Reflection in Professional Practice and Education in Engineering, Nursing, and Teaching

Reflective practice has long been associated with enhancing professional knowledge and practice. This paper considers reflective practice in the context of a collaborative policing research partnership conducted almost 10 years ago using a personal electronic diary kept for the duration of the research project. The paper draws on the notion of ‘reflection-in-action’ – that is, reflecting tacitly, ‘in the moment’ as we survey and consider a situation; and ‘reflection-on-action’ – a process of reflection that takes place after the event. The paper argues that a journal can be a useful tool, not only for documenting events and activity but as a way of critically reflecting on your research experience and acknowledging the assumptions, relationships and influences embedded in that experience. The journal has been transformative in that it has allowed me to actively engage with a previously lived research experience and reinterpret that experience in a new context. This has been the value of the research journal: recognising that new lessons are learned and relearned from old practices.

On the “Flip Side”: An Autoethnography Utilizing Professional Reflective Practice Skills to Navigate a Medical Experience as the Patient

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.

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.

Community mental health nurses speak out: The critical relationship between emotional wellbeing and satisfying professional practice

Reframing evidence-based practice curricula to facilitate engagement in nursing students

Reflective practice is one of the most popular theories of professional knowledge in the last 20 years and has been widely adopted by nursing, health, and social care professions. The term was coined by Donald Schön in his influential books The Reflective Practitioner, and Educating the Reflective Practitioner, and has garnered the unprecedented attention of theorists and practitioners of professional education and practice. Reflective practice has been integrated into professional preparatory programmes, continuing education programmes, and by the regulatory bodies of a wide range of health and social care professions. Yet, despite its popularity and widespread adoption, a problem frequently raised in the literature concerns the lack of conceptual clarity surrounding the term reflective practice. This paper seeks to respond to this problem by offering an analysis of the epistemology of reflective practice as revealed through a critical examination of philosophical influences within the theory. The aim is to discern philosophical underpinnings of reflective practice in order to advance increasingly coherent interpretations, and to consider the implications for conceptions of professional knowledge in professional life. The paper briefly examines major philosophical underpinnings in reflective practice to explicate central themes that inform the epistemological assumptions of the theory. The study draws on the work of Donald Schön, and on texts from four philosophers: John Dewey, Nelson Goodman, Michael Polanyi, and Gilbert Ryle. Five central epistemological themes in reflective practice are illuminated: (1) a broad critique of technical rationality; (2) professional practice knowledge as artistry; (3) constructivist assumptions in the theory; (4) the significance of tacit knowledge for professional practice knowledge; and (5) overcoming mind body dualism to recognize the knowledge revealed in intelligent action. The paper reveals that the theory of reflective practice is concerned with deep epistemological questions of significance to conceptions of knowledge in health and social care professions.

This article analyses reflective practice by exploring ethical knowledge-in-use and the influence of context on professional nursing practice. Is ethical knowledge used in an appropriate context? The author identifies and discusses the theoretical underpinnings of reflective practice and offers an alternative paradigm to the generation and use of ethical knowledge in practice. The message to teachers and practitioners is decoded to facilitate teaching and learning. This article is an extension of the work done by the author and described by him in Nursing Ethics.

Interactive orals are emerging in prominence as an authentic assessment method, accelerated by an increase in online learning from the COVID-19 pandemic. Limited studies have considered the potential of interactive oral assessments to cultivate professional identity through reflective processes. This paper explores how interactive orals stimulate students to engage in reflective practices and in turn, how critical reflective practices influence the formation of professional identity. Findings revealed interactive oral assessments stimulate high levels of engagement in reflective practices. Goal relevance is critical for encouraging engagement in reflective processes through interactive orals. Reflective processes were stimulated through a double loop learning approach, whereby encouraging students to critically identify their desired identity as a professional in the tourism and hospitality sector, encouraged deeper reflective processes. A conceptual model is proposed along with pedagogical suggestions for further assessment of the efficacy of interactive orals for enhancing graduate outcomes in tourism and hospitality education.

This study examines the value of undergraduate law students undertaking structured and assessed reflective practice as part of their studies, in the context of competing notions of employability. We discuss existing use of reflective practice in law and other disciplines, highlighting the different approaches and perspectives on its value. Students in this study engaged in reflection as part of a first year core module aimed at improving retention and performance, followed by a second year option module aimed at personal development in relation to employability and business skills following a work placement. We examine students’ perceptions of reflective practice and discuss how these relate to extant literature. We suggest that reflective practice is a very personal experience that can greatly benefit law students beyond their capacity to be employable. We suggest that reflective practice for law needs to be re-thought in relation to its intended purpose, taking cognisance of experience outside law to inform best practice. We propose that reflective practice should focus on developing the whole person, and discuss this in light of debate over the function of higher education. We suggest that the reinforcement cycle of personal and professional reflective practice in this study has the potential to be high impact practice in legal education as defined by Professor George Kuh.

Critical reflection in professional practice

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed challenges to health systems and institutions, which had to quickly create conditions to meet the growing health needs of the population. Thus, this study aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 on professional nursing practice environments and to identify the variables that affected their quality. Quantitative, observational study, conducted in 16 Portuguese hospitals, with 1575 nurses. Data were collected using a questionnaire and participants responded to two different moments in time: the pre-pandemic period and after the fourth critical period of COVID-19. The pandemic had a positive impact on the Structure and Outcome components, and a negative trend in the Process component. The variables associated with the qualification of the components and their dimensions were predominantly: work context, the exercise of functions in areas of assistance to COVID-19 patients, length of professional experience and length of experience in the service. The investment in professional practice environments impacted the improvement of organizational factors, supporting the development of nurses’ work towards the quality of care. However, it is necessary to invest in nurses’ participation, involvement and professional qualifications, which are aspects strongly dependent on the institutions’ management strategies.

Since 2003, a university healthcare centre in Quebec (Canada) has offered its nursing leaders access to a long-term professional development program focusing on skills in Reflective Practice (RP). This program is based on teaching nursing leaders to interpret and reframe difficult, emotionally-charged situations they encounter on a regular basis, so they can improve their interpersonal interactions with their colleagues, patients, and patients’ families. This article describes the results of a qualitative study conducted in 2018 with 18 nursing leaders who participated for at least three years in the RP program. Participants were asked to describe their understanding of the RP approach, key learnings from the program, and parts of the training they found most valuable. They were also asked to define or share the program’s impact on their professional practice and leadership skills. It was found that the participants view RP as a useful tool for understanding and improving their interactions with others, and that it had led to concrete improvements in their interpersonal and leadership skills. Several of the positive changes described by participants are rarely described in other studies about the use of RP as a professional development tool in a clinical nursing setting. The results suggest that when nurse leaders have participated for several years in an RP program, they experience different benefits than front-line staff with less long-term participation.

Part 1: Introduction 1. Reflecting on reflection and journeys Part 2: Critical perspectives within reflective practice 2. Using reflective practice in the development of exercise-related interventions 3. Where's the evidence? A review of empirical reflective practice research within sport 4. Reflecting forward: Exploring reflective methodologies with/for children 5. Keeping the cat alive: 'getting' reflection as part of professional practice Part 3: Pedagogical approaches to reflective practice 6. Sink or Swim: Case Study Reflections from an undergraduate Football Scientist 7. Enhancing the skills of students through the use of reflective practice in a physical activity and health curriculum 8. Reflections on Reflection: Some Personal Experiences of Delivering Higher Education Coach Education 9. Facilitating reflective practice in graduate trainees and early career practitioners 10. Reflective Practice and the realms of Physiotherapy Part 4: Applied practice: Reflective practice in action 11. They never bought me flowers: Storytelling as a means of critical reflection on applied sport psychology practice 12. Critical reflections from sports physiology and nutrition: Tales from pitch side to ringside 13. Using critical incident reflection in qualitative research: Transferable skills for sport psychologists 14. Mindful Supervision in Sport and Performance Psychology: Building the Quality of the Supervisor-Supervisee Relationship 15. The utility of reflective practice during the provision of sport psychology support 16. Reflective practice in talent development: A narrative inquiry of a coaching psychology intervention Part 5: Reflecting forwards 17. Reflecting back and forwards 18. References

This paper presents the author's attempt to develop her understanding of reflective practice and also verify its effectiveness as a method to improve her teaching, through her own action research. Developing her personal interpretation of Schon's concepts and definition of ‘reflective practice’, the author elaborates a model that is used to analyse her own processes of ‘reflection‐in‐action’ and ‘reflection‐on‐action’ in teaching first‐year architectural students. She also emphasises the importance of the concept of ‘role‐frame’ in informing the whole reflective process, presenting the way she sees her own role‐frame and how it affects her practice.