Supporting reflective writing in the disciplines

Supporting reflective writing in the disciplines

Martin McMorrow

Centre for Teaching and LearningMassey University, New Zealand

Slides available at: http://tinyurl.com/supportingreflectivewriting

[email protected]

Overview of Session

What is reflective writing?Disciplinary variationDifficulties for teachers and students

General framework for reflective writing

Supporting reflective writing

Exemplar of a reflective journal entry

EvaluationConclusion

Context

Context

New Zealand university

Diverse student population

Increasing vocational focus

Reflective journals used to assess practical experience

Learning consultant role

What is reflective writing?

essay reflection

harmonious

strongstatic

classical

discordant

vulnerable

dynamic

post-modern

Training interpretation of reflection

Aim

Example

• to provide evidence of achievement of professional competencies (and identify gaps for further development) (criticised for its ‘technical’ orientation by Zeichner & Liu, 2010)

• Speech and Language Therapy: Online portfolio (6 pages) For each range of practice (e.g. speech, swallowing, fluency) students are required to write a one-page self-reflection on their competency development during the year, referring to clinical placements, learning and research.

Critical thinking interpretation of reflection

Aim

Example

• to provide evidence of critical application of theory to practice (in line with Dewey, 1933)

• Management: Reflective Journal (3500 words) Your Journal will focus on three vignettes from either your own experiences as a leader, or your observations of other leaders in action with whom you have associated. Each vignette will contain a summary of the story which you want to highlight, and then a scholarly critique of that story using relevant leadership theories from class discussions.

Holistic interpretation of reflection

Aim

Example

• to provide evidence of integration of professional and personal learning (e.g. Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985)

• Social Work: Weekly Lab Journal (350-500 words) This journal is intended to encourage self-reflection and integration of the material, and be a kind of private conversation between you and the lecturer/tutor. …. You should … include personal thoughts, impressions, questions, reactions, struggles, new ideas, etc. to the readings, classroom presentations, lab sessions or discussions. You will not be evaluated on your opinions, but on evidence and personal growth.

Difficulties of reflective writing

• may not realise that “reflection” is ambiguous

• may be unwilling / unable to provide frameworks, models or detailed guidance

Lecturers

• may not realise the complexity of reflective discourse

I don’t want to talk about structure, because there’s nothing to talk about. Structure is an amorphous concept that takes shape, develops in context and in situ. If they haven’t written anything, there’s nothing I can do to help them. So, I say, ‘Go away and write something; show me what you’ve written; then we can talk about structure’ (Management Lecturer)

Difficulties of reflective writing

Students

• may not have any relevant experience or training

• may be uncomfortable in exposing their limitations and blunders

• may ‘default’ to more familiar discourses (e.g. narrative, essay or literature review)

We go to the lecturer and ask him ‘How are we supposed to do the assignment?’ and he says, ‘It’s your assignment; do whatever you want’. And some people are sitting there and thinking, ‘I’ve got no idea’. Like me for instance. I was like, ‘I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.’

General framework for reflective writing

• Reports concisely and clearly a learning experience

DESCRIPTIVE

ANALYTICAL

• Makes insightful connections between this learning experience and the ‘bigger picture’ of professional development and/or theory

• Sets specific and relevant learning goals

DEEPERCRITICAL

• Problematises the experience – asking relevant questions and identifying gaps or contradictions

in existing knowledge or competence

Based on van Manen, 1977; Jay & Johnson, 2002

Support for reflective writing

• I used these as the basis for writing workshops during courses – typically a single one hour workshop, though for one PG Management paper, there were five one-hour optional workshops

• I gathered information about the topic / discipline through reading (and brief discussions with disciplinary lecturers)

• Workshops included comprehension tasks, focus on form and group planning activities

• I wrote exemplars based on the assignment brief and generally including with three or four paragraphs (1 descriptive, 1 analytical, 1 or 2 critical)

Exemplar – part 1 (descriptive)

My focus this week is on the communication aspect of team leadership. I can’t often meet my team face-to-face, as most are part-time, hourly paid staff and work at different centres and times. This means I rely on group emails as my primary channel of communication. On Monday, I emailed the group to remind them to use our branding on training materials. I’d found some handouts in the photocopier with the logo of a competitor one trainer had worked for. This trainer (who I hadn’t named in my email) sent an angry response complaining that she had no time to produce new materials. She used ‘reply all’, so the whole team became involved. Several phone calls were required to sort out the confusion and calm everyone down. It was a classic ‘storm in a teacup’.

Exemplar – part 2 (analytical)

Clearly, email was an inappropriate channel of communication; any message that can be perceived as disciplinary is best delivered face-to-face (Simon, 2015). It reinforced an impression of distance between the staff and me (as a representative of institutional bureaucracy). It is another reminder for me that in order to build a more collaborative culture, “every discussion and interaction has an element of re-establishing trust” (Kaats & Opheij, 2014, p. 2.2.2). At a deeper level, it also made me wonder: If staff feel the branding is irrelevant, do they also feel their work is no different from any other institution? How can I help these part-time, casual staff develop a sense of common purpose, which is recognised as a hallmark of effective teams (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993; Parker Follett, 1987)?

Exemplar – part 3 (critical)

This relates to my overall challenge of developing leadership within a loosely-coupled organisation (Weick, 2001). I need to develop a more ‘respectful leadership’: tolerating error, respecting boundaries and encouraging potential (Quaquebeke & Eckloff, 2010). I’m applying this in a ‘fine-tuning’ approach (Dunphy & Stace, 1993) towards the photocopying issue; instead of the ‘stick’ of disciplinary warnings, I’m offering trainers the ‘carrot’ of having all their copying done for them. And to develop a team-based culture, I’m proposing for pairs of trainers to share professional development projects and to present their ‘best practice’ at monthly meetings.

Evaluation of support for reflective writing

• Students and academic staff were positive about the support and its impact on student performance

• PG Management students saw the supportive approach as complementary to the lecturer’s more abstract, Socratic style

It’s quite different the way you take the workshops and the way the lecturer takes the lectures. I think it depends on the type of work that you’re doing. The lecturer is more on making us think about certain things about Leadership and Management and yours is about facilitating us towards writing our essays. So I think although they are related, they are quite different with regard to the purpose. So getting ideas from both of you, actually helps a lot.


The fact that you did the assignment along with us, you shared your experiences, you did the exercise yourself. That actually helped. Because you not being, and we are also not Master’s or PhD’s in Management, so we, at least I, could identify with you, and when you had taken that much time and effort to reflect on your Leadership experiences, I had this confidence that even I could do it .

• PG Management students also appreciated the outsider/insider status of the learning advisor

Last semester, when I came here in the CTL, the main problem for most of the students, not only me, was that we couldn’t find a person who is in the picture of our subject


• Students still needed to feel that the workshops and resources were approved by the lecturer

If you talk with my professor, you discussed about the workshop before, it’s clear; but if you didn’t talk with him, so what he wants is one way, but what you want is this way, then it’s quite different.

• Lecturers were reluctant to take on the writing development role

The alternative of me delivering something? I’m interested, but I think it’s better that you, as the expert, have some kind of input. The problem for the students is that they want to believe somebody, whereas I want them to take on multiple viewpoints and deal with that complexity themselves … if they’re confused, that’s positive to me.

Conclusion

Integrated workshops on reflective writing allowed students to develop their expertise in a developmental space

The supportive, scaffolded writing pedagogy was accepted as complementary to the Management lecturer’s more challenging, philosophical approach

Lecturers may be reluctant to take on the responsibility for writing development within their programmes

References

Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker, D. (1985). What is reflectionin learning? In D. Boud, R. Keogh, & D. Walker

(Eds.), Reflection: Turning experience into learning (pp. 7-17). London, England: Kogan Page.Dewey, J. (1933). How we think. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.Jay, J. K., & Johnson, K. L. (2002). Capturing complexity: A

typology of reflective practice for teacher education. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(73-85).

Van Manen, M. (1977). Linking ways of knowing with ways of being practical. Curriculum Inquiry, 6, 205 – 228.

Zeichner, K., & Y., L. (2010). A critical analysis of reflection as a goal for teacher education. In N. Lyons (Ed.),

Handbook of reflective inquiry (pp. 67-84). New York, NY: Springer

See the word document or contact me for references from the example reflective journal entry