RAPPORT
WWW.RECORDINGACHIEVEMENT.ORG
Issue 1 (2015)
reflective
practice,
Personal Development
Planning (PDP) and work-based experiences.
The Quality Assurance Agency defines PDP as:
‘a structured and supported process
undertaken by a learner to reflect upon their
own
learning,
performance
and/or
achievement and to plan for their personal,
educational and career development’
QAA, 2009, P.2
Thus PDP is both a reflective and forward
planning activity.
More recently the Higher
Education Achievement Report further reinforces
the notion of reflecting and recording student
achievement, primarily on the premise of
supporting graduate employability (Burgess,
2011; Morris, 2013).
Problematising reflective practice
There are a number of reported and assumed
benefits of reflective practice. It is suggested that
reflection
improves
professional
practice
(Ferreira, et al, 2013) and that through critical and
analytical processes it enhances professional
competence (Devonport and Lane, 2014).
Learners are said to become more effective (Boud
and Walker, 1998) and reflection is said to
develop problem-solving competency, criticality
and original thinking (Hussain, et al, 2011). The
perceived potential of reflective practice to
students and in higher education is clear.
However, the experiences from the sector of
student reflective practice are mixed. Work
placements expose students to unfamiliar ‘real
world’ situations where learning is non-routine:
this context contrasts significantly with their
academic learning (Moon, 2004a).
In the
workplace there is no curriculum or academic
texts to learn from (Moon 2001 and 2004a). Moon
(2004a, p.65) considers work-based learning as
‘chaotic’, a situation that can be ‘confusing for a
learner who is used to being ‘fed’ information in
lectures’.
There is clear evidence from practice that, given
opportunities to learn through work-based
experiences,
students
have
difficulty
in
conceptualising
and
articulating
learning.
Academic colleagues express concerns regarding
the superficial and instrumental approaches that
students adopt and the lack of critical reflection on
practice (Marshall, et al 2014; Moon, 2004a,
2004b, Moon 2006; Trelfa and Telfer, 2014).
Students are encouraged to engage with
reflective practice to make sense of informal
learning in the ‘real world’ and to consider the
alignment of these experiences within the context
of their PDP and future career. However, these
are highly complex processes for inexperienced
young people and the challenges they present are
well recognised. An appraisal of both the framing
and evaluation of learning through placements
reveals limitations in the approaches that students
take. As Moon comments [reflective writing…]:
‘is increasingly used as a means of accounting
for and realizing learning in fieldwork,
placements and work experiences. While it is
generally recognized that students gain from
the opportunity to engage in such experiences,
the learning can be so varied and incoherent
that it is difficult for the student to articulate it
and apply it to other situations’.
Moon, 2006, p.59
It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the
expectations of students’ reflections are high.
However, the benefits of reflective experiences on
work-based learning might not be achieved as
reflective writing for undergraduate students
tends to be ‘superficial, descriptive and probably
doesn't lead to deep or comprehensive learning’
(Moon, 2006, p. 36). Moon (2001) claims that
reflective accounts from students often lack depth
and students tend not to reflect deeply about their
professional behaviours and this is supported by
Trelfa and Telfer (2014) who comment that
students often do not see reflective practice as a
tool for progression and growth.
Much reflective practice literature discusses
stages of reflection, from superficial reflection to
deep transformative learning (Moon 2001, 2004a,
2006; Trelfa and Telfer, 2014). However some
students struggle to ‘get’ reflective practice.
Models of reflection are often based on key events
or ‘critical incidents’ but students often report that
nothing happened to reflect on (Marshall et al.
2014; Trelfa and Telfer 2014). Furthermore the
framing of reflective practice models around
‘critical incidents’ might obscure learning from
more routine practice. The mundane or routine
does not appear, to some students at least, to be
fruitful for reflection.
Marshall et al. (2014) also identify the problem
that students display an instrumental assessment
driven approach. Occasionally it appears t