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Reflective practice in addiction studies:promoting deeper learning and de-stigmatising myths about addictionsRobin-Marie Shepherd a & Jane Pinder aa University of Auckland, School of Population Health, Social andCommunity Health, Tamaki Campus, Glen Innes, Private Bag,92019, New ZealandPublished online: 24 Feb 2012.

To cite this article: Robin-Marie Shepherd & Jane Pinder (2012) Reflective practice inaddiction studies: promoting deeper learning and de-stigmatising myths about addictions,Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 13:4, 541-550, DOI:10.1080/14623943.2012.659098

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Reflective practice in addiction studies: promoting deeper learningand de-stigmatising myths about addictions

Robin-Marie Shepherd* and Jane Pinder

University of Auckland, School of Population Health, Social and Community Health, TamakiCampus, Glen Innes, Private Bag 92019, New Zealand

(Received 9 December 2010; final version received 9 January 2012)

The following study was an exploratory journey to examine reflective practiceamongst students taking the undergraduate paper ‘Communities and Addiction’.This paper has been an elective paper within the Health Sciences for third yearstudents at the University of Auckland for three years. The students wereinstructed to reflect on two assignments after they had written each one. Thefirst assignment focused on addiction models and the second assignment focusedon social marketing as a public health approach to potentially addictive behav-iour (e.g. substance abuse, gambling, and eating disorders). The findings fromthe first assignment suggested that students developed (or enhanced) empathytowards sufferers of addiction. The findings from both of the assignmentsrevealed that many of the students were developing reflective skills, thoughoften this was at quite a basic level. These findings suggested that more guid-ance and feedback is needed to aid students in the reflective journey.

Keywords: reflective practice; addictions; undergraduates; culture

Introduction

If he is indeed wise he does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, butrather leads you to the threshold of your own mind. (On Teaching, Kahill Gibran)

As Gibran (1990) implied by the quote above, the wisest step for a teacher totake is to invite the student to seek their own knowledge. Reflective practice aimsto achieve this by inviting the student to take responsibility for their own learning.Reflective practice offers the student the space to discover, explore and revisit infor-mation and experience. As a result, a transformation of actions, problem resolution,clarity of ideas or skill building can potentially emerge (Wong, Kember, Chung, &Yan, 1995) and the student can potentially gain independence, self-awareness, andempowerment (Emig, 1977).

Reflective practice has been typically employed for students of medicine, nurs-ing, teaching or social work who are engaged in clinical or fieldwork. However,reflective practice is not usually practised amongst university students, especiallythose studying addictions. Therefore, our aim is to address this. Previous researchhas suggested that it is important to start reflective practice at the undergraduatelevel in order to challenge the myths surrounding individuals who suffer from

*Corresponding author. Email: rm.shepherd@auckland.ac.nz

Reflective PracticeVol. 13, No. 4, August 2012, 541–550

ISSN 1462-3943 print/ISSN 1470-1103 online� 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2012.659098http://www.tandfonline.com

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addictions (Lay & McGuire, 2008; Shepherd, 2009). For example, Shepherd (2009)reported that undergraduate students studying health sciences consistently labelledthose addicted to drugs and alcohol as ‘addicts’. This unchallenged viewpointwould certainly have an effect when they start working in the health field.

By dispelling myths surrounding addiction, this experience also offers the stu-dents the opportunity to develop empathy (Lay & McGuire, 2008). Empathy is theability to stand in someone else’s shoes and understand their pain (Hojat et al., 2002;Rogers, 1980). It is deemed one of the core conditions for helping someone tochange behaviours (Rogers, 1980) and this is particularly pertinent with respect tothose suffering from addictions (Lay & McGuire, 2008). Studies amongst doctorsand social workers working in the area of addiction report that reflective practicechallenged their biased thinking towards substance abusers (Ballon & Dinner, 2008;Lay & McGuire, 2008). In particular, encouraging students to attend self-help groupsfor those suffering from addictions further enhances empathy (Schroder, Sellman, &Elmslie, 2010; Sias & Goodwin, 2007) and reflective practice may capture this.

Reflective practice models

Reflective practice can have many definitions. For the purpose of this study, weadopted the definition that reflective practice is the integration of academic knowl-edge and personal experience (Boud, 2001). The two models of reflection employedin this study were those of Boud, Keogh, and Walker (1985) and Mezirow (1981).Boud and colleagues (1985) postulated that a combined reflection on, and integra-tion of, academic knowledge with personal experience creates deeper learning. Per-sonal experience incorporates professional experience, classroom learning and/orwhat arises in one’s personal life. This involves affective and cognitive processesworking in tandem. Thus, the process of reflection is ongoing and circular as thelearner returns to the experience, sometimes several times, to reflect on deeper lev-els (Boud et al., 1985). Mezirow (1981) similarly emphasised the iterative processof reflective practice, suggesting that there are different levels of reflection. Thesimplest level is when some learners start to identify links between different areasof knowledge. The next level is further reflection and integration of knowledge andexperience in which one would critique existing theories and understandings. Themost advanced level, on the basis of such critique, will move on to develop newhypotheses or theory about how things work or question such giving further insight.Given this, Mezirow (1981) referred to the ‘most advanced’ level of reflective prac-tice as ‘perspective transformation’ or gaining insight – a position that is achievedwhen reflectors achieve a deep understanding of the complex and multidimensionalcauses of, and potential solutions to, issues/problems and thereby ‘create’ newknowledge for themselves.

The following study was an exploratory journey to examine reflective practiceamongst students taking the undergraduate paper ‘Communities and Addiction’.This paper has been an elective paper within the Health Sciences for third year stu-dents at the University of Auckland for three years. The students were encouragedto reflect on their production of two different assignments, keeping in mind theirlearning from the lectures, guest speakers and their personal experience relating toaddictions (if they felt safe disclosing personal information).

This paper is divided into two sections, each dealing with one of the two assign-ments. Study I explored the students’ reflective practice in relation to their essay on

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addiction models and Study II explored the reflective practitioners in relation to thesocial marketing assignment.

Students were provided with a lecture on reflective practice given by a seniorlecturer from the university’s student learning centre. This lecture provided ampleinformation on the purpose of reflective practice and examples of reflective practiceto guide them. The class tutor then provided tutorials for the students where exam-ples of reflective practice were discussed further. The tutor was a PhD candidatewho had been tutoring in this course for three years.

Ethics approval was granted by the university ethical board to carry out thisstudy.

Sample

Twenty-six out of 29 potential volunteer students participated in the studies. Theycame from a variety of cultural backgrounds including Pakeha (White European),Maori (Indigenous people of New Zealand), Pacific People, Chinese, Thai, Indian,Iraqi, Iranian and Arab students. Some of the students participated in both studies.

Study I: first reflective assignment on models of addiction

Twenty-one females and five males completed the reflection exercise as part of theirfirst assignment. The age range of the students was between 19 and 24 years ofage.

The students’ first assignment required them to critically evaluate two models ofaddiction followed by a 500-word reflective practice on what they learnt aboutaddiction models by integrating their personal experience (e.g. lectures, personallives outside of work and school, and guest speakers) with their academic studies.The essay was graded according to how well they could critically evaluate twomodels of addiction and the 500-word reflective piece was given only a pass or faildepending on whether or not they completed the reflective piece.

This part of the course covered both mainstream and cultural models of addic-tion. The lectures included the mainstream models such as the Self-MedicationHypothesis, the Disease model and the Biopsychosocial model of addiction as wellas cultural models such as the TeWhare Tapa Wha (Maori model of health applica-ble to addiction) and the Fanofale Model (Pacific Island model of health applicableto addiction).

In the reflective piece, students were asked to reflect on the lectures, guestspeakers (e.g. Alcoholics Anonymous) and their personal experiences outside ofwork and school. The guest speakers from this lecture series included individualsfrom Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Overeaters Anonymous (OA), and speakers(both former patients and the director) from a private treatment facility for sub-stance abuse (the treatment facility’s philosophy is based upon the disease model).

Results

The comments below are examples of the reflections of the participants. Althoughthese comments are descriptive in their experience rather than reflecting accordingto the frameworks we employed, the students did not elaborate on exactly whatnew knowledge or insight they had gained from the reflective exercise. Thus,

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although their comments state or imply that they had become more conscious of theshortcomings of their existing knowledge, experiences and feelings with regard topeople suffering from addictions, it is difficult to assess how much they used thesereflections to revise their existing understandings and knowledge. The lecturerwould need a more specific explanation of how they ‘became more knowledgeable’or how their ‘eyes were opened’ in order to assess the presence of the integrationof knowledge.

The speakers from OA and the speakers from the treatment centre were hugelyinsightful and really gave me an authentic understanding of the impact of addictions.The lectures were good, but the guest speakers really provided the in-depth knowledgeI needed. It really opened up my eyes. I’d say it was probably one of the most benefi-cial experiences in the whole three years in the Bachelor of Health Sciences.

The speakers from OA and AA helped me learn about addictions better because theyexplained what happened to them in reality and real life experiences. I felt that theywere brave to come and openly discuss their addictions and what they did to over-come it. Both the real experiences and lecture based on addictions helped me becomemore knowledgeable.

In the following section, some students provide evidence that they are integratingcognitive (academic knowledge) with affective experience (personal experience),which was in line with the definition of reflection (Boud et al., 2001; Mezirow,1981) this study used as a template to gauge reflection.

The comments below also provide some evidence of empathy emerging fromthese experiences. The examples of empathy are put in italics.

In the first example below, the student was reflecting her thoughts and experi-ences vis-à-vis addiction after hearing a guest speaker’s personal experience in rela-tion to the disease model taught in a lecture. Although the student did not disclosewhat the speaker said to help her understand the 12 steps in relation to the diseasemodel, she nevertheless identified a disjuncture between the way the media some-times glamorises celebrity addiction and the very negative and painful reality ofbeing the guest speaker who was addicted to drugs.

I personally think that the most helpful aspect to writing my essay was having the dif-ferent speakers come in and talk to the class. It was also helpful to understand the dif-ferent steps of the AA model. The speakers made me realise how painful addictionscan be. The media normalises celebrity addiction and drugs, therefore, addiction wasalways something that was glamorised. Now I am more aware of the pain and whatthey go through being addicted.

The next example demonstrated that a student raised the issues surrounding themyths about sufferers of those with eating disorders and, on realising the impor-tant role the environment played in the continuation of addiction, then tied thisnew insight to the biopsychosocial model of addiction. However, the student didnot specify why they related the personal knowledge to the particular model ofaddiction.

I have learnt most in this part of the course from the guest speakers; most I would sayfrom the OA speakers and the speaker from the treatment centre. I had no idea OAexisted, and was especially surprised to see an ex-anorexic there – as I was expecting

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only very large women/men. I was also surprised to hear that they went though somuch pain with their addictions. I assumed that being an over-eater would only impacton their self-perception and physical appearance. In fact, every aspect of their livesseemed to be affected by their addiction and I found Susan’s story especially moving,as she sees to have truly gone through hell with her eating addiction. John from thetreatment centre was very interesting. His information was put in my essay, especiallyideas about holistic treatment and telling alcohol abusers to stay away from friends/places/areas that were tempting. I related this to the bio-psychosocial model anddiscussed it as a component of one’s social environment.

Overall, the students were beginning to articulate how they challenged theirfeelings, experiences and current knowledge through the process of reflection.However, they did not yet seem able to express explicitly how these insights mightchallenge and transform their existing theories or understanding of addictionprocesses.

Study II: second assignment on social marketing campaigns

In the second part of the study, 20 female and four male students participated in thereflection exercise for the social marketing assignment. In this group, ages rangedbetween 19 and 30 years of age. Most of the participants were between 19–23 yearsof age with an outlier of one person aged 30 years.

The second ‘social marketing’ assignment entailed critically evaluating a socialmarketing campaign and using this process to create a convincing social marketingcampaign, followed by a 500-word reflection on this process, once again integratingthe academic knowledge with personal experience (e.g. one person might create acampaign directed at young male smokers due to the fact that many young malessmoke in their particular community).

This assignment was based on course materials which addressed public healthand social marketing approaches to potentially addictive behaviours such as gam-bling, substance abuse, eating disorders and smoking. The assessment of the reflec-tive piece was similar to Study I in that the reflective piece received a pass or faildepending upon completing the reflective piece.

Results

The first set of reflections below are either descriptions of the course material(whereby students tended to repeat what they had been told in lectures or suggestedreadings) or are examples of students who said their learning and reflection in thecourse of the assignment were helpful and enlightening yet they failed to then spec-ify exactly how they had changed their perspective and/or arrived at a betterunderstanding of the topic.

The social marketing essay increased my understanding of marketing strategies in rela-tion to public health. I enjoyed the creative side to the assignment, creating a newcampaign.

And:

This course has taught me a lot with regard to educational content but more impor-tantly I have learnt about myself as a person. When I have the freedom to choose

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a topic that I am truly interested in as I did for this latest assignment, it allowedme to become more involved in the research process and overall writing. This iswhat I feel makes a better essay. Also, by focusing on a different aspect to publichealth campaigns such as social marketing, it allowed me to be creative, by comingup with my own campaign ideas, and how I would implement these in the commu-nity. I felt this assignment made use of my whole degree and tied in aspects fromother papers I have chosen, which overall was a nice way for me to finish mydegree.

Again, these students did not expand upon their views. For example, the firststudent could have described how they ‘increased their understanding of marketingstrategies’ through the creation of a social marketing campaign.

The following comment provides an example of a student who refers to ‘think-ing outside the box’, which implies further reflection than integrating knowledge.As with the other students mentioned above, however, this student fails to explainwhat is meant by this.

Developing my own strategies (for a social marketing campaign) against tobacco, Inot only learnt different methods and advantages and limitations, I also gained theability to think outside the box; trying to achieve something by integrating variousand non-related facts.

A number of other students also made similar comments about changed orenhanced understanding as a result of doing this assignment. Although none of thestudents in this category elaborated on how their thinking had changed as a resultof doing and reflecting on this assignment, many commented that they felt the morediscretionary (being able to choose a topic of personal concern) and the creativenature of the social marketing assignment (designing a new social marketing cam-paign) helped them develop a more in-depth understanding of the addiction problemthey were addressing. The next series of comments, however, provide examples ofwhere students went a step further as reflectors, as defined by Boud et al. (1985)and Mezirow (1981). Their comments provide some examples of the integration ofknowledge and personal experience, the linking of different areas of knowledge andthe development of new hypotheses and solutions in relation to the addictionsconsidered:

Domestic violence is an issue that has been a large part of my life as I have both seenand experienced it. I was surprised to find out that a lot of domestic violence is aresult of cultural acceptability as there are a number of cultures that view women asinferior or that they should be controlled by a male figure. I came from an Arab back-ground so have experienced first hand what it has been like to be a woman in this cul-ture and how trapped a victim would have felt. I was pleasantly surprised that thiswas addressed in the ‘It’s Not Ok’ campaign as they used abusers and victims fromdifferent cultural backgrounds saying that it shouldn’t be socially acceptable. Though Ithink the main issue with NZ is that it was a taboo subject, you don’t talk aboutdomestic violence (and substance abuse), but this campaign has normalised talkingabout it.

A lot of the OA and AA speakers talked about having a recovered ‘addict’ speak tothem and that’s what changed everything, what made them turn around and beginrecovering. I think social marketing campaigns should use this to help people alreadyaddicted, which is why I thought Quitline was good.

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The example below provides evidence of in-depth reflection as she identified theneed for a multidimensional approach and solution to the issue she considered.

I (as a Maori) chose to focus on the eating disorder of obesity and evaluated the‘Feeding our Future’ social marketing campaign. It was encouraging to see that reduc-ing health inequalities between Maori and Pakeha (European) was a priority. However,in my opinion the program lacked the components to make significant progress in thearea. This was due to a lack of Maori recipes and a lack of focus on broader socio-economic determinants. I decided to develop a social marketing campaign called ‘RealMaori are Healthy’ focusing on a holistic view including the physical, mental, spiritualand family. My campaign encourages greater participation for Maori traditionalpractices such as kapahaka, carving, gathering seafood and using natural ingredients. Ialso included spiritual and cultural components such as whanau support, maraeinvolvement and conservation to help strengthen identity and prevent obesity.

On the basis of this integrated understanding of the specific social and culturalinfluences on eating behaviour, this student developed a novel approach to theproblem of obesity amongst Maori which took her a step further in the reflectiveprocess and exemplified the integration of the personal with the academic.

Discussion of Studies I and II

Overall, this study generally demonstrated some evidence of reflection as defined asintegrating the academic with the personal (Boud et al., 1985; Mezirow, 1981)although they generally did not elaborate on this in much detail. It may be that thepractice of reflection is a new experience for most of the students and also mayhave reflected the word count (500 words) for the reflective piece.

More detailed reflection was conveyed in the first study (where studentsreflected on addiction models) than in the second (a reflection on a social marketingcampaign). It is difficult to postulate exactly why this might have been. However,the often moving and intense testimonies of guest speakers who had direct experi-ence of addiction may have been what prompted students in Study I to think inmore depth about their own feelings and experiences vis-à-vis addictions. Therewas certainly significant evidence from students completing the first assignment onaddiction models that reflective practice provided evidence that empathy emergedmore from reflecting upon the experience from the guest lecturers than integratingtheory with experience (as postulated by Lay & McGuire, 2008). Nonetheless, it isimportant to know what promotes the development of empathy for those planning acareer in the health sciences to develop early in their professional careers, particu-larly if they aim to work in addiction treatment. In this study, it seemed that theemergence of empathy was more likely to result from the assimilation of two per-sonal experiences (e.g. guest speakers challenging their personal myths about addic-tion). This tends to support the supposition that students of health science who planto be in the addiction field should have more exposure to those in recovery in theirtraining, particularly before they go into the clinical arena.

Overall, ‘perspective transformation’ (Mezirow, 1981) did not seem to emergeas evidence in these reflective practice pieces. This was probably due to one or acombination of, the following factors.

First, this exercise represented the first attempts at reflective practice for the stu-dents concerned. Therefore, their skills in undertaking it are likely to be relatively

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undeveloped. The ability to review and critically analyse one’s own thought pro-cesses in relation to personal experience and also to describe one’s metacognitiveruminations is a challenging task. The difficulty of such an exercise is compoundedby the fact that reflection on, and critiquing of, one’s assumptions and existingknowledge and experience is an iterative process and people do not proceedbetween levels of reflection in a linear fashion (Boud et al., 1985). Nor is reflectionachieved through one or two isolated exercises (as with the current study). Theoften non-linear and iterative character of reflection can also present a challenge forboth personal reflection and analysis of those reflections by others.

A quicker advancement of such skills might be achieved by providing morestructure, space (higher word count), and time for future reflective practices. Thiscould be done through the creation of a reflective journal as an ongoing processthroughout the duration of the course which might encourage more consistent andconscious reflection by the students. In addition, students’ reflective skills might beimproved through the provision of more specific instructions on how to integrateacademic knowledge (e.g. addiction models) with students’ thoughts, feelings andexperiences, whether learned through their own personal lives or listening to guestspeakers’ recovery stories. This would avoid students simply stating that they ‘havelearnt about a topic’ instead of elucidating a bit more on what was the result oftheir integration of different areas of knowledge and experience.

Second, the lack of clinical or field experience amongst most of the studentsmeant they lacked the stock of personal and practical experience which cliniciansand health workers performing reflective practice have the opportunity to drawupon. Obviously, this would set some limits on their ability to test the theories andideas they encounter against real life experience.

Third, the students only received a pass/fail for writing the reflective pieces inclass. This may indicate that effort was perhaps not as high as it might have been ifthey were graded. The course co-ordinator will therefore consider grading futurereflective practices.

Conclusion

The use of reflective practice for undergraduate students in a health science courseproved to be a worthwhile exercise for several reasons. The reflective practice exer-cises illustrated that personal experience (guest speakers) enhanced the developmentof students’ empathy which supports the recent research in that area (Schroderet al., 2010; Sias & Goodwin, 2007).

In spite of the fact that many students struggled to actually articulate in a spe-cific way how their understanding of addictions had changed through the use of thereflective techniques they had been taught, some nevertheless observed that throughthe reflective exercise they felt they had achieved a different, better understandingof the experience of, and issues affecting, the development and treatment ofaddictions.

Overall, the reflective practice exercise provided students with some importantskills to build on when they are practitioners in the health and social services fieldsby emphasising the need to be open to new information and ideas, to seek under-standing of and empathy for those one works with, and to regularly review one’sown understandings and approach in the light of this information. Attending one ofthe self-help groups for those addicted to a substance (e.g. 12 step meetings) and

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experiencing the environment rather than the classroom may enrich their reflectivepractice.

The authors conclude that the use of reflective practice is a component of the‘Communities and Addictions’ paper which has proven to be a useful learning pro-cess. Some improvements need to be made, however, in how reflective practice istaught so that students will be given more specific instructions and space to writereflectively. It may be best to instruct the students to write a reflective journal whichcould include two lectures, guest speakers in recovery of addictions, a visit to a 12step meeting, personal experience (optional) and an overall reflection on the reflec-tive process. It is anticipated that a reflective journal will provide them with thespace and time to reflect in a way which will link theory with the personal. It isalso anticipated that this will be a stepping stone for them to later link theory withpractice in their ongoing professional development in the health sciences.

AcknowledgementSpecial acknowledgement is due to Ms Mona O’Shea for her contribution in teachingreflective practice to the students.

Notes on contributorsDr Robin-Marie Shepherd has been in the addictions field for over 20 years starting as aclinical fellow at the Zinberg Centre at Harvard Medical School. She has clinical, researchand teaching experience in the addictions field in the USA, UK and New Zealand. Since2004, Dr Shepherd has been teaching at the University of Auckland to undergraduates,‘Communities and Addictions’ as well as to postgraduates in the domains of: counsellingand assessment in addictions, mental health and dual diagnosis. Currently, Robin hasfocused on reflective practice research to investigate how students can link theory withpractice.

After achieving a degree in social work and social policy in NZ, Dr Jane Pinder (neeIreland) completed a PhD in social psychology at Cambridge University. She has worked invarious positions in social policy and social research in the UK and also as a marketresearcher in both the UK and Middle East. She lectures on social marketing for theundergraduate paper ‘Communities and Addiction’.

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