Transactions in doing design-based research for designing curriculum: a self-study

Design-based research (DBR) is an emerging methodology in teacher education research that researchers claim has strong potential in systematically designing and using instructional strategies and tools to develop, enact, and sustain effective learning environments. Studies have been conducted employing this methodology, but very little research has been made on the process of engaging in DBR for designing curriculum. Through a self-study, I found that using DBR as a model for creating curriculum draws from personal meaning-making, where I tapped on my own education, background, and experiences in literacy instruction to create curriculum. The other dimensions to the DBR process were more intangible and thus harder to negotiate. These included the political aspects, where decision-making was needed regarding course components. Keeping positive relationships with stakeholders was another challenging dimension in order to achieve a collectively meaningful curriculum. Finally, dispositions on literacy instruction also implied tension on the process since dispositions are not necessarily aligned with some DBR principles.     

Letter writing as a reflective practice: understanding the shuffling,shifting, and shaping of a researcher identity

This article presents letter writing as a form of arts-based inquiry and reflective practice. The author argues that letter writing can be employed to develop a reflective space for autobiographical reflection. The letter featured here captures and demonstrates the shuffling, shifting, and shaping processes of the author’s researcher identity through letter writing, and is informed by the theoretical underpinnings of reflective practice. It records and investigates the experiences that the author underwent during a compulsory course in the first year of a doctoral program at a North American university. Three interrelated themes are identified in the letter: the researcher identity in crisis, the nature of research, and future researcher identity. It is concluded that letter writing can facilitate the self-evolution, self-introspection, self-awareness, and identity change that emerges with, and through, reflection. Letter writing as a reflective practice offers the benefits of developing self-knowledge, independent thought, critical thinking, and deconstructive understanding of one’s experiences.     

Writing for publication group: professional development situated in the interstices of academia and performativity

This article features nine ‘narratives of experience’ illustrative of academics engaged in an alternative Professional Development (PD) activity, referred to as Writing for Publication, in a regional Australian university. Each narrative adopts a critical stance to academic practice situated in what Ball defines as a ‘culture of performativity’ perpetuated by a ‘global neoliberal environment’. Contrary to professional development built primarily around sporadic content-provision and credential-based activities, Writing for Publication represents an alternative approach to professional development, a loose-coupling model, that gives validation to academics engaged in navigating dominant neoliberal discourses driving higher education filtered through the interstices or sites for identity-creation, agency formation and emerging communities of practice.     

Writing the (researcher) self: reflective practice and undergraduate research

This paper discusses the way in which postmodern emergence was used to assist a group of undergraduate students come to new understandings of research practice as they participated in a reflective component of an Undergraduate Research Summer School. Students were encouraged to ‘write the (researcher) self’ through a collaborative writing group based on the theoretical and pedagogical work of Somerville. Postmodern emergence highlights three stages of learning; firstly, assigning time for wondering, then a liminal space for becoming and finally an opportunity for generating new knowledge. This article is both the tangible product of this emergence reflective writing process and a recommendation about the capacity of undergraduate students to engage with their own professionalisation and meaning-making.     

A scenario for change: reflective practice for post-ordination professional development

The continuing professional development of ordained ministers is an important concept given the ever-changing nature of ministry and society as a whole. Within such a context, professional development needs to cope with continuous change through reflective practice in order to challenge and renew expertise. The proposed scenario for change seeks to embed reflective practice as the central method for the professional development of ordained ministers, thereby extending reflective practice from training and into the mode of lifelong learning. Components of this approach will include: ? Intentional reflective practice as the central methodology.

? Communities of practice as the central location for reflective practice.

? Facilitation as the central mechanism for reflective practice.

     

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.     

Moving from patches to quilts: developing self-aware,reflective leaders through curriculum innovation based on a Patchwork Text approach

A Patchwork Text is a creative approach to learning and assessment based on short pieces of reflective writing to promote deep, meaningful reflection. A five-year study was undertaken to explore whether this approach supports postgraduate students’ personal and academic development and the factors that influenced student experience, within one UK university. Our adapted approach encompasses patches of reflection, a structured Reflective Journal, formative feedback, and action learning within a constructively aligned curriculum. Between 2010 and 2015, 100 students attended the MSc Leadership Development programme and 71% (n=71) completed a questionnaire at the end of the first module. The questionnaire contained mainly open questions. The overwhelming majority of responses (89%, n=63) reported their experience of action learning was extremely positive. Eighty-five percent (n=58) reported that the Patchwork Text approach supported their academic development. Seventy-five percent (n=52) agreed the approach was helpful in relation to their summative assessment which comprised a reflective integrated portfolio. Thematic framework analysis of the qualitative data suggests the Patchwork Text approach increased self-awareness and insight; deepened and promoted on-going reflection; and facilitated critical thinking, analysis, and synthesis thereby enabling completion of the summative assignment. Findings suggest the adapted Patchwork Text approach increased students’ self-awareness as well as supporting them with both their summative assignment and the development of academic writing skills.     

Sailing through social LA GRRAACCEESS: tool for deconstructing and facilitating reflective and reflexive practice

Reflective and reflexive practice has become an integral component of practitioner professional training, particularly within professions associated with psychology and nursing. One way of facilitating reflective and reflexive practice is to integrate sensitivity of social interrelated constructs and social differences in relation to Gender, Race, Religion, Age, Abilities, Class, Culture, Ethnicity, Education, Sexual orientation and Spirituality as outlined in the GRRAACCEESS acronym. Inspired from the eighteen-century sailing vessel replica ‘La Grace’, this paper extends Burnham’s original GRRAACCEESS acronym by adding ‘Language’ and ‘Anatomy’ to form the ‘LA GRRAACCEESS’ model. This paper explores the merits and implications of the LA GRRAACCEESS model in order to assist practitioners with unravelling or deconstructing reflective practice and encourage ongoing mindful reflective practice.     

Support and self-care: professional reflections of six New Zealand high school counsellors

In many Western societies there is increasing demand for counselling; in turn, heightened levels of support needs have been identified for counsellors themselves. Despite calls for practitioners to adopt a more proactive approach to self-care, research suggests many still pay insufficient attention to alleviating on-the-job stress or achieving ‘work–life balance’. These issues were examined within the context of inviting six high school counsellors in New Zealand to talk generally about their professional lives. The authors suggest findings support calls for counsellor education programmes to offer structured opportunities for trainees to reflect upon the task of discursively constructing professional roles.     

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.     

Depth of Field: Using photographs and narratives to explore and reflect on ageing

The learning landscape of the higher education environment is changing, with an increased focus over the past decade on how educators might begin to cultivate reflective skills in health professions students. In addition, changing professional requirements demand that health professionals are adequately prepared to practise in today’s complex healthcare systems, including responding to changing demographics of population ageing. In this educational case study, we will share how we (a group of education, medical and nursing academics) developed ‘Depth of Field: Exploring Ageing’ a digital, consumer-driven, interprofessional reflective learning resource that uses photographs, narrative and small-group work to strengthen reflective capacity in current and/or future health professionals.     

Double narrative of a researcher and the researched: the journey of English-language learning

As I embarked on my PhD study in Australia, I felt excited because my study was born out of reflection on my own journey of English-language learning. I decided to use my experiences as a touchstone for an understanding of the experiences of others like me. The study presented here is part of a larger study and is a double narrative that explores the researcher’s and the four participants’ experiences of learning English language in their home country contexts and also in Australia while they are studying in an Australian tertiary context. Through a reflective practice, I have reflectively studied my and the participants’ experiences with language learning strategies (LLS) to improve English-language skills and to better socialise into Australian academic and social discourses as international students. By linking the researcher and the researched closely, this research makes a contribution to English learning and teaching on the development of English-language skills of international students through the use of LLS. It provides some implications to institutions and advice to students like me.     

Feedback on reflection: comparing rating-scale and forced-choice formats for measuring and facilitating teacher team reflective practice

This study focused on elements of measurement and feedback for teacher reflective practice. The measurement component examined the use of the Survey of Reflective Practice: A Tool for Assessing Development as a Reflective Practitioner to measure reflective practice and promote reflection, and compared educator responses using rating-scale and forced-choice item formats. The feedback component observed teachers and mentors collaborating to set goals that facilitate growth as a reflective practitioner. Results suggest the instrument can be used to measure and facilitate a teacher team’s level of reflection with one important caveat: our results indicate that there may be a threshold level of reflection necessary before teachers can benefit from the examined collaborative process. In addition, results suggest that the forced-choice item format might help mentors move away from a judging and evaluating mindset to a mindset of thoughtful analysis of the conditions and qualities that most accurately describe the team’s reflective behavior.     

Reflection in university and the employability agenda: a discourse analysis case study

In UK universities, reflection is promoted not only for its intrinsic value but also for instrumental purposes, for students to gain and demonstrate skills and attributes which are valued by employers. In this paper, I examine reflective writing produced by students seeking an award offered by the careers department of one university. By looking at the evaluative language choices made by the student writers, I shed light on some of their practices regarding self-representation and their articulations of experience. I provide a critical account of what reflective writing looks like in this particular setting, and interpret this in the broader context of the goal to foster reflection among higher education students. I argue that the reflective writing engendered by this particular context and task is different in key respects from the reflection which is commonly advocated as an element of personal, professional or academic development.     

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.     

Drawing on creative reflective practices in counselling research: an example of using mental imagery to shed light on the research process

The disciplines of counselling and psychotherapy have generated a range of innovative qualitative research methods. There is the potential for further developments, particularly in relation to methods that reveal how the researcher is implicated in the research. Practitioner-researchers could help to identify potential new methods through a willingness to engage in creative applications of clinical expertise and knowledge to their research projects. This article presents an example of applying a creative reflective method to the research process and discusses its potential for delivering insights into how the researcher is shaping the research and its findings. This particular mental imagery technique is considered in the light of conceptual metaphor theory and the possibility that representing the research project as a mental image can reveal how the researcher is cognitively structuring the research process.