Developing reflective practice

Assessment for learning: guide for law teachers

This is part of a guide, compiled by Alison Bone (University of Brighton) and Karen Hinett (UKCLE) in 2002, providing an overview of the chief issues involved in assessment and how it affects learning and teaching in law.

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In order to be able to facilitate learning with our students it is necessary to understand the learning process ourselves. It is extremely difficult to encourage students to learn reflectively unless the lecturer embodies such an approach.

The term ‘reflective practitioner’ was used extensively by Schön. In his first book The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action (Harper Collins, 1982) Schön addresses the following questions:

• what is the kind of knowing in which competent practitioners engage?
• how is professional knowledge like and unlike the kinds of knowledge presented in academic textbooks and learned journals?
• in what sense, if any, is there intellectual rigour in professional practice?
  By looking at a number of case studies using various professions Schön develops answers to these questions. Although educators are mentioned in several contexts they are not used as a specific example, but it is enlightening to insert them and use the arguments accordingly.

Many academics now recognise the importance of ‘professionalising’ the role of the lecturer. The application process for membership of Higher Education Academy’s Professional Recognition Scheme requires applicants to reflect on why they do what they do and what they have learned as a result of experiences in the past. In short, it requires evidence that members indicate that they are already reflective practitioners.

What is a reflective practitioner?

Schön recognised that professionals face a dilemma:

Professionals are called upon to perform tasks for which they have not been educated and the ‘niche no longer fits the education or the education no longer fits the niche’.

— (Schön 1982: 14)

Many lecturers will relate to this. The advent of semesterisation and modularisation, the growth of student numbers, widening access, the increasing importance of ICT and the student as ‘customer’ are just a few of the issues which have had an impact on the role of the lecturer, but there has not always been sufficient staff development to deal with these important changes in general terms, let alone in subject specific contexts.

Also:

The dilemma of the professional today lies in the fact that both ends of the gap he is expected to bridge with his profession are changing so rapidly; the body of knowledge that he must use and the expectations of the society he must serve.

— (Schön 1982: 15)

For law lecturers this is a double-edged sword. For us the ‘body of knowledge’ encompasses the rapidly changing content of our specialisms as well as the expanding research into the processes of facilitating learning.

One approach to dealing with this dilemma is put forward by Simon (1972):

All professional practice is centrally concerned with the process of ‘changing existing situations into preferred ones’.

— (quoted in Schön 1982: 46)

Frequently it is the approach of the lecturer that needs to be changed in order to facilitate learning of the students. It was Tolstoy who said:

Every teacher must, by regarding every imperfection in the pupil’s comprehension not as a defect of the pupil, but as a defect in his own instruction, endeavour to develop in himself the ability of discovering new methods.

— (quoted in Schön 1982: 66)

How reflective practitioners encourage learning

Reflective practitioners in academic environments will frequently think about what they are doing while they are doing it, whether it be curriculum design, devising a PowerPoint presentation, setting seminar questions, developing assessment strategies, delivering information or marking assessed work.

More importantly the professional lecturer will encourage students to think about what, why and how they are doing whatever they are doing while they are doing it.

If we look at Schön’s ideas and substitute ‘student’ for ‘client’ it becomes clearer:

Just as reflective practice takes the form of a reflective conversation with the situation, so the reflective practitioner’s relation with his client takes the form of a literally reflective conversation&He recognises that his actions may have different meanings for his clients than he intends them to have, and he gives himself the task of discovering what these are. He recognises his own obligation to make his own understanding accessible to his client, which means that he needs often to reflect anew on what he knows and the reflective practitioner tries to discover the limits of his expertise through reflective conversation with his client.

— (Schön 1982: 295)

Schön built on these ideas in his later work (Educating the reflective practitioner London: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1987), which contains some useful practical tips for lecturers, many drawing on the work of traditional educationalists.

It was John Dewey who stated that a student cannot be taught what he needs to know, but he can be coached:

He has to see on his own behalf and in his own way the relations between means and method employed and results achieved. Nobody else can see for him, and he can’t see just by being ‘told’ although the right kind of telling may guide his seeing and thus help him see what he needs to see.

— (quoted in Schön 1987)

If the student can be ‘coached’ to identify the thought processes undergone to move from ignorance to understanding – to reflect on his own learning – then learning can continue at a much swifter pace and with less support from the lecturer.

For a minority of lecturers the label says it all. Their self image is of a subject expert whose main task is to deliver knowledge and then to test whether the message has been properly received and understood. Learning is assumed to be happening despite the clear evidence to the contrary.

Learning is easier to track in seminars or small groups but it should not be assumed that it is occurring because (for example) students are discussing during a seminar, the answers to a problem they were given earlier. Learning is more than discussing answers, because these (at least in law) are constantly changing. Learning happens when students can identify the right questions to ask which is what reflective learning is all about.

Schön (1987) expresses it well:

The paradox of learning a new competence is this; that a student cannot at first understand what he needs to learn, can learn it only by educating himself, and can educate himself only by beginning to do what he cannot understand.

Meanwhile, back in the classroom

In some subjects, in some environments, formative assessment is alive and well, but in law schools it is comparatively rare to be asked to submit work for assessment which will not count in some way towards the final grading.

Students may be told how to solve legal problems in their first weeks and how to draft their answers, but are frequently more interested to know what the ‘right’ answer is or to have a ‘model’ answer from the lecturer. Many law undergraduates are not aware that they need to develop their thinking skills, and, in the early days, that this is more important than arriving at the ‘right’ answer. More sadly, their lecturer may not share this important knowledge with them either.

The use of small student groups between seminars can encourage reflective learning. Peer lecturing and seminar leadership have also been used successfully, and peer assessment is a powerful tool in encouraging students to reflect on their own learning.

References

Last Modified: 4 June 2010