Integrating reflective practice into the curriculum

This section considers the integration of reflective practice into the curriculum, addressing such issues as the alignment of learning objectives with assessment outcomes and the assessment of reflective practice, including dealing with disclosure and providing feedback, and collaboration, groupwork and plagiarism.

What is your purpose?

Reflection can be used in different contexts for different purposes. If you are thinking about introducing reflection into a module or programme it makes sense to think about the purpose and function of the activity. As McGill and Brockbank point out:

“By understanding my purpose I can more consciously attend to the means by which I achieve that purpose. If my intention is to transmit knowledge then engaging in reflective dialogue will be probably inappropriate. If my purpose is to engage in transformatory learning where the focus of the learner is as a whole potentially critical being, then engaging in reflective dialogue is likely to be appropriate.”

— (McGill and Brockbank, 1998:61)

Exercise

The reflective activities matrix indicates some possible uses of reflection and identifies three contexts in which it might be used. Use it to identify what it is you want students to be able to do. Place a tick next to all the uses you think are appropriate to your teaching area. Add any additional uses.

Consider the context

Having identified what it is that you want students to be able to do you need to think about the particular context in which the students are working. Boud has done considerable work in the area of reflective practice working in professional, undergraduate and work-based learning settings. For him, “context is perhaps the single most important influence on reflection and learning. It can permit or inhibit working with learners’ experience” (Boud and Walker, 1998:196). By context he refers not only to the department or institution in which the student’s formal learning is situated, but also the wider cultural, social and political environment in which experience may be grounded.

“Teachers and learners bring with them all the essential elements of the larger context: they are imbued with the assumptions and practices of their culture, the demands and expectations imposed by the educational institution, and the attitudes and ways of operating that dominate the particular discipline.”

— (Boud and Walker, 1998:203)

Teachers and students of law need to appreciate the particular legal context shaping their experience. The ‘tribes and territories’ articulated by Becher (1989) reveal the interpretations made by staff and students of particular subject disciplines. In particular they reveal that individuals are socialised into the particular values of a subject discipline and identify keenly with what they perceive to be a ‘law’ perspective as distinct from that of any other subject. In facilitating reflection law teachers need to acknowledge these influences and in so doing accept that new methods of learning and teaching may appear incongruent with the pervading ethos of the department.

Align your teaching, learning and assessment outcomes

The most common and transparent way of ensuring there is alignment between what we teach, what students learn and what we assess is to write learning outcomes for each programme, module or unit. As Biggs, who leads work on alignment, claims: “a good teaching system aligns teaching method and assessment to the learning activities stated in the objectives, so that all aspects of this system are in accord in supporting appropriate student learning” (1999: 11). He goes on to confirm that learning outcomes:

• help staff to set appropriate learning, teaching and assessment activities
• help students to understand what is expected of them and what evidence they need to provide
• helps provide a clear framework against which student’s success can be measured (1999: 14)

Not all modules or subject areas have to assess every area or skill, but taken as a whole there should ideally be an identifiable route that leads to student demonstration of achievement of the overall outcomes.

The easiest way to begin to define learning objectives is to think about what you want students to learn, or what you want them to do at the end of the period of study, and then design the content and assessment around those areas. It is useful to think in terms of three stages; verb, object and condition. For example:

examine critically (verb) theoretical frameworks and research (object) relevant to contract law (context/condition)

(Thanks to Mike Laycock, University of East London, for allowing the use of this illustration.)

Exercise

Using the learning objectives table write three learning outcomes for a module you teach. Would a reflective element aid the achievement of the learning outcomes?

As simple as this process appears, doubts have been raised about transferring and reducing the goals of reflection to a formulaic learning outcome. Maughan, Maughan and Brayne (2001) have investigated the use of reflection in law courses and claim that competence defined in terms of outcomes represents a restricted and inaccurate view of what the student can do. Macfarlane (1998) also questions whether the continuing trend towards descriptive outcomes and development of generic standards takes law teachers further away from educating reflective practitioners. In a thoughtful piece Macfarlane comments that:

“ Despite its usefulness in structuring course aims and assessments, an outcomes model is problematic for educators who wish to move towards a reflective practice model of teaching and learning…how to accommodate individuated learning goals within universal outcomes, the tendency of outcomes to artificially separate skills and knowledge, the emphasis of outcomes measures on product rather than process, and the assumption that universalised summative testing is both a fair and complete system for assessing students – are equally relevant to the profession and other stakeholder groups if they are serious about enhancing reflective practice.” (1998:15)

Notwithstanding these reservations, the process of articulating intended learning outcomes helps law teachers to focus and align what is taught, what is learned and what is assessed. There are no right or wrong ways of facilitating reflective practice, but as Boud and Walker observe, “there are no reflective activities which are guaranteed to lead to learning, and conversely there are no learning activities guaranteed to lead to reflection” (1998:193). The best we can do is learn from others, acknowledge the limitations of the context, plan carefully, be willing to relinquish power as assessors and consider the appropriateness of current systems of assessment in promoting these aims.

Assessing reflective practice

Assessment gives value to work and signifies to students what is important. One of the less desirable effects of this finding has been to assess everything. Over-assessment is now acknowledged as a problem by staff and students, and is deleterious to deep learning. One option is to integrate reflection into the programme and/or make it compulsory. This signals to students that it is important but does not add to the weight of assessment, making it instantly more attractive to both staff and students.

However as every law teacher knows, students pay more attention to activities that are assessed. When asked for her learning diary, one of the students at MMU (example 3) responded: “I did not complete this. I think now that it would have been useful but when you’ve got so much to do…if you know that there are no marks for the work and it isn’t going to form part of the assessment it’s the first thing that goes.” This is a clear message about the need to give reflection some status in line with other academic work. Students are socialised into a grade culture. When reflective activities are not assessed or effectively integrated into the learning outcomes for a course/module this gives particular signals about the value of the activity.

If formal assessment is considered necessary, thought needs to be given to what and how we assess. Are we assessing the outcome of learning, ie the report, presentation or advice given to a client, or the reflection on the outcome?

Exercise

Think about a module for which you are responsible and answer the following questions:

1. Do you assess against all the learning outcomes?
2. Do you give credit for the process or the product?

Assessing the product or outcome of reflection can be achieved by reference to criteria or a set of learning outcomes that the student can demonstrate. However, demonstrating the process of reflection is less easy to capture. McGill and Brockbank (1998) suggest that in order to demonstrate process, evidence is needed to reveal the learning journey and development that has taken place. This can be achieved through learning journals, portfolios and the tools of personal development planning. They also suggest a combination of ‘self reports’ (diaries, logs etc) and ‘other reports’ in the shape of peer feedback. This evidence, submitted to tutors, demonstrates validity and the extent to which critical reflection has occurred. To ensure reliability, they suggest using a range of assessment tools, including the more conventional forms such as exams and essays as well as ‘self’ and ‘other reports’.

Despite some concerns about an outcomes model being fit for the purpose of reflective practice, attempts have been made to develop criteria and frameworks for assessing the reflective process. In developing a programme for undergraduate law students Webb and Maughan distinguish between three kinds of reflection:

• reflection on the specific skills, attributes or behaviours displayed in the performance of a task
• reflection on practical legal knowledge (ie substantive law and procedures)
• reflection on ‘law in context’ and theories about the legal process

In so doing they draw on each student’s feedback on their performance. They maintain this is essential if they are to assess whether a student is learning from doing rather than just doing. However they also admit that this has limitations. For example, there is no benchmark of the level of reflective capacity that the student had at the beginning of the programme, making it difficult to make a judgement about the extent to which an individual’s reflection has developed. In addition to the performer’s feedback they also assess reflective capacity by reference to:

• the student’s capacity to recognise discrepant reasoning and inappropriate theories of action or behaviour
• their ability to identify new techniques or strategies for the future, and how these might improve on those used in the assessment

As the example from Webb and Maughan (1996) shows, developing criteria for reflective practice is not without problems. Bloom’s Taxonomy of education objectives (know, comprehend, apply, analyse, synthesise, evaluate) is often used as a basis for assessment (Bloom et al, 1956). Bloom identifies evaluation as the highest level of achievement. In order to evaluate, an individual needs to reflect and think about what is important and relevant given the context. However, having acknowledged that reflection is also about drawing on experience and intuition, Bloom’s original taxonomy is limited as a basis for assessing reflection.

Bloom and colleagues also created a taxonomy of objectives in the ‘affective domain’. They identified five hierarchical levels; receiving (or attending), responding, valuing, organisation, characterisation by a value (Krathwohl, Bloom and Masia, 1964). Figure 4 illustrates how these map onto a cycle of reflection. (Levels 4 and 5 have been merged, as they both indicate the value of evaluation, personal judgement and ability to make a decision.)

Level	Stage of Reflection	Associated Verb (for writing learning outcomes)
receiving or attending to	taking stock of existing knowledge, attending to feelings	aware, perceive, accept, listen
responding	identifying gaps in learning	derive, select, motivate (self)
valuing	feedback	participate, attain, decide
organisation	evaluate the integration of new knowledge and understanding into existing knowledge	find, form, relate, associate
characterisation by a value		judge, identify, decide, change, demonstrate

a representation of the taxonomy of affective levels mapped against the reflective cycle

This representation may be used by law teachers or teams to write learning outcomes or to develop criteria against which values, behaviour and the development of reflective capacities might be judged. Alternatively, law teachers may wish to involve students in the development of criteria, thereby extending the ownership of the learning experience.

Dealing with disclosure

In assessing reflection attention also needs to be given to the sensitive area of disclosure. Self reflective statements are by definition highly personal accounts of an individual’s learning experience, and may include fears and anxieties about learning. In designing ethical and fair assessment educators must be alert to the difference between personal disclosure and evidence of reflective practice. This is particularly pertinent in law, where the observations of the student may impact upon a client.

At its most extreme a student may inadvertently disclose information that could be used as evidence of criminal behaviour, putting themselves, the client and the institution at risk. To prevent this it is essential to be clear to students what is appropriate and inappropriate for them to disclose. In compiling a portfolio it is common practice for students to keep their own reflective notes and then to draw out the key points for learning and areas for development to include as evidence to be assessed.

Boud (1999) also points out that it is naive to expect students to restrict their reflections to matters outlined by the teacher. The nature of reflection means that students will inevitably ask questions about themselves and raise different and often moral dilemmas about their own ability or the legitimacy of an activity. Setting boundaries for reflection detracts from the nature of learning and investigation. Law teachers need to be willing to accept and facilitate difficult discussion. More importantly, they need to be able to distinguish between what is public information used for the purpose of assessing reflection and what is private and personal disclosure. In some portfolios students are urged to keep separate personal and private sections. Students can draw on their personal notes to write the reflective diaries that form part of the assessed portfolio and then simply extract the personal notes before submitting the work.

Exercise

In thinking about the assessment requirements on a course or module you teach ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are you looking just for evidence of skill development, or for evidence of reflection on the development also?
2. What kind of evidence are you looking for?
3. How can students document that evidence?

The personal nature of reflection also means that students are also likely to censor what they make available. Where reflective journals are used as part of the assessment process it is important to acknowledge that some students will automatically censor their work. Boud and Walker suggest that “where it is judged necessary to assess students’ reflection skills reflective writing should be judged in terms of criteria for the recognition of reflective writing, not in terms of standard academic writing conventions” (1998: 194). In designing appropriate assessment law teachers need to be aware of the influence they have as assessors over what is learned and the extent to which students will expose limitations and engage in reflective activity.

Exercise

If you are currently using or intend to introduce reflection into a module/course use the list below as a checklist for assessment purposes. Have you:

• Identified reflective learning as an outcome within the subject discipline?
• Ascertained that reflective dialogue has taken place?
• Established that there is evidence of the learner’s participation in that dialogue?
• Identified evidence of a developmental process over time, regardless of the start or end point?
• Ascertained that there is evidence that a process review has taken place, enabling the student to take away an understanding of the learning process? (McGill and Brockbank, 1998: 102)

Providing feedback

Feedback is an essential element of the reflective process. Students need to make sense of feedback and apply it to their learning in order to maximise performance in the future.

Tutor feedback is just one way of communicating what constitutes reflection on learning. As the examples reveal, peer feedback, reports by placement tutors and personal insight developed through self assessment are all important feedback mechanisms. Conversational frameworks such as chat sessions (example 5) also allow students to discover meaning for themselves. Distance learning takes full advantage of the use of e-mail, and in many ways provides the personal dialogue and fast accessible feedback which students desire.

Exercise Think about the ways in which you currently offer feedback.

1. How much time do you spend giving feedback (including writing on scripts and face to face feedback)?
2. Could you reduce the time spent by giving feedback to a group or via e-mail?
3. Could you introduce peer assessment into aspects of the course?
4. Could you post annotated examples of student work on an intranet so that students can see a range of approaches to a particular task?

Feedback can often be restrictive, powerful and used to perpetuate dominance. An ‘off the cuff’, ill-constructed comment can do real harm to a learner’s confidence. Where peer assessment is used, care needs to be taken to ensure a supportive context in which students offer fair and non-damaging feedback to each other. It is helpful to engage students in a discussion about the process of giving peer feedback and get them to agree principles of conduct, so that no one is offered potentially damaging or politically incorrect feedback. A useful guideline is to encourage students to begin by focusing on the positive aspects of a performance or piece of written work, and to limit any shortcomings to two items. In this way students are encouraged to be fair about each other’s work without fear of upsetting their friends and without being over-complimentary.

Self evaluation forms can be used to assess group work. This might include questions about the ability of the group to listen to individual contributions, whether all group members were involved in the activity, whether the group evaluates its progress and whether conflict can be reconciled (LeBrun and Johnstone, 1994: 348). Students complete this form individually and then discuss their responses with peers in their learning group, and finally together formulate a group response. There are several advantages to this approach; firstly students retain a feeling of control over their learning. Secondly, it enforces a sense of community and respect for fellow learners, making plagiarism less attractive. Thirdly, it helps students to develop their skills of evaluation.

Time and timing

Reflecting on the introduction of personal development portfolios in management (example 6) Sheila Ryan commented that one of the main reasons for success was having a year long module to introduce students to the idea of reflection and to give them time to get used to thinking about themselves as important agents in the learning process. Strange as it may seem, students rely on tutors to teach them and do not always see themselves as important. It takes time for them to realise that their own reflections can help their learning. The first point for law teachers thinking about introducing reflection is to ensure that students have several opportunities to reflect. A one-off reflective experience will only compound feelings of reliance, and if assessed is likely to knock rather than build student confidence.

Thinking about when to introduce reflection is another important issue. Boud (1995) suggests that there is no best time to begin to introduce students to reflection, since there are pros and cons associated with both early and late introduction. First year undergraduate students are likely to accept any practice that is presented to them, but have competing demands on their time, such as getting used to a new discipline, as well as the problems of adjustment that leaving home and starting university entail. By contrast, third year and postgraduate students have a better understanding of the subject, but are likely to question why such an important activity as evaluation has been denied them for so long. There is no right or wrong time. What is important is that students are given adequate time and support for reflection.

Collaboration, group work and plagiarism

Quality assurance procedures mean that teachers are often reluctant to indulge in learning, teaching and assessment methods that call into question the reliability of judgement. In particular, questions are often raised about the reliability of reflective work that involves students making judgement for themselves. Collaborative work is also considered dangerous, since there is an associated risk of plagiarism. As Boon describes:

“ A curriculum which uses self, peer and tutor review is more consistent with developmental goals. However, these forms of assessment rely on group work, which, while having many advantages in terms of learning gains, gives rise to doubts about the validity and reliability of assessment.” (1996: 126).

There is however a wealth of research literature (Stefani 1994, Boud and Falchikov 1989) to support the use of self, peer and group assessment. Research findings are very reassuring, and indicate that when students are involved in attributing grades to their own and the work of peers there is no identifiable tendency to over or under assess. When students are supplied with criteria they are equally competent at assigning grades, and generally fall within a percentage point or two of that given by the tutor (see examples 3 and 6). However, the ability of students to make fair judgements about their work is not to be confused with the propensity of some students to cut corners on assessment. Students can competently make fair judgements about the quality of their own work. Before embarking on the facilitation of reflection it is important that both staff and students know the boundaries.

Stefani (1999) identifies four different forms of ‘cheating’; copying (reproducing an answer), collusion (deceit), collaboration (working with) and plagiarism (passing off the work or writings of others as one’s own). This last definition is perhaps the most accurate, since ‘work’ can mean anything that is written, spoken, produced or articulated through the medium of film or photograph. Defining what we mean by plagiarism is central to the prevention of such activities, as it makes explicit to staff and students what is and is not acceptable.

There is evidence to suggest that some students get genuinely confused about the difference between ‘working together’ and passing off someone else’s ideas as their own (Ashworth, Bannister and Thorne, 1997: 196). Other reasons cited for cheating are stress and pressure for good grades (Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead, 1995: 160) and inadequate assessment that “encourages students to cheat” (Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead, 1995: 170). Engaging students in group work can help them to distinguish between collaboration and group work, as they can learn for themselves the difference between supporting colleagues and supplying them with a ready written assignment.

Self and peer assessment also help in this respect by opening up the debate about what constitutes quality in law. Students are actively encouraged to discuss assessment criteria and to provide comments on each other’s work or performance; this is not collusion, it is collaboration. As Stefani indicates, collusion is a deliberate attempt to deceive a third party, namely the assessor. It is a conscious attempt to flout the assessment rules. In self and peer assessment the rules are clear; students should assess each other’s work against explicit criteria, make a judgement about quality and the extent to which competences have been met and offer supportive feedback which will help the other student improve their learning and performance. It is about supporting learning and gaining evaluative experience rather than trying to usurp the role of the tutor as legal specialist.

The use of reflective diaries and portfolios can also be used to confirm authenticity. A carefully constructed set of criteria by which to assess reflective and affective capacities makes it difficult for students to pass their work off as someone else’s. Grounded in experience, reflective diaries depict personal observations, making it difficult for others to fake. Used in conjunction with other forms of assessment and evidence they are also reliable. Or at least as reliable as other more conventional forms of assessment!

Last Modified: 4 June 2010