Assessing the level of student reflection from reflective journals

Abstract

The concept of reflective learning has been widely adopted in many of the nursing curricula today. Reflective learning is of particular relevance to the education of professionals, as it encourages students to integrate theory with practice, appreciate the world on their own behalf, and turn every experience into a new potential learning experience. While nurse educators have widely accepted the educational benefits of reflection, research into reflective learning is hampered by the lack of reliable and widely accepted methods for assessing whether reflection takes place and the level of any reflection. This study attempted to develop and test coding systems for written reflective journals based on two well-known models of reflective thinking. The reflective journals submitted by the students were subjected to content analysis at two levels. The findings of this study suggest that student writing can be used as evidence for the presence or absence of reflective thinking. The process of allocating students to three categories of non-reflector, reflector and critical reflector was straightforward and reliable. Identifying textual elements within journals and allocating them to the finer levels of reflection within a more complex model of reflective thinking was, however, more problematic and considerably less reliable.

Qualitative Analysis of Written Reflections during a Teaching Certificate Program

“…Medicine, nursing, and pharmacy are among the disciplines that are adapting these types of reflective processes in curricula to aid in learning as well as improve patient care. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] The extent of medical residents' reflection has been explored [13][14][15] and showed that physicians' decision-making skills were improved in complex clinical cases if they were able to critically reflect on those experiences. 15 An evaluation of nursing students concluded that interview sessions (individual, paired, and group) on reflective practice were viewed as beneficial for the participating students and encouraged them to practice reflective thinking on their own.…”

A theoretically-based coding system to guide assessment and evaluation of affective learning

“…All team members attended an orientation session on the coding system and the procedure for analyzing journal content. [21] The identification of these principles was essential to ensure structure and consistency among the team members. The coding principles (see Table 3) included the following: repeated points or arguments are coded only once; if a coder perceives that a student is between coding stages within a paragraph, the coding is based on the lower stage of the coding system; coding is only valid with evidence or substantiation; coding must be supported by textual data and quotes from the literature to illustrate or substantiate a student's own experience are amenable to coding, but quotes that merely demonstrate textbook knowledge are not coded; concepts in the student journals that pertain to personal issues are excluded from coding and finally coders must maintain a personal log to validate their decision making.…”

“…[10,17,18] Similarly, student-reaction essays were also used as a method to guide medical students in exploring and clarifying misconceptions, values, and attitudes concerning aging and palliative care. [19] These studies and others have demonstrated the utility of using Mezirow's theory of transformational learning, [20,21] and the affective domain [22,23] to guide reflective journaling. In particular, Wong and colleagues [21] acknowledged the lack of empirical evidence related to assessment of reflective learning.…”

Clinical Reflection: The experience of Nursing Students in the Obstetric Unit

“…Reflective learning is of particular significance to the education of nursing students as it inspires them to integrate theory and practice and through reflective writing, turns every experience into a new prospective learning experience [1]. The nursing literature focuses the need to promote the concept of reflective practice to assist students in reflection of their experiences [2][3][4][5][6].…”