Bridging the gap between reflective learning and reflective practice through anticipatory reflection

Impact of Gaps in Care during Adult Care Transfer in Sickle Cell Disease

In this chapter, the authors present a discussion on the importance of the role of reflection, reflective learning, and reflective practice in personalised learning in higher education and employment. Learning how to reflect is vitally important, not just in academia but as a life skill. Within the context of Biesta, the authors examine the critical role self-awareness maintains in education for sustainable futures. They start by offering a definition of reflection, reflective learning, and they then discuss how coaching can also support personal development by increasing self-awareness.

This first article—of two—is in three parts. First, it discusses the important role of reflective learning in the modern practice of mental health practitioners, and summarises the relevance of national policies for reflective clinical practice. Second, it highlights the benefits that regular and structured reflection on clinical experiences might have for the professional development of nurses and healthcare assistants working on inpatient mental health wards. Finally, this paper argues for an incorporation of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) principles into the reflective learning process. The second article will build on this, and evaluate the clinical effectiveness of the CBT-integrated model of reflective practice.

INTRODUCTION & OBJECTIVES Essential to both students and experienced exercise physiology practitioners, reflective practice is a cornerstone of lifelong learning and improved client care. In clinical settings reflection, characterised by awareness, is the critical analysis of experience and requires integration into higher education curriculum. METHODOLOGY Final-year exercise physiology students (N = 21) and 5 clinical exercise physiology supervisors completed a reflective practice learning activity. The stepped process of SPROUT was utilised, via classroom teaching and 14 weeks of clinical practicum. SPROUT represents the Situation, Past experiences, Read and refer, Other influences, Understanding, and Taking it forward. Teaching modes included group discussion, clinical situations, and student-led practice along with the completion of written reflections. Each student responded to the Reflection in Learning Scale (RLS) and further questions about their confidence. Written scripts were analysed for meaning and each ranked. Supervisors responded to open-ended questions during a focus group. FINDINGS Student scores for the RLS revealed higher scores for planning, knowledge integration and mental processing and lower for interactions with knowledge, mindful summarising and coping with negative emotions. 75% of students indicated that they were confident with reflective practice and that SPROUT, however time-consuming, had been helpful. Written scripts showed a range of developing abilities, from novice requiring more depth to those more advanced who demonstrated meaningful engagement and solution-orientated reflective ability. Clinical supervisors supported the importance of reflective practice and were positive about the application of the stepped approach of SPROUT. CONCLUSIONS The SPROUT framework supported reflective practice learning, benefiting both students and qualified practitioners, facilitating not only increased confidence but also a more profound understanding of clinical encounters. The structured approach of SPROUT proved beneficial in guiding reflective thinking. This research underscores the importance of reflective practice in exercise physiology, endorsing its role in ongoing professional development.

This paper reports on a pilot study exploring the use of generative AI and anthropomorphic coaches to enhance students’ reflective practices. Reflective practice is crucial for critical thinking and self-awareness. AI-driven feedback systems and lifelike avatars may create interactive, engaging environments for deeper student reflection. Drawing on observations from an ongoing project using Soul Machines Studio at the University of Auckland Business School, this inquiry considers anthropomorphic AI coaches’ ability to provide timely feedback and support reflective work in postgraduate courses. As a work-in-progress, we describe two use cases: (a) Refining team collaboration through AI-guided reflection and (b) providing feedback on reflective journal writing. We also outline future work on scalability, longitudinal studies, learning management system integration, cross-cultural adaptation, and ethical frameworks. We highlight AI's potential to develop students’ reflective practices and contribute to integrating advanced technologies in education.

Reflective Practice (RP) is a continuous process of analyzing one’s experiences to inform or change future practice. Narrative Medicine (NM) uses humanities-based methods like close reading and writing to enhance one’s ability to recognize, understand, and respond to patients’ and clinicians’ stories. Both RP and NM have been shown to professionally benefit medical trainees and healthcare providers. However, there is a paucity of published studies that describe the impact of longitudinal RP/NM curricula in medical schools. The Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) School of Medicine curriculum includes a required four-year RP/NM curriculum. It consists of nine required sessions (seven small-group and two large-group sessions) across four years. Curricular activities include responding to prompts about patient care experiences via written notes and analyzing visual art pieces and poems. Two cohorts of medical students (Class of 2023 and 2024) completed two online surveys that assessed perspectives about RP (Survey A) and NM (Survey B) at five different timepoints during medical school. More than 600 (n = 617) post-session surveys (Survey A) were completed before didactics (Time 1), after didactics (Time 2), and after clinical rotations (Time 3), with a 66.7% response rate. Of these, 95.7% of respondents agreed that RP was an essential activity for physicians, and 85.7% indicated it was essential for medical students. We found a statistically significant increase in students practicing RP from the start of medical school compared to later time points. Survey B (response rate 81.7%) was completed during the clinical phase and indicated that students regard NM as a tool that improves their clinical skills (76.5%) and well-being (79.1%). Our study demonstrates a feasible, required, longitudinal RP/NM curriculum in undergraduate medical education that fosters students’ ability to understand and engage with narratives of self and other, to enhance personal and professional identity, and to meet the national standards of developing self-directed, lifelong, and reflective learners.

This study reports how teaching using a systemic functional linguistics (SFL)-based appraisal system impacted English-as- a-foreign-language (EFL) students’ reflective practices with text deconstruction and construction. Through qualitative content and discourse analyses of three focal EFL students’ reading and writing performance, interviews, and reflection journals collected from two writing classrooms (expository and argumentative writing) in a Chinese university over one academic year, this case study shows that students transformed into reflective learners who could understand and critically deconstruct and construct the relationships among context, interpersonal meaning, and linguistic resources in reading and writing, although their development proceeded in a tortuous process, with writing being slower than reading. Despite this complexity, the study illustrates the malleability of using an SFL-based appraisal system in guiding EFL students to be reflective learners.

The transformative vision of NEP 2020 in developing critical thinking, creativity, innovative pedagogies, and professional development of teachers is very closely aligned with the philosophy of reflective learning. Reflective learning involves the process of thinking and analysing one’s own learning experience for continuous improvement in the future. Reflective learning moves beyond rote or procedural engagement, fostering an adaptive mindset that is responsive to dynamic classroom realities and diverse learner needs. It equips teachers with the ability to question their own pedagogical choices, integrate feedback constructively, and adapt to evolving educational contexts. Therefore, the objectives of this paper are: i) To explore the influence of reflective learning practices on critical thinking, self-awareness, and professional growth among pre-service teachers focussing on Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle, and ii) To analyse the role of post-teaching reflection in developing reflective thinking and professional competencies in pre-service teacher education. It is a qualitative research where the case study research design has been followed, and data has been collected qualitatively from 125 pre-service B.Ed students for in-depth analysis, for which written reflections, classroom discussions, and observational records have been analysed using inductive thematic analysis. The findings show that structured reflective learning has significantly enhanced critical self-examination, empathy, creativity, professional awareness, and life skills such as problem-solving, decision-making, and resilience among the pre-service teachers. Aligned with the vision of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the study recommends that reflective learning should be an integral part of teacher education because it is vital pedagogical tool for cultivating reflective, adaptive, and professionally competent teachers. Key words: Critical thinking, Creativity, Reflective learning, Professional development

“Reflective learning” in psychiatric education: Does it have any merit?

<p style="text-align: justify;">Reflective practices have been recognized as a predictor of professional development because they favor teaching changes that improve the students’ learning. The expressions reflection, practice, and reflective professionals are very present in training programs, but with a diversity of meanings and interpretations. The concept of reflection is linked to professional development and teaching identity. The goal of training reflective teachers is shared on an international level, however, the educational conditions that favor a positive attitude toward reflection have not been sufficiently researched. This article aims to describe the obstacles to a positive attitude toward reflection in pedagogy students according to their teachers. This study is qualitative with an interpretive approach for which an instrumental case study was conducted with 15 university teachers in six Chilean regions. The results show that both inter-institutional conditions negatively affect attitudes, as well as the lack of models of reflective practice, insufficient teaching, the way teacher reflection is evaluated, and the barriers to reflective practice in schools. The results indicate the need to intentionally teach pedagogical reflection practices and help to recognize its benefits for teaching.</p>

The purpose of this paper is to determine the most appropriate model of cooperation between an enterprise and the innovation ecosystem of the territory based on the assessment of its readiness to implement joint innovation activities. One of the requirements necessary for the effectiveness of innovation activity is to ensure the continuity of innovation processes along the entire value chain. The peculiarities of different organizations and different levels of readiness of ecosystem participants for innovation activities lead to ambiguity in the choice of possible options for partnership interactions. The paper presents a scheme of development for the territory's innovation ecosystem based on the concept of a minimum viable ecosystem. The concept of transfer gap is introduced as a violation of the continuity of the process of transfer (transfer) of the results of innovation activity along the entire value chain, which does not allow to obtain a competitive result (an innovative product) and/or bring it to the consumer within a competitive timeframe. Researchers identify two components of the transfer gap: technological and managerial. We developed indicators and scales for their assessment. On the basis of analyzing the interests and risks of participants in innovation processes in all links of the innovation chain, the possibilities of the innovation ecosystem to dampen transfer gaps are identified. We form the model of overcoming transfer gaps on the basis of partnership interactions.

Reflection is not a new concept in the teaching of higher education and is often an important component of many disciplinary courses. Despite this, past research shows that while there are examples of rich reflective strategies used in some areas of higher education, most approaches to, and conceptualisations of, reflective learning and assessment have been perfunctory and inconsistent. In many disciplinary areas, reflection is often assessed as a written activity ‘tagged onto’ assessment practices. In creative disciplines, however, reflective practice is an integral and cumulative form of learning and is often expressed in ways other than in the written form. This paper will present three case studies of reflective practice in the area of Creative Industries in higher education – Dance, Fashion and Music. It will discuss the ways in which higher education teachers and students use multimodal approaches to expressing knowledge and reflective practice in such a context. The paper will argue that unless students are encouraged to participate in deep reflective disciplinary discourse via multi-modes then reflection will remain superficial in the higher education context.

Background: Critical reflection is an essential curricular component for learning from experience that determines placement quality in postsecondary experiential learning placements. However, there are poor empirical connections between the use of critically reflective processes and learning outcomes. Purpose: This research explored reflective processes professionals use in their practice and how these processes compare with the reflective activities postsecondary instructors in professional faculties use during experiential learning. Methodology/Approach: This collective case study used focus group interviews, field notes, and professional grey literature to examine the research questions. Findings/Conclusions: Professional training programs must align their reflective practices with more integrated and holistic models of reflective practice to better mirror the professional skills demanded in professional practice contexts. Professionals in context-laden professional environments should integrate reflective activities into their practice based on emergent, iterative, and cocreative models that are more like their lived realities at work. Reflective practices which better fit and mirror these lived realities may lead to better connections between reflective activities and work outcomes. Implications: Professional environments are complex, dynamic, and affected by contextual factors. New integrated and holistic models of reflective experience should replace the separated, stepwise, or automatic models that have guided reflective practices in the past.

Utilizing communication strategies to enhance reflective learning in Ethiopian EFL classrooms

In health professional education, reflective practice is seen as a potential means for self-improvement from everyday clinical encounters. This study aims to examine the level of student honesty in critical reflection, and barriers and facilitators for students engaging in honest reflection. Third year physiotherapy students, completing summative reflective essays on clinical encounters using the modified Gibbs cycle, were invited to participate in an anonymous online survey. Student knowledge and beliefs about reflective practice, and disclosure of the truthfulness of their reflections, were assessed using a mixed method approach. A total of 34 students, from a maximum possible of 48 (71 %), participated in the study activities. A total of 68 % stated that they were at least 80 % truthful about their experiences. There was general student consensus that reflective practice was important for their growth as a clinician. Students questioned the belief that the reflection needed to be based on a factual experience. Reflective practice can be a valuable addition to the clinical education of health care professionals, although this value can be diminished through dishonest reflections if it is not carefully implemented. Student influences on honest reflection include; (1) the design of any assessment criteria, and (2) student knowledge and competency in applying critical reflection.