSP (with case discussion) participants, in a Canadian DOP, described their experience of the group meetings, as beneficial, including contributing to strengthening of their resilience.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

The reality of practicing some Reflection tools among students of science teachers at Sultan Qaboos University

The current study aimed to reveal the extent of the use of reflective practices tools among undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University. To achieve the objective of the study, the quantitative approach was used to answer the main question: What is the degree of use of reflective practice tools among undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University? An electronic questionnaire prepared by the researcher was applied to determine the degree of practice (high - medium - weak - non-existent) for several reflection tools, namely: action research, portfolio, reflective reports, self-assessment of performance, listening thinking, peer observation, ideas record, and learning groups. The study sample consisted of (58) undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University, (48) of them were female, and (10) were male. The results of the study showed that the average total score of student-teacher responses about the degree of their practice of reflection tools was (1.79) with a standard deviation of (1.00) and a weak practice degree, and the averages of the degree of practicing most of the tools were at a weak degree except for three of them were at a medium degree. The study recommended the necessity of including reflective practices in teacher preparation courses in various disciplines and employing these reflective practices within assessment methods in teacher preparation programs.

(Re)framing teachers’ family engagement practice as cultural work

ABSTRACT Family engagement in children’s learning is an evidence-based approach supporting student learning. This study examines four primary school teachers’ family engagement practice, within a non-dominant community. Utilising the framework of Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR), the teachers examined their partnerships with families, identifying barriers to family engagement. The teachers began to act as cultural workers as they changed their homework practice to strengthen non-dominant families’ connection to their children’s school learning. Through the theory of practice architectures, the teachers’ language (sayings), activities and resources (doings) and relationships (relatings) with families were considered. Data were collected through transcripts from reflective practice meetings, reflective practice tools and semi-structured interviews undertaken throughout the CPAR process. The theory of practice architectures underpinned data analysis, identifying practice conditions which support teachers to (re)frame family engagement as cultural work. The resulting practice framework scaffolds how schools can critically examine their own family engagement practices.

Silence: A duoethnography

Duoethnography is an emerging research methodology and tool for reflective practice in English language teaching (ELT). Duoethnography allows for people to become the sites of their own inquiry and investigate issues and phenomena of importance to them (Sawyer Norris, 2013). In duoethnography, participants engage in critical dialogue with one another as a way to challenge broader normative assumptions but also as a way to bring meaning to experiences and find solutions to immediate teaching issues. In this duoethnography, we examine the phenomenon of silence through our shared experiences as English language teachers and applied linguists but also from our diverging perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds. Data were gathered from online conversations, reflective notes, and memos between the two authors with emerging themes including 1) Shifting perspectives on silence, 2) Silence in the online classroom, and 3) Turn-taking and student/teacher discourse expectations. While specific to the authors, it is hoped that this duoethnography may resonate with readers and serve as a catalyst for further reflection on silence.

Teaching Journal: An Effective Tool for Reflective Practice in Teaching among English Language Teachers

Through teaching journals, teachers can actively conduct true and continuous record, description, reflection, and summary of experiences and teaching behaviors with reflection and research value in their own teaching activities in order to make progress in regard to their teaching skills and classroom presentations. This is an effective way and tool to improve English teachers’ reflective practice in teaching along with their own professional development as well as to promote the role transformation as reflective teachers. Given the widespread concern of the reflective practice in teaching along with the fact that teaching journals are effective in reflective teaching, this paper explores this topic and suggests several implications for teaching via documentation and a case analysis of three samples obtained from an actual teacher’s teaching journal.

REFLECTIVE PRACTICES OF TEACHER EDUCATORS IN PUNJAB: A NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Purpose of the study: Reflective practices are considered very important and influential for teacher training and professional development. This study was conducted by using a narrative perspective. The main aim of this study was to explore the role of reflective practices in building teacher educators’ professional lives. Their stories were explored to understand what is needed to become an effective teacher educator. Methodology: The current research involved six teacher educators from GCETs selected purposively as research participants. Semi-structured interviews were used as data collection instruments. Teacher educators who have a minimum of ten years of experience were interviewed. After gathering stories, the researchers build categories and themes from interview data. The narratives of teacher educators were reconstructed through analysis and discussion. Main Findings: The findings of the current research reveal that reflective practices can play a very effective role in the professional grooming of teacher educators. The effective use of reflective practice tools is significant in building these practices. It is implicated by the study findings that novice teacher educators and future teacher educators can learn from the experiences of experienced teacher educators. Novelty: This research will help the administration to know about problems that teacher educators face while using reflective practices. Future researchers can be helped to explore the ways that how the reflective practices-related challenges and problems can tackle. Moreover, how the reflective practices of school teachers and college teachers can be made more effective.

Video Recording as a Tool for Reflective Practice in a Public Speaking Class A Case Study

In this study, the researcher wanted to investigate how the use of video recording facilitated reflection for students and how reflective practice helps students to develop their aspects of public speaking. The participants of this research were 13 fifth-semester students of the public speaking class in one of the universities in Surakarta consisting one male and 12 female within age 19-21 years old. This research is a qualitative study. The data of this research were collected through observations, interviews, and document analysis. The finding reveals that firstly, the reflection process by viewing video recording not only helped the students in improving their personal development, which in this context is aspects of public speaking but also their collaborative space where the relationship between students with either other students or teacher was better. Second, from going through reflective cycle in the public speaking class, the students gained enhancement in their aspects of public speaking that are voice control, body language, the content of oral presentation and effectiveness.

‘Parents don’t need to come to school to be engaged:’ teachers use of social media for family engagement

ABSTRACT This paper presents a small-scale Critical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) study, investigating school leaders’ efforts to enhance families’ engagement in their children’s learning, through classroom teachers’ use of social media. The study occurred within three Australian primary schools, situated within a culturally and linguistically diverse community. Throughout two action research cycles the participating school leaders and classroom teachers critically reflected on family survey data and a sample of social media posts depicting student learning, so as to identify opportunities for enhanced family engagement. A practice lens was used to examine the sayings (words and language), doings (activities and resources) and relatings (relationships and power dynamics) featured within social media posts, to facilitate the participating leaders’ critical self-reflection of current practice. Data were collected through surveys, semi-structured interviews, transcripts of reflective practice meetings and reflective practice tools utilised throughout the CPAR process. Analysis of practice architectures identified systemic features utilised by school leaders to support classroom teachers’ practice change. Furthermore, this study highlights the significant role that school leaders have in facilitating classroom teachers’ use of social media for family engagement.

Envisioning the future of clinical analytics: a modified Delphi process in New South Wales, Australia

BackgroundClinical analytics is a rapidly developing area of informatics and knowledge mobilisation which has huge potential to improve healthcare in the future. It is widely acknowledged to be a powerful mediator of clinical decision making, patient-centred care and organisational learning. As a result, healthcare systems require a strategic foundation for clinical analytics that is sufficiently directional to support meaningful change while flexible enough to allow for iteration and responsiveness to context as change occurs.MethodsIn New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia, the Clinical Analytics Working Group was charged with developing a five-year vision for the public health system. A modified Delphi process was undertaken to elicit expert views and to reach a consensus. The process included a combination of face-to-face workshops, traditional Delphi voting via email, and innovative, real-time iteration between text re-formulation and voting until consensus was reached. The six stage process engaged 35 experts — practising clinicians, patients and consumers, managers, policymakers, data scientists and academics.ResultsThe process resulted in the production of 135 ideas that were subsequently synthesised into 23 agreed statements and encapsulated in a single page (456 word) narrative.ConclusionThe visioning process highlighted three key perspectives (clinicians, patients and managers) and the need for synchronous (during the clinical encounter) and asynchronous (outside the clinical encounter) clinical decision support and reflective practice tools; the use of new and multiple data sources and communication formats; and the role of research and education.

Approaching Spiritual and Existential Care Needs in Health Education: Applying SOPHIE (Self-Exploration through Ontological, Phenomenological, and Humanistic, Ideological, and Existential Expressions), as Practice Methodology

Addressing existential and spiritual care needs, often remains a challenge in health education. Spirituality is a subjective human experience that shapes how individuals make meaning, construct knowledge, develop their own sense of reality, and bring personal and social transformation. To inspire health and social students at a London based University; learners were engaged into philosophical reasonings associated with the meaning to care. SOPHIE (Self-exploration through Ontological, Phenomenological and Humanistic, Ideological, and Existential expressions)—a reflective practice tool was applied during in-class activities from June 2019–2020. Using SOPHIE as a tool, students were encouraged to explore existential and ontological care aspects by engaging into transformative learning approaches. Participants identified their own existential and spiritual care needs by reflecting on their own meaning making process. SOPHIE enabled resilience and authenticity among learners as a reflexive discourse.

In-Service EFL Teachers Engagement in Reflective Practice: What Tools do In-service Teachers Utilize to Reflect their Teaching?


 
 As long-life learners, teachers should not stop learning and evaluating their teaching-learning process. One of the ways to evaluate or reflect a teacher’s teaching is by conducting reflective practice. Reflective practice or sometimes called reflective teaching is not a new concept. In the education field, reflective teaching has been enforced as a means to develop teacher professionalism. This study aims at reviewing some reflective practice tools utilized by in-service teachers in reflecting their classroom performance as an attempt to improve their teaching. Two in-service teachers with teaching experience ranging from 3-10 years are concerned with this research. Data gained through interviews. The data collected are compiled by applying Miles, Huberman, & Saldana’s (2014) interactive model data analysis. The results of data analysis reveal the individual differences among in-service teachers’ preference in doing reflection toward their teaching. The finding of this study leads in-service teachers to know kinds of tools used in reflective practice in their teaching-learning process to improve their teaching quality and learning outcomes.
 

Action logs as mediational means for teacher development

In this narrative article, I document my implementation of action logs as a tool for reflective practice and teacher development as I transitioned from working in a small eikaiwa (English conversation) school to working in a private international university. After providing a brief description of my contextual background and how I came to start action logging, I give examples of student feedback I received and their relevance to my reflective teaching. Finally, I explain the varied ways in which I feel using action logs aided me in improving the efficacy of my classroom practice and influenced my evolving teacher identity during a stressful transition between two markedly different professional worlds.

Exploring the needs and experiences of educators in facilitating use of the Bass Model of Holistic Reflection

Health professionals are required to reflect on practice to evaluate and improve care in rapidly changing health care environments. This study explored the professional development needs of educators facilitating development of reflective capacity in midwifery students using the Bass Model of Holistic Reflection. Thirteen midwifery academics at two Australian universities took part in the study conducted in three phases. Phase 1 identified the learning needs of educators described as ‘understanding the building blocks of reflection’; ‘practical application of the model, and ‘assessment of reflective capacity’. Phase 2 involved an Intervention including development of a reflective practice tool kit and delivery of a two-day workshop. Phase 3 evaluated the experience of educators using the resources and four themes emerged: 1) ‘Educators value a reflective practice toolkit’; 2) ‘A toolkit builds confidence and trust in the model through promotion of deep personal reflection’; 3) ‘Effective use of the model is key to achieving consistency in application by educators; and 4) ‘Deeper understanding of the model promotes transformation of practice’. This paper confirms the importance of developing resources for educators, that support reflective pedagogy when implementing models of reflection into curricula.

Finding the contextually appropriate: student reflection as a dialogic reflective practice tool

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on Reflective practice (RP hereafter), the learning and teaching features of Generation Z, and the issue of large classrooms in ELT. Facing the challenge of teaching speaking to the Generation Z students at a large higher education classroom, the researcher designed her course through student reflections, an under-utilized RP tool. In the reflections, students evaluated their large speaking class by focusing on four areas: their perceptions of the class, suggestions for diminishing the impact of class size, and suggestions for their peers for individual study to improve their speaking with and without online resources despite the disadvantage of being in a crowded class. Once the data was gathered through student reflections and the supplementary notes, the researcher analysed the data using grounded theory coding procedures. Based on the findings, the researcher designed the course of the next semester. At the end, the researcher conducted reflection on the reflection both individually and with students. The findings and the complete reflection procedure indicated that the student reflection was a powerful tool for course design in a large classroom as well as addressing the learning requirements of the learners, Generation Z in this example.

‘Putting on a Show’ Non-Placement WIL in the Performing Arts: Documenting Professional Rehearsal And Performance Using Eportfolio Reflections

his study explores the utility of employing a student-created experiential narrative ePortfolio as a multi-modal tool for reflective practice in WIL. It does so by examining a case study situated within the performing arts, where WIL discourses are rarely adopted, and few examples are present in the literature. This paper introduces a circular mentoring framework that extends Kolb’s experiential learning model, whereby learning is facilitated through the interchange of roles through rehearsal and reflection. In this study, participants prepared and performed an opera in a professional venue over a five-day period of intense creative studio work. The 2017 and 2018 Inclusion Project is an innovative teaching and learning opportunity that offered authentic industry-based experience to undergraduate music students in a closely monitored, non-placement WIL setting. Participants (n=18) undertaking a semester long elective, reported their experience through online journaling in an ePortfolio allowing them to create narrative responses. A qualitative analysis using narrative inquiry on the ePortfolio reflections indicated a direct benefit for student’s career readiness as creative artists.

“Suspended Above, and in Action”: Think Aloud as a Reflective Practice Tool

Think Aloud (TA) involves an individual verbalising his or her thoughts throughout the duration of a task. A case study approach examined the experiences of one football coach (Dave) as he engaged in four coaching sessions using TA. Dave completed four reflective diaries, supported by an overall narrative account, TA transcriptions, and two interviews. The aim of the case study was to gain a deeper understanding of Dave’s experiences of using TA in his context. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was utilised and revealed a superordinate theme of “suspended above himself” and actively engaging in the coaching session, which reflects the essence of TA for Dave. This metaphor captures the view that the TA process enabled Dave to move between analysing his own performance as if suspended above himself, and engaging in the action of the coaching session. Five subordinate themes were also generated: improved self-awareness, pedagogy, communication skills, feelings of apprehension, and distraction. These findings provide a rich description of the experience of TA and a novel glimpse into the potential pitfalls associated with TA that will inform coach educators. A further significant contribution is provided by highlighting relevant theoretical considerations that will inform future studies.

Exploring the Potential of Facebook Group Discussion Platform for Trainee Teachers’ Reflective Practice

The teacher training institution is an important place in supplying content and pedagogical training to teacher trainees. However, applying this knowledge in a natural setting is another challenge faced by the trainee teachers. Thus, there is a need to empower the capability of trainee teachers to refine their teaching skills independently. One of the ways to develop and cultivate this need is by improving how reflective practice is conducted during their teacher practice. The issue of improving the quality of reflective practice has been addressed especially through variety of mediums, such as the use of paper-based method and electronic-based method, and such as the use of blog sites, online forums and chat sites, and more recently social networking sites, like Facebook. However, the use of social networking websites, such as Facebook, have received little attention, even though a handful of studies have reported on its many benefits for reflective practice. Therefore, this conceptual paper is written to provide a review of past studies that explored the potential of using Facebook Group discussion platform for trainee teachers as a tool for reflective practice.

Impact of Technology-based Reflective Practice Tools on Student Skill Development

The purpose of this study was to examine how students received the combination of technology-based tools implemented in a staged manner within a curriculum and if any specific tool was of greater benefit in developing their reflective practice skills. Participants were 45 tertiary students enrolled in a health professional course. Qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed student preference for individual tools changed over time. Students preferred supportive tools (simulated video recordings, group blogging and teaching approaches) earlier on and independent tools (e-journaling and online reflective summary writing) in their final year. The findings support the use of different reflective practice tools in course design to better support student development and improve student engagement in reflective practices.