The magic,the life,the others: how can the imaginative dimension in reflective practice be used with student teachers? A learning experience through a self-study

In this article the author reflects upon the place imagination has in education and argues that imagination for adults is an important part of the reflective practice. The article explores the importance of going beyond the traditional way of thinking to capture the essence of understanding teaching and learning practice. The goal of this self-study is to create a way of professional development as a teacher educator which the author could utilise with teacher students. To accomplish that, the author travels to the three (imaginary) lands of reflective practice, and applies this as a way of reflective learning. The author demonstrates how reflective practices can draw together a dialogue between the embodied experience and understandings based on imaginative meanings. The author argues that reflective practice could benefit from a perspective that focuses on imaginative thoughts and more creative discussion in all aspects of education. Furthermore, to enhance students’ reflective learning one must first and foremost be able to grasp the imaginative element within oneself in order to improve students’ learning through reflective practice.     

Reflective practice and work-based research: a description of micro- and macro-reflective cycles

The role and importance of reflective practice have been thoroughly documented and its benefits are well established. When coupled with research in a higher education context, a similar importance for reflection can be extended to professional development, leadership, and work-based learning. However, the relation of reflective practice to work-based research, specifically when defined as an element of methodology in higher degree research awards, has yet to be fully examined. In this paper, we explore the basic principles of reflective practice as they relate to work-based learning and highlight the interfaces or ‘bridges’ between reflective cycles, showing their centrality to work-based research. As an example of how these principles might be applied, we also introduce the role of each micro- and macro-reflective cycle in the Professional Studies program at University of Southern Queensland, a relatively new academic approach which utilises both work-based learning and work-based research.     

Reflection for learning in doctoral training: writing groups,academic writing proficiency and reflective practice

This literature review highlights the benefits of participating in a doctoral writing group, with specific emphasis on how these learning communities foster reflective practice skills development. In particular, this review proposes that the process of continuous peer feedback and discussion benefits students by helping them verbalise their internal reflective thinking, fostering reflective practice skills development through various authentic learning experiences. Consequently, this review highlights the importance of establishing and supporting doctoral writing groups to further develop doctoral students’ personal epistemology, growth and professional practice.     

Dialogic reflective e-journaling: providing extra field-based support to special education preservice teachers by enhancing their critical reflection skills and transformative learning

In light of the continual problem of attrition in the field of special education and the need for well-prepared new special education teachers, the purpose of this study was to examine how dialogic reflective e-journaling between the first author and undergraduate preservice teachers impacted the classroom decision-making as well as the transformative learning of these preservice teachers involved in a special education field-based experience in US schools. Performance feedback was given by the first author as part of the teacher preparation supports already in place for the field-based experience. Study findings revealed that dialogic e-journaling enhanced the reflective skills of the study participants when faced with classroom disorienting dilemmas and instigated a positive personal transformation in them as teachers.     

Imagining my ideal: a critical case study of digital storytelling as reflective practice

Teacher candidates (TCs) must navigate personal, experiential, and theoretical discourses of learning to teach to establish a teaching identity. This article describes a critical case example of digital storytelling to imagine a future classroom. The qualitative research design situates the TCs’ digital stories as a performance and analyzes the art form to consider how they might use these texts to imagine and make visible this negotiation. The critical case shows how the TCs used the digital story to make sense of personal experiences, their image of an ideal teacher, methods coursework, and the personal struggle inherent across these sometimes disparate voices of learning to teach. Findings indicate that digital storytelling expands TCs’ reflective practice in the supportive environment of a teacher education program.     

The Relevance of Sociocultural Theory to Culturally Diverse Partnerships and Communities

The phenomenal growth of information technology and globalization promises a future where education about diversity and difference will be very significant. In this information age where existing knowledge and technology are constantly being replaced in an ever changing interdependent global environment, the fundamentals of education are also changing. Education will focus on building new knowledge rather than passing on existing knowledge. The increasing interconnectedness between cultures and their concomitant intermixing as a result of globalization requires that pedagogies about cultural diversity also focus on creating new knowledge and meanings about cultures as they change. In this article, we discuss sociocultural theory as an alternative educational pedagogy that situates the teaching and learning of cultural diversity within rapidly changing local and global conditions. We argue that features of this theory are especially relevant to providing a guiding pedagogy for valuing difference in inclusive environments. We engage the literature on cross-cultural communication and collaboration between culturally diverse professionals and parents of children with disabilities to illustrate sociocultural perspectives on conceptualizing cultural differences and their interaction, and the possibilities for creating culturally inclusive partnerships and communities.     

Reflections of the student teacher

This paper explores the concept of reflection and its changing role in the journey of the student teacher. It presents part of the findings of a year-long investigation into the reflective practice of student teachers during their training year. Specifically, it investigates the reflections of the student teachers’ lessons during the PGCE (Post/Professional Graduate Certificate of Education) year at a higher education institution (HEI) in England. The strengths and weaknesses of the student teachers’ lessons are analysed and how these reflections change as they reach Newly Qualified Teachers (NQT) status.     

To challenge and to be challenged – teachers collective learning in higher education

Critical analyzing and reflective competence are essential objectives in all higher education. In academic professional education, it is a challenge for the teacher to support and develop the student´s critical reflection of both academic and placement studies. The aim of this study is to identify the characteristics of the teacher role and the challenges of the reflective seminar within higher education. Data were gathered through group interviews and analyzed with a phenomenological hermeneutic approach. The result shows four themes; the experience of control and uncertainty, building trust and challenging ideas, the alternation between closeness and distance, and the parallel processes of supervising learning and being in a learning state. One conclusion is that the seminar teaching practice stimulates a collegial learning environment. This practice promotes the teachers pedagogical and didactical competence and an open attitude to each other´s teaching practice.     

Informal Home Education: Philosophical Aspirations put into Practice

Informal home education occurs without much that is generally considered essential for formal education—including curriculum, learning plans, assessments, age related targets or planned and deliberate teaching. Our research into families conducting this kind of education enables us to consider learning away from such imposed structures and to explore how children go about learning for themselves within the context of their own socio-cultural setting. In this paper we consider what and how children learn when no educational agenda is arranged for them and we link this manner of learning to the Deweyan ideas of learning as transactional and learning-in-context. We also use our empirical evidence to explore the notion of ZPD with regard to informal learning and to consider how children, without specific guidance, go about charting a course of learning through the ZPD. We consider the quality of informal learning particularly with regard to the educational aim of developing reflective and critical thinking, showing how these are integral to informal learning. We suggest that a much wider conception of what learning is and how it happens is needed, away from the confines of formal educational structures.     

Sacred and secret stories in professional knowledge landscapes: learner agency in teacher professional learning

Set in a schooling practitioner research context, this article critiques instrumental forms of teacher professional development. An account of teacher professional learning and development is provided, as an inter-relational construct, where teachers reflect on practice to inquire into their students’ learning and foster their own and others specific interests and talents in creative ways. In an Aotearoa/New Zealand context, teachers are mandated to inquire into what their students need to know and understand, the strategies required for teachers to attain these learning goals, and how effective the approach implemented is in enhancing student learning. Emerging from qualitative case study research, a teacher’s narrative account of a student-initiated critical thinking episode in a secondary science classroom is analysed to demonstrate sacred, secret and cover stories of professional knowledge landscapes. Findings highlight the importance of agentic teacher-enacted forms of practitioner inquiry that support critical and collaborative reflective practice.     

Fostering learner autonomy and critical reflection through digital video-journals in a university foreign language course

Many studies have documented the benefits of incorporating reflective journals into foreign language education at university level, though the pedagogic tendency has been to utilise these valuable learning resources to enhance students’ written language skills. This study focuses on how the production of a digital reflective journal in video format can assist in the improvement of oral language abilities in tertiary students of Spanish as a foreign language. With spoken language as the driving vehicle for this assessment task, the course coordinator and educator in charge aimed to promote the development of learner autonomy and self-reflection. In addition, to foster students’ agency in this process, the task incorporated the use of modern digital technologies, which are part of the repertoire of communication channels used by today’s university language learners. Findings suggest that completing this self-reflection assessment task afforded creative teaching and learning experiences, and generated opportunities for learners to improve critical thinking skills, written language proficiency and oral communication. It also heightened their motivation to engage with language-related cultural knowledge, and minimised feelings of anxiety towards communicating verbally in a foreign language.     

The impact of reflective practice in a university language class

This study by a university professor of foreign language examines what impact reflective practice has on students’ overall performance in a university language class. The findings support that reflective practice has a positive impact on students’ performance and their own role in learning. The intertwining nature of reflection in all contexts of learning processes strengthens instructional practices which students favorably described throughout this study.     

Incorporating reflection into computing classes: models and challenges

Literature has shown that the use of reflective practice is one way to assist students to understand and adjust to the expectations demanded by higher education. However, the implementation of reflective practice within the classroom can be challenging especially more so for the science, technology, engineering and mathematics discipline. It is often the case that reflective exercises are incorporated into the classrooms without further thought beyond the assignment of a reflective journal and students are asked to reflect without being taught how. This paper reviews existing models of reflection and discusses its application to the field of computing education particularly in the design of class activities to train students to reflect. Existing literature on how reflective activities are incorporated into assessments and classroom activities for different purposes are also reviewed to determine factors that contribute to its successful implementation in the classroom.     

Reflections on becoming a psychologist: Professional development experiences of students in a South African psychology graduate program

This study sought to describe student psychologists’ experiences of their professional preparation activities in which they used reflective journals. The students (n =7; female = 71%, black = 86%) were enrolled in a masters training program in the clinical and the counselling psychology programmes at a reputable University in South Africa. Over a period of the ten months of their first academic year, they completed reflective journals on aspects of their professional practice preparation. The reflective journals were thematically analysed to depict how the students framed their experiences. Findings yielded four themes that defined the students’ emerging professional identities: positive feelings about the profession, commitment to high standards of practice, concerns about high work loading, and a sense of learning community. Reflective practice capabilities appear important for early professional identity development from pre-service psychology practice education.     

Collective reflection in practice: an ethnographic study of Swedish police training

Although reflection has been viewed as an individual process, increased attention has been given to how reflective processes are socially anchored. The present article contributes to this knowledge through an examination of how collective reflection is enacted in the context of police education. The article is based on a one-year ethnographic study of police recruits undergoing training, and the main sources of data collection were participant observations and field interviews. The data were inductively analysed, and a model that differentiates amongst ‘specular’, ‘dialogic’ and ‘polyphonic’ reflection processes is presented. The findings suggest that collective reflection involving multiple individuals adds complexity to reflective processes and that these processes may take on more diverse forms than has been acknowledged, as previous research has mainly focused on dialogic collective reflection. The implications of these findings, such as how increased complexity may counteract the benefits of collective reflection, are also discussed.     

Reflecting on a journey of resilience in children’s blood and cancer nursing

Reflective practice is recognised as an integral part of being a highly skilled and successful health care professional. Many benefits have been identified from being a reflective practitioner including the opportunity for critical thinking, growing self-awareness and supporting individual resilience. There is a growing body of literature recognising the negative emotional impact that caring for children with cancer and blood disorders can have on health professionals. Currently there is an emerging interest in a more strengths-based approach focused on maintaining staff wellbeing. Resilience has been suggested as a framework for coping and maintaining wellbeing in areas, like children’s oncology and has been used as a term to describe the ‘surviving’ health professional. This paper explores the first author’s (GA) experiences of being a children’s oncology nurse and paediatric palliative care nurse specialist in the context of existing empirical and theoretical literature, with a particular focus on how GA developed resilience. Reflective examples of practice are used within the context of themes identified from a recent literature review exploring how resilience is defined within empirical literature.     

Using Popular Film to Teach Multicultural Counseling: A Constructivist Approach

The use of popular film as an experiential teaching tool in multicultural counselor education has been well documented. However, existing research has been limited. The purpose of this study is to implement a unique pedagogic intervention using popular films and to study how counseling students experience the activity as part of their multicultural counseling training. The researchers utilized the popular films Crash and Precious to stimulate student dialogue and reflection on topics pertaining to race, culture, privilege, and social justice. The findings indicate that popular films, when implemented in conjunction with reflective learning activities, are effective in promoting students’ multicultural and social justice counseling competencies. Participants reported that the pedagogic activity was effective in bringing to life the multicultural course concepts and stimulating difficult but necessary conversations about race, ethnicity, privilege, and power. Finally, implications of this study could further inform the field of multicultural counselor education.     

“Immunity‐to‐Change Language Technology”: An Educational Tool for Pastoral Leadership Education

Abstract. One of the primary aims of pastoral leadership education is to offer reflective processes that enable learners to surface, critique, and construct different epistemological conceptions of reality leading to more effective pastoral practice. In many pastoral leadership education programs, this type of intentional reflection usually takes place in a mentoring or supervisory relationship as well as in a reflective seminar. In this essay, I describe how I have used the “immunity‐to‐change language technology” as one type of reflective process for intentional reflection and transformational learning in pastoral leadership education. The results of my research and ongoing use of this educational tool indicate that it can be valuable for enabling change by helping learners expand their pastoral leadership capacities and become more effective in their practice. Given my findings, I conclude that this educational tool could be of interest to other educators who are seeking to broaden their own repertoire of approaches to transformational learning. A version of this research appears in a forthcoming book by the same author, published by Novalis, in Fall 2008.     

A routine perspective on implementing reflective career conversations in education

ABSTRACT

Reflective career conversations are a necessary instrument in the career guidance of students in vocational education. These conversations help students to learn from their (work) experiences and gain a better understanding of their motives on the labour market. Research shows that in a society in which change seems to become the only constant factor, knowing one’s own motives in work is important. However, the introduction and implementation of reflective career conversations in Dutch vocational education is problematic. In this article, we introduce the concept of ‘routines’ to better understand the nature of these problems. The concept ‘routine’ allows us to understand in much more detail what is required to induce the necessary behavioural changes that are required from teachers, students and management. Recognition of the complexity of this process and the willingness to invest are necessary prerequisites to prevent reflective career conversations from becoming the next ‘trick’ or ‘trendy innovation’.