No abstract

Where courses have as an aim the promotion of reflective practice, it will enhance the achievement of the goal if the level of reflective thinking is assessed. To do this in a satisfactory way requires a reliable protocol for assessing the level of reflection in written work. This article presents a protocol that can be used to guide the allocation of work to four categories, namely: habitual action/non-reflection, understanding, reflection, and critical reflection. Intermediate categories can also be used. Detailed descriptors of each category to guide the process are provided. The protocol was tested by four assessors independently using it to grade a set of written work, and very good agreement was obtained. ReflectionMany courses cite goals related to promoting reflective thinking or developing the ability to reflect on practice. This is particularly true in professional degrees. Schön (1983) argued that expert practitioners in a profession were distinguished from novices by their ability to reflect on their practice when dealing with unusual or particularly complex cases. The logical corollary is that, to ensure adequate preparation for a professional career, programmes need to cultivate the ability to reflect on practice (Schön 1987).It is also arguable that all degrees should promote reflective thinking since it is necessary to make reflective judgements to deal with ill-defined problems. This is surely a generic capability that is needed by graduates in knowledge-based societies. The nature of reflectionWhat is perhaps surprising, in spite of the wide interest in reflection and the volumes written about it, is that the concept is ill defined. Formal definitions are not easy to find as has been observed by Atkins and Murphy (1993) and Sparks-Langer et al. (1990) among others. Many write about reflection with the apparent assumption that everyone knows what it is. However, the disparities in terminology, frames of reference, applications and usage make it clear that this assumption is not helpful.There is an element of confusion within the literature because the concept has become so widely and diversely used that it is now found within quite disparate contexts and based on divergent frames of reference. As a result, a number of quite discrete areas of literature

No abstract

No abstract