A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 58

Use of Reflective Practice in Developing Students’ Listening and
Ensemble Performing Skills in Guitar Ensemble Co-Curricular Activity

Limitations

One of the limitations of this study was the short time
frame of the research. This limitation may have affected
the quality of the reflections collected over the 11 weeks.
As the students had to do one reflection every week
for at least four consecutive weeks, this led to some of
the reflections being repetitive, contributing to a loss of
noteworthy reflections.
The timing and venue to implement reflective practice
was another limitation. After observing two weeks of
reflective practice, we realised that asking the students to
complete a journal and sit through a reflective dialogue
immediately after a two-and-a-half-hour rehearsal and a
long day of school, was actually a tall order. The quality of
the reflections could have been affected as the students
were giving generic and repetitive answers so as to get it
completed as quickly as possible.

Recommendations

One recommendation is to give students the option to
complete the reflection journal in the comfort of their own
home and submit it through electronic means (i.e. email)
within 24 hours. It is worth mentioning that we managed to
implement this recommendation in our research study on
three separate occasions and the outcome of this change
was encouragingly positive. However, further testing
on this submission method over a longer period of time
is needed in order to be sure of its positive results. This
brings us to our next recommendation of implementing
reflective practice over an extended period of time so as to
prevent repetitive answers in the students’ reflection. Our
suggestion is to implement it once per term, ideally in the
final week of each term. However, further investigation will
also be required to determine if our claim is true.

55