Objective Postgraduate courses for pharmacists are increasingly incorporating reflection on learning and on professional practice as the theory of learning in use. This paper provides an insight into the views of pharmacists, who participated in a prescribing course, about using reflection to contribute to the development of their learning and professional practice.
Method The research was exploratory in nature and employed an inductive, grounded theory strategy. Qualitative data were collected from focus groups and individual interviewees. Twenty‐six individuals, who had been registered on Keele University's Supplementary Prescribing (SP) course, participated in total.
Key findings and conclusions Two key themes are discussed in this paper that appear to the authors to provide an insight into how reflective learning contributes to the development of professional practice. The structured reflective activities included in participants' reflective portfolios were a catalyst to making them aware of the reflective learning process that they instinctively or intuitively used in their professional practice to some degree. Participants also appeared to be aware of different levels or depths of reflection. They articulated these in a more pragmatic way than the theoretical presentations of levels that appear in published literature. Overall, they saw reflection as being of benefit to their professional development, patient care and their interactions with other health professionals. They perceived it as a way of building the healthcare team through helping them integrate with other health professionals by developing a community of practice.
The aim of this article is to examine the role taken by the Institute for Learning (IfL) in England to promote the nature of professionalism in the lifelong learning sector. It raises the possibility that the decisions taken by the IfL, since its inception in 2002, are leading to the de-professionalisation of teachers. It is argued that what is now needed is a new professionalism that is driven by the practice of phronesis: wise practical reasoning, based on judgement and wisdom, and that accords with the centrality of context and the reflective nature of the activity of teaching. It will be informed by values that enable practitioners to mediate the confrontational forces of managerialism which might otherwise threaten to undermine their professionalism.
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