what is critical reflection in education

Critical Reflection

Critical reflection is a “meaning-making process” that helps us set goals, use what we’ve learned in the past to inform future action and consider the real-life implications of our thinking. It is the link between thinking and doing, and at its best, it can be transformative (Dewey, 1916/1944; Schön, 1983; Rodgers, 2002). Without reflection, experience alone might cause us to “reinforce stereotypes…, offer simplistic solutions to complex problems and generalize inaccurately based on limited data” (Ash & Clayton, 2009, p.26). Engaging in critical reflection, however, helps us articulate questions, confront bias, examine causality, contrast theory with practice and identify systemic issues all of which helps foster critical evaluation and knowledge transfer (Ash & Clayton, 2009, p. 27).  While critical reflection may come more easily for some students than others, it is a skill that can be learned through practice and feedback (Dewey, 1933, Rodgers, 2002).  

Guidelines for Integrating Reflections into Your Course

Incorporating the following characteristics into the design of your reflective activities can help make the reflective process as effective as possible.  

Create Curiosity.  When students learn new concepts or subject matter, they often experience a sense of uncertainty and disequilibrium until they can make sense of the new information. Critical reflection is necessary to assimilate the new information and resolve the state of disequilibrium. It takes time to do well; sparking students’ curiosity can motivate them to engage in the reflective process(Dewey, 1933; Rodgers, 2002). Providing appropriate question prompts, activities, problems and tasks can help spark the necessary curiosity. See CTE's online resource: Reflection Framework and Prompts .

Make it Continual.  Build in “periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning” (Kuh, O’Donnell & Reed, 2013). Because critical reflection is a defined way of thinking, students have to have numerous opportunities throughout the course and the program to practice and receive feedback.

Connect It.  Activities to promote reflection can range from writing/rewriting exercises, problem solving activities, discussions, role playing/simulations, and group work to name a few. To be effective, though, be sure to explicitly connect the reflective activities to course/program learning outcomes, specific assignments, course concepts or experiences .  For an example of role playing/simulations, please see CTE's resource, an interview (YouTube) with Dr. Veronica Kitchen about Using Simulations in the Classroom .

Give it Context.  Design reflective activities to support integration of learning across courses and to engage students with “big questions” related to community/public issues that matter beyond the classroom. Ideally, reflective activities should ask students to consider messy, ill-defined problems that do not have a ‘right’ answer (Moon, 1999).  This helps move them towards higher order thinking and higher levels of reflection. 

Consider your Class Size.  Assessing and providing feedback to reflections require time and resources. For smaller classes, it might be manageable to assess individual reflections through journals, logs, and blogs. For larger classes, consider facilitating whole class discussions and opportunities for peer feedback. Dividing a large class into smaller groups for discussions and small group brainstorming sessions can provide the practice and feedback students need without all the feedback having to come from you, the instructor. Having students share reflections through ePortfolios is yet another way for students to receive feedback from peers. See CTE's online resource about ePortfolios .

Model the Reflective Process.  During class discussions, model the reflective process by asking the kinds of questions that members of your discipline ask. Explicitly point out how you support a claim with evidence. As you go through the process, explain how you are modeling the critical reflection process. Providing students with a rubric may help them practice the process themselves.  

Breakdown the Assignment.  When you provide students with details for a particular assignment, lead a discussion asking them as a group to outline a process for tackling the assignment. Have each student then create a personal plan for addressing the areas which might cause them more difficulty.  Ask students to hand in different pieces of the assignment throughout the term, providing feedback to the various components. Over time, less guidance and feedback will be required to help students with the reflective thinking process. 

Encourage Multiple Perspectives.  Being exposed to different perspectives (through discussions with classmates, or through resources such readings, websites, case studies, simulations that represent different points of view), and being able to participate in a dialogue with others (peers, instructors) about matters of importance is critical to the reflective thinking process. Having students work on collaborative projects can facilitate this; they learn to listen to others and consider different approaches to solving problems.

Provide a Safe Environment  where students can explore and articulate emotional responses. Students might not mind sharing their knowledge and understanding about content with their classmates but may be less inclined to share emotional responses with others. In these cases, consider splitting up the task so that the descriptive, non-personal component is done in class and the articulation of learning part is handed in individually to a TA or instructor.    

Assess It.  Making reflections part of a course grade encourages students to engage in the reflective process, helps them track their growth and development over time, and signals to them that critical reflection is a worthwhile and valued activity. Provide students with ‘frequent, timely and constructive feedback’ to the reflective activities.

Provide Clear Marking Criteria and Exemplars.  Clearly state the criteria for success and show students an example of a good reflection. Explain why the example is a good one (e.g., show how the reflection provides concrete examples to support the observations, and ties the observations back to the course content/learning outcome). Provide students with opportunities to self-assess or provide peer-feedback using the rubric that you will use to assess their reflections. 

Assignment and Rubric Examples:

See the links below for examples of critical reflection assignments that have been shared with CTE. Some of the instructors have also included their assessment rubrics along with the assignment instructions. 

• Reflecting on Professional Skill Development
• Becoming Reflexive Practitioners
• ePortfolio: Inspired Insights, Magnificent Failures, and Unanticipated Connections
• AAC&U Integrative Learning VALUE rubric
• Higher Levels of Reflection Rubric

Choose Prompts that Suit Your Goals    

Use language that suits your course and discipline.  The term ‘reflection’ has come to mean different things to different people (Rodgers, 2002). Use a term that makes sense to your discipline. Science students might roll their eyes if asked to reflect on personal development in a chemistry course. Is there a term that your discipline uses instead of the term reflection (design notes, lab notes, documentation of bugs)? 

Choose the type of reflection that suits your goals.  Reflective activities can be of two types: one type helps students focus on their growth and development, and on their personal learning process and another type fosters students’ capacity to think deeply about content and concepts. Be sure to choose reflective prompts that align with your course goals.  

• Process Reflection.  This type of reflection promptsstudents to think about their progress and the strategies they are using while they are working on a project or assignment (e.g., where are you with your project? What challenges are you having? What are you planning to do about those challenges? What problems did you encounter in completing the assignment? How did you troubleshoot them? What still needs work?) This can be done individually or, in large classes, consider using small group discussions.
• Inward-Looking Reflection.  When reflecting inward, students focus on their personal strengths, gaps, resources, standards, values, response to challenges, strategies, etc. 
• Outward-Looking Reflection.  By observing others, students can build their awareness of alternative perspectives and ways of doing things. When contrasts are noted, students can give examples to support their observations.
• Forward-Looking Reflection.  At the beginning of a course, project, or assignment, prompt students to think about which components look familiar and which look more challenging and difficult, and why. Towards the end of the course, hand these lists back to the students and have them discuss whether they have met their goals. As a class, have the students list which of the goals they believe they achieved, and which they did not. Alternatively, have students write a letter to the students who take the course next, giving advice and encouragement.
• Backward-Looking Reflection . At the end of a project, work term or volunteer experience a backward-looking reflection is a good way for students to take stock of their experience.

Examples of Reflection Models and Reflection Questions:

• Sample Reflection Questions
• Eight Reflection Models
• Reflections to Foster Deep Thinking & Connection Making

If you would like support applying these tips to your own teaching, CTE staff members are here to help.  View the  CTE Support  page to find the most relevant staff member to contact. 

• AAC&U Integrative Learning VALUE rubrics retrieved from  https://www.aacu.org/value-rubrics
• Habits of Mind: The Questions Intelligent Thinkers Ask that Help Them Solve Problems and Make Decisions retrieved from  https://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/stw/edutopia-stw-assessment-high-sch-humanities-habits-of-mind.pdf
• Sample reflection questions retrieved from  https://www.edutopia.org/pdfs/stw/edutopia-stw-replicatingPBL-21stCAcad-reflection-questions.pdf
• Teaching Metacognitive Skills CTE tipsheet retrieved from  https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/metacognitive
• Ash, S.L., & Clayton, P. H. (2009). Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection in applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1(1), 25-48.
• Boss, S. (2009). High tech reflection strategies make learning stick retrieved from  http://www.edutopia.org/student-reflection-blogs-journals-technology
• Dewey, J. (1916/1944). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: The Free Press.
• Kalman, C.S., Sobhanzadeh, M., Thompson, R., Ibrahim, A., Wang, X. (2015). Combination of interventions can change students’ epistemological beliefs.  Physical Review Special Topics Physics Education Research,  11(2):020136-. doi:10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.11.020136
• Kuh, G. D., O’Donnell, K., & Reed, S. (2013). Ensuring quality and taking high-impact practices to scale.  Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities .
• Moon, J. (1999). Reflection in learning and professional development. Abingdon, Oxon: RoutledgeFalmer.
• Rodgers, C. (2002). Defining reflection: Another look at John Dewey and reflective thinking.  The Teachers College Record ,  104 (4), 842-866.
• Schön, D. A. (1983).  The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action  (Vol. 5126). Basic books.

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5 Activities That Promote Reflection in the Classroom

The metacognitive work of reflecting on learning boosts engagement and encourages the development of critical thinking skills.

Reflection is a powerful tool for enhancing learning and knowledge acquisition and is essential for teachers and students. When students engage in reflective thinking, they are better able to analyze and evaluate their experiences, which enables them to extract meaning and actively process what they have learned and to make sense of it. By taking the time to engage in the metacognitive practice of thinking and reflecting on learning, students can make more meaningful connections and gain a deeper understanding of the material, leading to greater long-term retention and application of knowledge.

Reflection also helps students develop metacognitive and social and emotional skills, such as self-awareness and self-regulation, by identifying areas for improvement and setting new goals. These are all important skills for lifelong learning.

5 Learning Activities that Can Foster reflection

To promote reflection, there are many options available that provide students with choices in how to share what they have learned and to engage in reflective practice. 

1. Blogging. For students who enjoy writing or jotting down ideas, blogging or journaling can be a great choice. Whether students contribute to a class blog or share it only with their teacher, it enables students to practice their writing skills, reflect on their learning, and potentially receive feedback from their peers. The blog can be on a topic related to their coursework, such as a book review, a reflection on a field trip, or a summary of a research project and what they learned and how the experience was for them.

WeVideo is a neat way for students to compile a series of video reflections and have an artifact of their learning to look back on throughout the year. It also promotes student choice and building digital skills with its editing tools and features. Students can even collaborate with classmates as they reflect. 

2. Digital storytelling. Digital storytelling is a popular and engaging option for students who are looking to showcase their knowledge through multimedia. With digital storytelling, students are empowered with choices in how to create a visual representation of their learning in a fun, engaging, and meaningful way. Depending on the tool used, students can include images, video, and audio to share thoughts and reflections of learning. 

StoryJumper is a digital storytelling platform that promotes student choice and voice in learning. Students can choose different background scenes, characters, and props and record audio for their books. Books can easily be shared with a QR code. 

3. Making mind maps. Creating graphic organizers or mind maps can be another way to boost visualization of learning and for students to present their thought processes, ideas, and connections between different concepts they have learned. Mind maps can promote critical thinking and creativity skills, as well as helping students evaluate how well they understand complex topics and develop a deeper understanding of the material.

Ideamapper is a tool that can be used by students and teachers for creating a mind map. There are many templates available to start with that make it easy to process learning, creating visualizations that help students reflect on concepts learned and make connections, leading to better content retention. 

4. Podcasting. For students who prefer speaking rather than writing to communicate their thoughts and ideas, podcasts are a great option. I started my own podcast as a way to reflect on my teaching practices and also to share what I was learning and how it impacted my classroom. By creating a podcast, students can explore their communication skills, delve deeper into a topic, and have a thoughtful discussion with classmates or simply a conversation with themselves that they can listen to and process for further reflection.

Students can create an episode to talk about a current event or a specific area of study, or to self-assess their learning experiences. Students can provide their unique perspective and insights on a topic while refining their speaking and communication skills. They will articulate their ideas more clearly, structure their thoughts, and engage in conversation, all of which also benefit their SEL skills.

Soundtrap for Education offers students and teachers many resources for getting started with podcasting in the classroom. Soundtrap also has lesson plans on a variety of topics and content areas for educators to explore and start podcasting with students right away.

5. Building digital portfolios. Digital portfolios are a great way to have students track their progress. Through a portfolio, they can build a narrative of their work and have a space to reflect on their progress and set goals.

Spaces EDU is a digital portfolio platform that helps teachers gain a deeper understanding of students’ interests, needs, and learning styles. Students can track their growth over time, identifying strengths and areas where they can set new goals. This information is critical in supporting reflective practice, allowing teachers to adjust their teaching strategies to better serve each student’s unique needs. 

Wakelet offers many possibilities for classroom use. Students can have their own Wakelet to add artifacts of work and create a digital portfolio, as well as record Flip videos to reflect on their learning. Flip has been a very beneficial tool in my classroom for several years. Whether students record videos to share their ideas or respond to prompts, it offers many choices that provide authentic and engaging learning and reflection opportunities for students. 

Benefits of reflection

Reflection promotes self-awareness and self-improvement and helps students identify strengths and weaknesses, set goals, and develop strategies to improve their learning outcomes. We want students to take ownership of their learning and become more active and engaged learners.

Reflective practices also enhance critical thinking and problem-solving skills. When we engage in the metacognitive process of thinking about thinking, we develop greater awareness of our learning experiences. Students will develop a habit of self-reflection that will enable them to better adapt to new challenges, learn from experiences, and continue to grow and develop as they prepare for the future.

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Where to get started with critical reflection and why it’s important for quality early education

Understanding how to use critical reflection is an essential part of professional development for educators. We explore what critical reflection is, why it’s important, and models to consider. 

By CELA on 19 Oct, 2023

Early education and care professionals play a crucial role in shaping the future of children. As such, it’s important to engage in continuous learning and professional development. One essential aspect of this is critical reflection. In this article, we’ll explore what critical reflection is, its importance in early education and different models to consider in your critical reflection practice. 

What is critical reflection? 

The critical reflection process involves deep analysis and evaluation of experiences and actions to gain new insights and knowledge. It goes beyond thinking about what happened and delves into understanding why it happened and how things could have been done differently.  

Jannelle Gallagher, CELA Early Education Specialist, explains that critical reflection is different from reflective practice.  

“Critical reflection takes reflective practice to a different level beyond where educators unpack their own practices with certain aims or goals in mind,” says Jannelle. “Critical reflection is a meaning–making process that involves deeper thinking, analysis, and evaluation of the effectiveness of planning and implementation of the curriculum and the impact on children's learning, and well-being.” 

The importance of critical reflection in early education 

The importance of critical reflection is highlighted in the updated Early Years Learning Framework V2.0. The term is embedded in all areas of the document, appearing 24 times, a stark contrast with the EYLF 2009 version where the term appeared only three times. 

By asking questions, considering multiple perspectives, and identifying areas for improvement, critical reflection empowers educators to grow both personally and professionally. It supports a deeper understanding of beliefs, values, and biases, and how these factors influence their interactions with children, families, and colleagues. Educators can use critical reflection to develop strategies to enhance their practice and provide more responsive and individualised support to children.  

The process takes the educators on a journey led by their own curiosities and wonderings where pedagogical decision-making has a transformative impact on future practices,” explains Jannelle. “Educators who engage in critical reflection challenge practices that contribute to inequities or discrimination. They demonstrate an understanding of each child’s learning, development, and well-being.

Different models of critical reflection 

One widely recognised model of critical reflection is Gibbs' reflective cycle , which involves six stages: Description of the experience, feelings about the experience, evaluation of the experience, analysis of the experience, conclusion and action plan, and reflection on the process. It encourages educators to reflect on their experiences, identify emotions, critically evaluate actions, analyse the situation, draw conclusions, and create action plans for improvement. 

Another prominent model is Kolb's experiential learning cycle . It emphasises the idea that learning is a cyclical process that involves four stages: 

Concrete experience: In this stage, learners engage in direct experiences or activities that serve as the foundation for learning. 

Reflective observation: Learners reflect on their experiences and observe what they have encountered, identifying patterns, connections, and personal insights. 

Abstract conceptualisation: Based on their observations and reflections, learners develop abstract concepts, theories, or frameworks that help them understand and make sense of their experiences. 

Active experimentation: Learners apply their new understanding and concepts by actively testing them in practical or real-world situations. This stage allows for further learning through trial and error, feedback, and adjustment. 

A third model is Borton's model of reflection . This model involves three key questions: 

• What?  
• So what?  
• Now what?  

Educators reflect on the experience (What?), explore the significance and implications (So what?), and determine the next steps or changes needed (Now what?). It encourages a deeper understanding of experiences and the implementation of meaningful changes in practice. 

Using the Planning Cycle to reflect

Prior to joining CELA, Jannelle was a preschool director. She recalls an instance where her team used The Planning Cycle as a framework to delve deeper into their practices, known truths and beliefs. 

“Two of the children brought to our attention the idea of privacy in the bathroom,” she explains. “What resulted was a two-year project deeply exploring children’s ideas, families’ and educators’ perceptions and unpacking the intent and understanding of the legislation. This resulted in a $120,000 bathroom and toilet redevelopment. 1  

“Our practices were critiqued and analysed, internally and externally. Together we planned and implemented a curriculum plan which echoed children’s voices. Our children, families, and team of educators were involved in an ongoing cycle of review.”  

The new EYLF V2.0 discusses the notion of a robust culture of critical reflection that supports educators to question established practices and question why they work the way they do with children. 

When an environment offers an opportunity for educators to engage in deep pedagogical thinking, they are empowered and committed to their own professional development. This translates into collaboration with peers to develop capabilities and new practices resulting in high-quality early childhood education for children. 

Training and support 

CELA Webinar: How the Exceeding Themes Influence Your Practices  

CELA Webinar: Demystifying Critical Reflection  

Further reading 

Amplify!: How we made our Exceeding Themes present on assessment day  

Amplify!: A reflection on reframing inclusive early education  

References 

1. Jannelle Gallagher and Zsuzsa Millei (May 2012). Opening Spaces for Dialogue and Re-Envisioning Children’s Bathroom in a Preschool: Practitioner Research with Children on a Sensitive and Neglected Area of Concern  

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2 What is critical reflection?

Critical analysis and reflection is a key tool in helping us learn from the contradictions and complexities we encounter.

Activity 2: Importance of critical reflection

Listen to the clip of Dave and Sarah explaining what is meant by critical reflection and the importance of critical reflection in learning to teach. (Please note that The Open University’s PGCE course mentioned in this audio has now been discontinued.)

Transcript: Audio 2

Non-diegetic

Both Dave and Sarah emphasise the importance of being able to analyse lessons and basing that analysis on the evidence available.

Critical reflection allows us to synthesise different perspectives (whether from other people or literature) to help explain, justify or challenge what we have encountered in our own or other people’s practice. It may be that theory or literature gives us an alternative perspective that we should consider, it may provide evidence to support our views or practices or it may explicitly challenge them.

Critical reflection also allows us to analyse what we have learned and how we have learned to enable us to take control of our own development. It is in light of these two functions that a great deal of importance is placed on critical reflection in the professional development of teachers.

The rest of this course will help you to understand critical reflection and introduce some tools to support effective reflection.

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Lesson 1: Why critical reflection?

There are many reasons to incorporate critical reflection into your instructional practice. The simple answer is that critical reflection is an essential component of experiential learning. However, we invite you to engage with this question more in depth so you can work out your personal reasons for wanting to utilize critical reflection.   

Experience without critical reflection 

According to Bringle and Hatcher (1999), “experience becomes educative when critical reflective thought creates new meaning and leads to growth and the ability to take informed actions” (p.180).  

Experience alone can lead students “to reinforce stereotypes about difference, to develop simplistic solutions to complex problems, and to generalize inaccurately based on limited data.” (Ash & Clayton, 2009, p.26). Critical reflection enables the facilitation of specific learning outcomes to avoid such pitfalls. According to Ash and Clayton (2009), critical reflection:  

Generates  learning (articulating questions, confronting bias, examining causality, contrasting theory with practice, pointing to systemic issues)  

Deepens  learning (challenging simplistic conclusions, inviting alternative perspectives, asking “why” iteratively)  

Documents  learning (producing tangible expressions of new understandings for evaluation) (p.27)

Critical reflection and holistic learning

Critical reflection can work to connect and integrate knowledges and wisdoms from multiple sources. Critical reflection can connect academic learning to the learner's:

Sensory/embodied experience

(Dewey, 1958)

Prior knowledge

(Stucki, 2012) 

Cultural or communal knowledge

(Stucki, 2012)

According to Māori pedagogue Paora Stucki (2012), this weaving together facilitated by reflection speaks to an openness and flexibility to diverse learners and communities as it makes space to integrate the wisdoms and knowledges from learner’s lives outside academia. It is thus a critical step for equity, diversity, and inclusivity in learning.  

Critical reflection and the social world 

When students are encouraged to start with a deeper reflexive analysis of their social positions, critical reflection can also promote global, civic, and social engagement (Tiessen, 2018). In fact, Stephen Brookfield (2009) argues that reflection is only critical when it involves an examination of social contexts, systems of inequity, and structures of power.  

Critical reflection can facilitate critical social consciousness by helping learners to: 

Recognize their social privilege

Examine the limitations of their situated perspectives, develop practices informed by their learnings.

Marcella LaFever (2016), a non-indigenous pedagogue, also suggests that critical reflection can be used to integrate not only a decolonizing approach to pedagogy but one that centers and prioritizes indigenous ways of knowing and praxis, particularly the spiritual dimension to learning.

Critical reflection and indigeneity

Margaret Raven, a Yamtji-Noonjar and non-Indigenous scholar, (2010) warns against formulaic or “tick-the-box” approaches when considering ethics and indigeneity in academia. Instead, any integration of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing must be preceded by careful reflexive consideration and more importantly, conversation with Indigenous communities (Raven, 2010). 

In reference to critical reflection specifically, she urges pedagogues to consider the cultural safety of such assignments (Margaret Raven, personal communication, September 19, 2021). While she agrees with the benefits of critical reflection listed above, Dr. Raven asks educators to carefully consider how these assignments are designed, contextualized, and evaluated.

She warns that reflections on one’s past and present engagements with power can be associated with trauma especially but not exclusively for Indigenous students. While acknowledging its potential to facilitate healing, she calls upon pedagogues to approach critical reflection with a trauma-informed lens that reflects a broader consideration of cultural safety.  

This online module was developed with an eye towards acknowledging the indigenous roots of what we now call “critical reflection.” However, this is a very limited glimpse into indigenous perspectives. If you have any additional resources or information on indigeneity and critical reflection, please contact us at  [email protected]

Benefits of critical reflection

(Brookfield, 1995)

Gaining new perspectives and understandings

Clarifying our assumptions and beliefs.

Developing a clear rationale for our actions and approaches. 

Promoting a positive sense of self-awareness and self-confidence

Taking informed action, focusing on a philosophy of continuous growth and improvement.

In summary, the purpose of reflection is to integrate and articulate what one has gained from an experience to meaningfully engage with one’s own learning and one’s strategies for the future.

Reflection question:

What are some of your past experiences with critical reflection? Why do you want to integrate critical reflection into your instructional practice? 

Why use critical reflection?

Additional resources

Promoting reflection and resilience through course design.

View resource

Lesson checklist

Review reasons for integrating critical reflection into pedagogy  

Reflect on why you want to facilitate critical reflection  

Watch "Why critical reflection?" video  

Check out additional resources 

Ash, S. L., & Clayton, P. H. (2009). Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection in applied learning.  Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education , 1(1), 25-48. 

Bringle, R. G. & Hatcher, J. A., "Reflection in Service Learning: Making Meaning or Experience" (1999).  Evaluation/Reflection . 23. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/slceeval/23 

Brookfield, S.D. 1995.  Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher .  Jossey-Bass. 

Brookfield, S. D. (2009). The concept of critical reflection: Promises and contradictions.  European Journal of Social Work , 12(3), 293-304. Doi: 10.1080/13691450902945215  

Dewey, J. (1958).  Democracy and Education . The Macmillan Company.  

LaFever, M. (2016) Switching from Bloom to the Medicine Wheel: creating learning outcomes that support Indigenous ways of knowing in post-secondary education, Intercultural Education, 27:5, 409-424, doi: 10.1080/14675986.2016.1240496  

Michelson, E. (2015).  Gender, Experience, and Knowledge in Adult Learning: Alisoun’s Daughters  (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/10.4324/9781315709291 

Tiessen, R. (2018) Improving student reflection in experiential learning reports in post-secondary institutions.  Journal of Education and Learning , 7(3), 1-10, doi: 10.5539/jel.v7n3p1  

Raven, M. (2010). Protocols: Devices for Translating Moralities, Controlling Knowledge, Defining Actors in Indigenous Research, and Critical Ethical Reflection.  Australian Aboriginal Studies  2010(2), 33–47. 

More lessons

Lesson 2: Designing critical reflection assignments

Lesson 3: Confronting discomfort and subjectivity

Lesson 4: Critical reflection prompts

<< Go back to Critical Reflection Learning Module

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The What? So What? And Now What? Of Critical Reflection

Dr. natasha kenny, phd, taylor institute of teaching and learning .

July 30, 2014

Critical reflections can provide a great opportunity for us to evaluate and document students’ learning progress

Critical reflection occurs when we analyze and challenge our presuppositions and evaluate the appropriateness of our knowledge, understanding and beliefs, in light of our present contexts (Mezirow, 1990). Many of us would support the importance of fostering critical reflection in the classroom – for both instructors and students. As highlighted by Brookfield (1995), there are many benefits to engaging in critical reflection including:

• gaining new perspectives and understandings;
• clarifying our assumptions and beliefs, and developing a clear rationale for our actions and approaches;
• promoting a positive sense of self-awareness and self-confidence
• taking informed action; and,
• focusing on a philosophy of continuous growth and improvement.

As instructors, critical reflections can provide a great opportunity for us to evaluate and document students’ learning progress. As we view learning through our student’s eyes, we can also garner feedback on our own instructional approaches and success.

Those of us who have engaged in critical reflection, or have used critical reflection in the classroom will note how difficult it can be to engage in the process. At the 2013 Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) Conference, Gavan Watson and I reflected on how difficult it is  to “teach” critical reflection . Despite seeing the value over time, students often communicate their dislike for engaging in the process. In addition to clearly communicating  why  they are doing  what  they are doing (i.e. by defining and linking intended course learning outcomes to activities and assignments which involve critical reflection), it is helpful to provide structured opportunities for students to engage in critical reflection both informally (e.g. classroom discussions) and formally (e.g. graded assignments) throughout the duration of the course. Aronson (2011) provides a very practical overview of additional strategies to foster critical reflection.

One of the most straight-forward frameworks that I have used to support critical reflection in my personal and professional practice is: What? So What? Now What?

What?  What happened? What did you learn? What did you do? What did you expect? What was different? What was your reaction?

So what?  Why does it matter? What are the consequences and meanings of your experiences? How do your experiences link to your academic, professional and/or personal development?

Now what?  What are you going to do as a result of your experiences? What will you do differently? How will you apply what you have learned?

Whatever your approach to critical reflection, one thing is for certain – sustained practice illuminates the value of engaging in the process, and eases the pain.

Related content

Promoting reflection and resilience through course design .

Read more >>

Learning Module: Critical Reflection  

Aronson, L. (2011) Twelve tips for teaching reflection at all levels of medical education. Medical Teacher, 33(3), 200-205.

Brookfield, S.D. 1995.  Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher.   Jossey-Bass, CA.

Mezirow, J. 1990.  How critical reflection triggers transformative learning.  In pages 1-20 of J. Mezirow (Ed).  Fostering Critical Reflection in Adulthood.  Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Fransisco.

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• Early childhood education

Critical Reflection

A presentation from the 2022 ECEC Roadshow on critical reflection and how it should drive your practice.

- Great. Thanks very much for that, Kate. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the New South Wales Department of Education's webinar on critical reflection. My name's Belinda Wakeford and I'm one of the state operations managers in our quality assurance and regulatory services, which sits within the early childhood education. You may also know us as the reg authority. As we begin this morning, we have a video we'd like to share with some children acknowledging country.

- We place our hands on the ground to acknowledge Aboriginal land. We place our hands in the sky that covers Aboriginal land. We place our hands on our heart to care for Aboriginal land. We promise.

- Great. Thank you. Thanks for that, Kate, and I'd like to acknowledge that I'm meeting you today from the beautiful Dharawal land on the south coast and I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the various lands on which you're all joining us from today and pay my respects to elders past and present. I extend that respect to our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants and colleagues that are joining us today. So to get us started, a few housekeeping bits. As Kate mentioned, your microphone and video and chat functions have been disabled for the webinar today. During the registration process, you were invited to send through some of your questions, and we had a huge response to this and received well over 300 questions from the group, which is fantastic. For that reason, we deliberately made a decision to close off the Q&A function just for today. What we have done though is use some of those common themes from your questions to inform what we've included in today's session, and we'll talk directly to a few of those popular questions towards the end. Please do note though, the Q&A function will remain in place for the remaining Roadshows. We acknowledge some of you would like to know how do we document to get exceeding. I have that question frequently when during A&R, and we've been asked directly, what do the department want to see? What are the officers looking for? And I just want to start by saying the purpose of critical reflection is to support your continuous improvement journey to enhance your service quality and practice, leading to improved outcomes for children, and that's what we're going to be focusing on today. This is not about us as a reg authority. It's about you and your service. If by the end of this morning's session we haven't been able to address your question, there will be further opportunities for you to connect with our team, and we'll share details about how to make contact later in the session. For any questions that you might have relating to your service operation, you can also contact our information and inquiries team who are able to support you. I'm just going to get lovely Kate to pop the details into the chat for you now. We're also going to be using a few interactive features during today's session, including Menti. Hopefully you're familiar with that if you've been to some of the other Roadshows this week. So can I please ask you to have your phone or another device to scan and have that ready? The code will pop on the screen so that you can interact with us, and finally, as you would've been informed when you came in, this session is being recorded and you'll be provided with information about how you can revisit the session once our Roadshows have completed. So today, we will look at reflection versus critical reflection, and our focus is to understand the difference between reflective practice and critical reflection in order to support your continuous improvement journey. So what is critical reflection, when is reflection more of an evaluation, and how does critical reflection drive your practice and quality improvement journey? This morning, we'll hear from Alison, who's one of our experienced authorized officers, as well as a service leader from the sector who has kindly joined us this morning to share with you their critical reflection journey, and we're hoping after today's session that you'll walk away with a deeper understanding of critical reflection, and importantly, how this might drive your quality practices. We know critical reflection is part of the National Quality Standard. If we look within Quality Area 1, Element 1.3.2 speaks directly to critical reflection of children's learning and development. Critical reflection is also one of the three themes that services need to demonstrate at the standard level to be rated exceeding the NQS. Some of the participants online with us today submitted questions around what's the difference between critical reflection in relation to 1.3.2 at the element level and critical reflection as one of the exceeding themes, and we weren't surprised to see this question come through commonly, as we know that this causes, broadly, some confusion across the sector. We acknowledge it can be confusing with the same terminology that's used for both. So I guess to look at what the difference is, I think I need to start by noting what's the same, and that is they both require critical reflection which involves closely examining all aspects of events and experiences from different perspectives. Critical reflection outlined in Element 1.3.2 is about how educators critically reflect specifically on children's learning and development, both as individuals and in groups, to drive the program and their practice. Some examples of how we focus on children's learning and development is through reflection in action, such as altering experiences where they're not, our children not engaging, or adapting the program to include all children, rather than adapting a child's routine or requirements to fit the program. We may also document critical reflection of the program and our practices by analysing our teaching strategies to determine if they're supporting our learning goals that we've created for individual children, or analysing if group experiences and learning goals are being achieved. So as you can see, critical reflection in this capacity has a focus on how children's learning is being evaluated and analysed and what changes are made to support their learning and development within the program. Exceeding theme two, practices informed by critical reflection, involves a deep level of regular and ongoing analysis, questioning, and thinking that goes beyond evaluation and review. Critical reflection informs practice when the continuous reflection of all educators individually and together informs decision making and drives continuous quality improvement. It's about the how and the why we do what we do and it's a universal theme that can be applied across all standards of the NQS, and it's not specific to children's learning and development per se. I'm now going to introduce you to Alison Hendry. Alison is one of our amazing authorised officers in the continuous improvement team, and Alison came to the department with extensive industry experience. She has a clear passion for critical reflection and quality improvement practices that are informed by theoretical and philosophical research in this area. Welcome, Alison. Thanks for joining me this morning.

- Okay. Hi, everyone. Great to see so many of you participants are online with us this morning. Before we deep dive into critical reflection and what that actually means, I'd like to hear from you all. I'd like to hear, what do you think critical reflection involves? So we're all going to use Menti now, if you could. Could you tell me in a few words what you think is involved in critical reflection? You can use the QR code on your screen or go to menti.com and enter the code that is on the top of your screen there. Then type in a few words, and I'll give you a few minutes. We'd love to see your thoughts and it is anonymous, so please feel free to join in. Great. I can see some of our words coming in and they are fabulous. A lot of people are saying analysing, which is exactly right. Thinking. Oh, I think a lot of you are really on the right track there. Look at all these responses. Fabulous. Thank you so much, everybody, for providing these responses. That's great. I can see that analysing is clearly something that's at the heart of what a lot of people believe is involved in critical reflection. Fabulous. Okay. So now we're at a point where we're going to look at what is the difference between reflection and critical reflection. What we want to understand is what is reflection and when does reflection transform into that critical reflection space. So theorists tell us that reflection is deliberate. It's conscious. It's a way of making sense of what we've been doing, and realistically, it's a way that we learn from the experience. John Dewey, who I have affectionately named the grandfather of critical reflection in education, most famously said, "We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience." So if reflection is about meaning making, then what's critical reflection? Again, theorists tell us that critical reflection is the relationship between theory and practice or theory and experience. ACECQA reminds us that critical reflection really is multifaceted. It's multilayered. So it's no wonder we all, at times, find it hard to break this down and have a really good understanding of what's involved and then how we engage in the process. This is not easy. So if you find critical reflection smooth sailing, you might not be examining deeply enough. Critical reflection involves critical thinking and multiple perspectives. There's purpose in it and it's used to support enhancements or change or refining practice. Critical reflection is the link between thinking and doing, and my favourite part of these theorists' quotes is that "critical reflection can truly be transformative." This is where we see it come alive. Maybe potentially Freire sums it up best when he notes that "Critical reflection on practice is a requirement of the relationship between theory and practice. Otherwise theory simply becomes 'blah, blah, blah,' and practice is pure activism," but I'm sure you all want to know what the grandfather of critical reflection will tell us. Well, he tells us that critical reflection requires active, persistent and careful consideration of the conclusions that we draw and the knowledge base that we've relied upon to come to those conclusions. So if we now know what reflection is and what critical reflection is, let's see what it looks like when we put them side by side and try to identify what is the difference. We know that reflection is a very practical, in a very practical everyday sense is looking back on an experience to learn from it. Therefore, we know that reflection is a means of building knowledge. However, we know that there's a change to reflection to make it critical. The Australian Institute of Radiography has actually given us a very simple way of looking at when that change from reflection to critical reflection occurs. We know that critical reflection is a process of analysing, considering and questioning experiences within a broad context. Critical reflection can therefore be broken down into a continuous cycle involving the process of practice, reflection, viewing these two elements through a lens of theory, and then reflection or analysis on what we've discovered in that process. From a pictorial view, this ongoing and continuous cycle looks like this. If we start at practice, this is all about the things that we are mostly doing on a daily basis. We're noticing. We're observing what we're feeling. We're thinking about what we're doing. It's really about evaluating. For example, did the environment set up support the learning outcomes? Were the children engaged? Did the new routine work for the morning session, or are families able to understand and access the rostering structure? The next step is also probably something that many of us are doing in terms of that reflection step. We're recording. We're examining. We're confronting the situation we're experiencing and challenging why we're doing what we're doing. We may be writing in a journal or discussing at team meetings why something isn't working and collectively decide to make a change. For example, does the environment allow for children's agency? Collectively, we decide that it doesn't, as children are unable to access resources independently, so we decide to add an open bookshelf so that they can house resources that children can independently obtain. The element that needs to be added to this cycle in order for this to become critical reflection is theoretical influences. The reason why it's important that theory or philosophical influences become part of this ongoing continuous cycle of critical reflection is because these perspectives will underpin the why of what we're doing. It will guide the change. It informs the practice or informs the shaping of a new practice through research or exploring theoretical perspectives. We might read various articles or guiding documentation, such as recognised publications or other sources sharing best practice. We might meet and talk with some subject matter experts or attend professional workshops to learn more about the area that we're critically reflecting on. When we put together our original practice or evaluation and reflection with theory, we're able then to make an informed analysis. This informed analysis is another form of reflection whereby we could rewrite or re-evaluate or critique or challenge those original beliefs that we held or the original way that we did things in order to close the loop and inform our ongoing practice. Realistically, the process of critical reflection needs to take the first two steps of practice and reflection and review those through a framework of theory or philosophical influences in order to analyse critically what we're doing now and what we might do in the future. As I said, the magic happens when we close the loop and use our critical reflection or analysis based on theory to inform, improve or change our practice. As such, the outcome of our critical reflection, or simply the results, might include an uplift of practice or a creation of a new practice, creation of a new policy, a change to the environment, or a refining or affirmation of current practices. It's only when we close this loop that the process of critical reflection has been completed. These outcomes are important and they are examples that demonstrate how your service practice has been informed by critical reflection, which aligns to the exceeding theme two under the NQS. I would just like to give you some additional examples from published research and also recognised bodies who have tried to clarify the difference between reflection and critical reflection. So Dr. Jan Fook, who is an internationally renowned scholar widely recognised for her work on critical social work, practice research and critical reflection, tells us that the difference between reflection and critical reflection lies in that analysis step that we've been talking about, as this brings together the theory with our original reflection, and together, there is likely to be some transformative change, change in our behaviour or change in our practice. Effectively, this is an informed change of practice. Similarly, ACECQA reminds us that critical reflection occurs when educators consider, question, analyse, research, utilize recognised guiding documentation, and re-evaluate planning and decision making that informs practice and process. ACECQA also reminds us that the concept or culture of ongoing self-assessment and continuous improvement, as we've just viewed on the previous slides, the continuous nature of the cycle of critical reflection, all of which ultimately aims to lead to improved outcomes for children, families, educators and service leaders.

- Oh, thanks very much, Alison. That was really great. I think that summarises that really well, and really key for me is that connection of theoretical influences, or simply put, who and what's guiding our practice on our reflection or evaluations and then challenging these. So that's great. Thank you very much for that insight, Alison. I'm now going to introduce Bernice Mathie-Morris, who is the director of early learning at Bomaderry Community Preschool. Good morning, Bernice, and thank you for joining us. It's really lovely to have you today.

- Morning. It's lovely to be present and to be able to have the chance to share some of our practices that we engage with at Bomaderry Community Preschool. Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm meeting with you today on the lands of the Dharawal people on the beautiful south coast of New South Wales. So yes, I'd just like to start by saying at Bomaderry Community Preschool, we love to engage in critical reflection. I think that comes back to, and reflection, it comes back to our love of learning. So we always say that it's important to involve children and impassion children to have that love of learning, but as adults too, it's really, really important. So that practice of reflection and critical reflection for adults is something that continues to drive us and to want us to learn more, which then helps us, as in a practice, to drive that critical reflection and also those outcomes and that best practice. So at Bomaderry Community Preschool, we reflect every day, but we do choose, you can't possibly choose everything that you reflect on to critically reflect on. As Alison has said, and Belinda, there is so many things in that process, so you can't engage deeply with every single little thing that you want to reflect on but choose something that you think will have the greatest engagement with your staff, but also something that's going to create those quality outcomes for your children and your families and your whole centre. So we too have a great connection, I guess, with John Dewey and his work. So we always say we just don't learn from doing, from that experience. We learn from reflecting deeply on those experiences that we engage with every single day. So today, I'm just going to share with you two questions that we have recently used to deeply critically reflect on and to walk you through the steps of how we have done that, and every centre, every program will look very different. This is just something that we find works for us and it guides us through in a very, well, I guess, a very organized space to get to the outcomes that we want to get to. So if we could have the next slide, so two of the questions that we've recently engaged with in with critical reflection was, why is it important to understand the conceptual mathematics development as educators and teachers in the early years program, and how do aesthetics and relationships within an early education program impact on the cognitive, relational functioning of educators, children and families? So we also, we always start with practice. What does that look like for us in our service? So that is educators noticing, so noticing what's going on with the children, the families, our environments, our interactions with each other. The feelings. How is everyone feeling? That is a really big part, so making sure we're taking note of that as well. How are the children feeling? How are the families feeling? As educators, what are we feeling? How do we approach that? Then questions, lots of questions. We always encourage everybody to question each other, and it's not seen as a negative in our service. It's a positive. So I will often walk through our rooms and be with the children and the other educators and say, "Tell me more about this," and we really encourage that with all educators to be able to do that. Our wonderings, share our wonderings, and they are really valid in this process as well, and we also ask educators to reflect on their own teaching strategies, the resources and the environment. Conversations that we have are really important in the process as well, and then our intentional and spontaneous programming. So there's so much that goes into our days that helps us inform and to be able to critically reflect as we move through. So you wonder what, you say, "Well, how do we document all of this?" And you can't possibly be able to document every single thing, but we do, the next step for us is that reflection step. So we have something called a reflective document and it is a Google Doc that we just use and everyone can have access to that, and we all have different colours and everyone writes in that and we make comments on each other. So that's where we document our noticing, our feelings, our questions, our wonderings. We also then bring them to a team meeting and then to our whole team meeting and discuss every single one of those. Everyone has a voice, and then we also use, obviously, those conversations with families and children, and we document that in there. So it's not a formal document. It's just something that we add to. We might think of something and just quickly write, type it in there, and the beauty of a Google Doc is that everyone can see that and have access to it. So we're constantly thinking about that. I encourage also in that reflection process is evaluations and critiquing on our planning and our documentation as well. So anything that we're thinking about within that reflection evaluation, we pop into that Google Doc as well. Educator meetings is a great time to have great, robust conversations around what we have written, what we have thought, and what we have been discussing in that critical reflection document, and robust conversation sometimes can be really challenging. I will acknowledge that this process is not an easy process, but if you look at it as a point of being able to move forward and I always get so inspired because I know I'm going to learn more. So that's why it is something that's very passionate for me and for our team. Can we have the next slide, please? Thank you. So then, as Alison and Belinda have talked about before, we move on to that next step of theory. This is where a lot of people go, "Oh, this is a little bit too hard. This is really challenging," but it's not. It's inspiring, and as Alison and Belinda has said before, there's so many things within this theory section that we can tap into and learn so much from. So we use lots of different readings, academic journals, sector publications, Department of Education, Bedrock, Pedagogy+, Rattler, textbooks. We have a lot of university students that come to us, so we also tap into lots of resources like that. So what we often do is, as educational leader, we will choose something and it might be three or four documents and we share that with the whole team and they reflect on that and then bring that to a staff meeting. Another great way is to connect with your colleagues at conferences, at webinars, in-house presentations, from sector leaders, other colleagues that have a passion in a space. So it could be as simple as when we talked about aesthetics in our space, we got someone to come in and talk to us about the importance of that. Engaging within our community. Not all of us live close to a university, but the use of webinars and connection through the internet has created a whole other world for us. So we engage as much as we possibly can with universities in projects. So we did a mass project with Wollongong University. So put yourself out there. Make connection with those universities, and they're always doing beautiful projects and really engaging projects that I think your teams will learn so much from, and then once we've taken that, all of that theory, then we link it to our reflections, previous reflections, and our wonder, that first stage of reflection and practice. Then we put it all together. So that analysis, how do we do that? So we come together, as I said, at that team meeting and we discuss the most important questions . What did we learn and what did we get from all of those readings, from those engagements with other professionals? Is there anything that we need to change? If so, how and how are we going to do that? Is there any policies that need to change as a space in there as well? Environment changes. Is there anything that links to our environment that we need to change? And then we make some decisions around what we're going to do to move forward as a result of that whole reflection process and our practice and then engaging with theory, because often when we engage with that theory, there's so many things that come up that we have not been, we did not know, and so many people have very different opinions and thoughts. I think the most important thing with that is to make sure that you're reading some great, reputable documents that are something that you can rely on. So that's another just important little tip. So then we make those decisions, and some of the easy ways to document that in terms of having that, I guess, that documentation so that you can share that with the department when it comes to assessment and rating, we always record on audio, on iPods, and we keep that critical reflection document. We always save all the readings that we've done and just annotate them. It doesn't have to be any formal documentation, but just annotate. Keep all your staff meeting records, all of those types of things and all of that is just then available. It becomes part of your everyday practice and then it's available for anyone to see when they come in and you can share that with them. I would say it doesn't, sometimes it takes a long time. It doesn't mean you have to critically reflect in two weeks. Sometimes it might be months, so enjoy the journey. That's what I would say. Enjoy the journey of critical reflection, because it is something, once you really start getting into it, you become very passionate about it. It challenges you, but you get to the space where you just keep wanting to go because you keep learning so much more. So thank you. I hope that I have been able to shed a little bit of light on how that critical reflection can become an integral part of your journey and that it can be something that you can easily achieve.

- That's wonderful, Bernice. Thank you so much for sharing with us really great examples of how your service engages with critical reflection, and I'm sure that many of our colleagues joining us online have found this really beneficial. I think it's really interesting to see in your practice and reflection subject areas some of the practical things that your educators, some of the educators online would be able to recognise and relate to. So you've mentioned about observations and evaluations and looking at your teaching strategies and interactions, but also the use of the collaborative documentation used to support your critical reflection. It sounds like that Google Doc work is working really well for your team.

- It certainly does. It's something that was a little bit of a adjustment for some people that had never used a Google Doc before, but it's very easy to use. It's just very versatile, so everyone can have access to it. Everyone can see in current time as people write in it and it's not a critical thing that we go, oh, that, you don't have to worry about spelling and grammar. It's just writing it. So it just takes that pressure off everybody.

- Beautiful, I love it, and you made really clear how theory is recognized as an important part of the process together what the end result or action, and I really loved hearing about your overall approach. I can see the excitement and passion that you've shown us would be inspiring for your team. I literally think I could listen to you all day, Bernice. So thanks so much for joining us. That was really, really informative.

- Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to share.

- Lovely. Okay, so we've covered a lot of things this morning. We're just going to move on now. It's time to get a bit of a pulse check to see what we now know about the difference between reflection and critical reflection. If I can just have the next slide, please. Thank you. So you won't need, oh, I'm going to give you three scenarios. So I'll share these with you and I'm going to ask you to use the poll that's on your screen. It'll just appear. You won't need to use your device for this one. I'm going to give you the scenarios and ask you to identify and think about each example to tell us whether you feel that it's an example of reflection or critical reflection. So we'll have that pop up. The poll will just appear on the screen. Thanks so much to the lovely support team who are doing an amazing job in the background there today for me, So the first scenario is during Assessment and Rating, a service shares their daily critical reflection sheet, which includes evaluations of the daily program, such as routine times and placement of furniture and layout of experiences. The sheet is also used to inform where experiences may be set out the next day, where additional supervision may be needed, or what the experiences are that are not being utilised. So I'm just going to get that poll up for you. So if you can use that to let us know whether you think this is an example of reflection or critical reflection. Great. Thanks so much. Just give everyone a moment to have a little look at that. Gosh, we've had a good, big group on today, which is great to see. Okay. How did we go with this one, Alison?

- Okay. So Belinda, this is an example which highlights evaluated reflection, where the daily happenings are noticed and observed. While the program is evaluated and used to guide future learning opportunities, placement of both resources and supervision and engagement of children, it does not include any theory-based analysis that's being used to change, shape or uplift practice. Something to think about, if you're using a form or document with the term critical reflection in the title, it doesn't necessarily ensure that critical reflection is occurring. This scenario is a scenario demonstrating reflection.

- Excellent, thank you, and we'll move on to our second poll question. Wonderful. Thank you. So during an Assessment and Rating visit, an authorised officer asks to see evidence that supports a stated key practice, that is, that indicates that critical reflection has been completed on changing the service programming template. So the ed leader at the service explained that the educators decided the programming template was no longer working for them and they've chosen to move to using an online programming application. The authorised officer asked what process was undertaken in changing that template, and the ed leader advised that one of the educators who'd been on a prac placement saw the online programming application and that service was awarded exceeding in Quality Area 1, so the team decided to change over to the application as well. I'm just going to get the poll to pop up for you. If you could let us know, do you think this is an example of reflection or has it moved to critical reflection? And that will just pop up for you in a moment. Wonderful. Thank you. Yeah. Where are we at? Excellent. Our poll's being quite tricky and putting all three up at once this morning, and that's okay, showing our flexibility and adaptability.

- That's right.

- So how did we go with this one, Alison? Where are we landing with this?

- There's some good results here, and I've got to say, I think people are starting to, are understanding what is involved with reflection and critical reflection. However, scenario number two or poll question two highlights reflection where a change of practice has occurred, although that change of practice appears to come purely from an operational decision and it's not driven by any theory-based reflection or discussion on practice and there's no evidence of any analysis occurring. So whilst a change did occur in practice, it wasn't driven through that theory and analysis, so this is an example of reflection.

- Excellent. Thank you, Alison, and our last one, I think some of you might have already completed this one, but I'm going to go through it anyway for those playing along in order. During the Assessment and Rating visit, a service explained that they're on a journey to embed inclusive practice, which was instigated when a child enrolled with mobility restrictions. So the educators hired and trialled specialised equipment that the child would need to assess their accessibility and barriers and identify barriers to learning. They met with the child's family and their specialists to develop strategies for inclusion, and the educators attended a workshop and consulted current research to expand their knowledge on inclusive practice, and they reviewed and updated the inclusive practice policy. Through the journey, a broader understanding of inclusive practice developed and a case study was completed on how the service and families understood inclusive practice and how this is demonstrated at their service daily. The case study was reviewed at quarterly interview intervals to ensure it's relevant, robust, and ongoing changes of practice were analysed. So I'll just get the last poll up there, final question for you. What are we all thinking? Looks like we're nailing it there, Alison.

- I completely agree. That's some really clear results there from the audience, from who's listening in. That's great. Yeah.

- Okay, great. So what are your thoughts on this, Alison, reflection or critical reflection?

- Well, first of all, I'm going to say excellent job for everybody. Thank you for participating in the polls, and this is our last scenario question. A lot of you actually answered that correctly. So scenario three is an example of critical reflection. This example highlights critical reflection through the approach of practice reflection, theory reflection and analysis. This critical reflection also has the component of being ongoing, with a review of the change of process practice undertaken, a review of policy and procedure, furthering educators' understanding, and supporting the inclusion of every child. Your critical reflections may not all be this long or they might not all look like this, but it's about what is relevant and reflects the practices in your service. You may notice this scenario refers to a case study which was relevant to this particular scenario. That's not always the case as each critical reflection will be unique to the topic.

- Great, thanks, Alison, and for those of you who may be still a little unsure, I think you'll find this next part of the session will be really helpful. We're now going to address some of those really popular questions I mentioned earlier that came through with your registrations, and I absolutely know that we're not going to be able to get to all of them due to the sheer volume that we received. However, as mentioned earlier, you can reach out to our team following today's session to talk about your own service and experience, and I will get their details popped up in the chat for you in a moment. So Alison, are you ready for me to run through some of our top three popular questions?

- Yes, I'm ready. Let's go. Thanks, Belinda.

- So multiple services have asked, where do we start and how long does it take to complete the critical reflection process?

- Yes, this is a great question actually and one we get often. So critical reflection will often start organically or it may require a conscious decision to identify opportunities. It may derive from highlighting something in your practice or your reflections. It may be something you choose to complete in response to a critical incident or to address feedback provided. Most commonly, critical reflection is undertaken by services to inform better practice or to uplift practice or to make a change to the environment. Additionally, services may choose to complete critical reflection to align their practices against the National Quality Framework. As we discussed earlier, critical reflection often starts in the noticing or observing of a practice or a situation. It may be about paying attention to what you're feeling and what you're doing. Often it's evaluative and this may lead to deeper questioning about the practice or situation. This is often how the critical reflection process starts in a service. Because critical reflection is unique to each service and each service context, how long it takes will be dependent on the processes the service undertakes. So some critical reflections may take less time than others as everyone's aligned to the outcomes of the critical reflection and in the analysis and a change or an enhancement in practice is adopted and understood quickly. Other critical reflections may take on a life of their own and require a case study or research paper to document the depth of the analysis and reflection. Again, it will be unique to your service and what your critical reflection involves. In terms of how long this takes to complete, it's important to remember that critical reflection is a continuous cycle. So in that sense, have a natural endpoint.

- Excellent, thanks, Alison, and one of the other frequently asked questions was, how do we get people involved and on board to support that critical reflection journey?

- Yes, so, one way is that we need to create a safe and positive work culture that allows for educators to be able to be honest and open and vulnerable when unpacking reflections on practice or feedback. Unless you have this underlying culture of safety, you'll find it's difficult to get to an authentic place where true critical reflection occurs. We need to be really clear and be able to communicate easily to each other what are the benefits of the process. Think about how you get the buy-in and what's in it for the educators. Ultimately, you'll see an uplift in your own practice and you'll be part of the fabric that underpins the practices that demonstrate quality at your service. Now, we're all different and you need to find what sparks the interest in your educators in the same way you reflect on what sparks the interest in your children. Acknowledge that your team will all have different learning and communication styles and how we gel these together to support an inclusive process. For some, this will be quite structured, but for other educators, it may be more informal. Services may find the process of critical reflection runs smoother when there's someone who takes responsibility within your service or organisation to ensure that the service community is working through this critical reflection cycle. As service leaders, it's important that we role model behaviours we want to see reflected. When I was at a service recently, they talked to me about how critical reflection has underpinned the journey of transformative change that they've been on for the last few years. This service shared with me that the initial seed of the transformation occurred through honest and open reflection on where each educator's strengths lie. Through this reflection, different educators started to discover a passion or a curiosity about different areas of the service delivery. These educators were then provided space and time to lead the critical reflection and were supported through the process of critical reflection because it was new to them. The process was broken down into small parts initially with supported individual reflections taking place, and these individual reflections then were used to influence that broader and more collaborative critical reflection that was instigated across the service, and ultimately, this led to a more empowered workforce that facilitated themselves this transformative change. I think I'd also like to say it's important that we are deliberate and purposeful and it's essential to provide time for our teams to connect with each other and with this process.

- Absolutely, I completely agree, and it's really difficult beause we are time for, but I like that you call out that it's really important to plan for that and to provide time for our teams to connect with each other in this process. So one last question that we'll have time for, and I think this will be one that people want to hear about, is how should we document critical reflection?

- Okay, so Belinda, you'll know this. This is actually one of our most asked questions, and truthfully, we can't give you a template or an example sheet on how to document your service's critical reflections. The honest answer is how you document will be unique to your service. In addition to how unique the critical reflection subject or topic potentially is, some services will start at the beginning stages of critical reflection in staff meetings or room meetings and therefore start the journey. The start of that journey may documented in meeting minutes, the agenda or summary notes. There may be evidence of the theoretical or philosophical documentation that's being used to further unpack the evaluative practice and reflection. However, this is more often than not going to be an online document or a professional development session or a conversation that's been held with a subject matter expert, and it may only be documented in the analysis notes of the critical reflection summary. Finally, the critical reflection's initial findings and changes or enhancements that have been identified may be noted in a summary document, and you heard about that earlier, but that works for Bernice and her service having a summary document. That summary document can be used as a reference point to come back to later and reassess if further changes or enhancements are needed. This reference document can then be used to support a continuous cycle of critical reflection. I'd also like to acknowledge that parts of the critical reflection process may be through conversation, and many educators ask, "How do we provide evidence that this has actually occurred?" Well, firstly, I acknowledge that may well be the case, and often is, however, this may be part of the initial reflection or evaluative practice stage of critical reflection and that critical reflection process. These conversations will lead to something and have further depth involved to them to allow for an informed change or enhancement. The conversations then become the spark that may well be noted simply in the summary of the critical reflection that's used as the reference point and may recorded as the initial seed that started that particular critical reflection journey. In regards to different methods of actually recording critical reflection, some of the ways you might consider documenting your critical reflection is in journals or mapped out and documented in services' online applications, maybe in services' unique template forms with specific probing questions to guide the reflection. Maybe it's in important improvement planning documents or even potentially through a whiteboard mind map that's been photographed to reflect back on later. There is no one way to document your journey. These are just some suggested variations. Be creative. Get others involved to ensure it's relevant to your service context. If you network with other services, have a chat and see what they use and what they find helpful. As Bernice said, enjoy the journey. What I would say is your critical reflection journey is your own. It's really important to document it in a way that's meaningful and useful to you. Ensure it's user friendly, accessible, and understood by those who are involved and those who'll be guided by it.

- Fantastic, Alison. That's great, and I think, you know, we can't give you a magic template that's going to solve it, but I love the examples that you have provided, and we heard from Bernice what works well for them for that service, and I think, as you said, be creative. Have a chat to others. Find out what works well for you and your educators at your service. So thank you for that. I think you've given those online some food for thought here, Alison.

- Thanks, Belinda.

- Okay, so let's move on. If we look at some of the words we've used today, active, analysis, research, thinking, examining, ongoing, cycle, you can see that there's not one way of describing or engaging with critical reflection. We can't give you a template, as we've just mentioned. It's not that simple. It is relevant to the individual context of your service, and we recognise, as Alison mentioned earlier, it's not an easy process, so take heart. You're not alone if you're finding critical reflection challenging, and as Alison mentioned earlier, if you are finding it easy, then perhaps you're not digging deep enough. This is not about ticking a box and I acknowledge we certainly have not answered the common question I get often is, how do I get exceeding? What this is about is supporting continuous improvement and identifying areas or opportunities for change and inform change in your service program and practice to ultimately improve the outcomes for children. We do though hope today has given you some insights in the differences between reflection, that may be more evaluative in nature, and critical reflection, and also given you some information about the continuous cycle of critical reflection and how each of these aspects of the process are important to consider and use to inform your practice. I'd like to thank you all for joining us today and for all of the questions that you provided and sent in. As I mentioned, if you'd like to make contact with our team, the details are in the chat. The information inquiries team is also available to talk to you about anything to do with your service operation, and following today's session, you will receive a link to a short survey and I'd really encourage everyone to complete this. The feedback that you share with us really does help us to provide purposeful and relevant Roadshow sessions in the future. In our last slide, as we're going, as people are leaving the session today, I'm just going to leave this up so you can see the sources of the references we've used in today's presentation and some suggested further reading. So thank you all again for joining us. I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Thank you.

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For many educators unfamiliar with designing critical reflection activities and assignments, reflection is something that happens after an experience and that reflection is only appropriate for certain types of situations. In reality, critical reflection is a fundamental process of learning and meaning making. When getting started it's important to keep the following in mind: 

• Critical reflection can be designed to generate a variety of learning outcomes.  These include knowledge, skills, as well as attitudes, values, dispositions and behaviors. 
• Everything is reflection worthy. As a result, it's important to guide learners to attend dimensions of experiences that are of interest. 
• Guidance matters. When designing critical reflection activities and assignments, the guidance provided, whether via written prompts, oral or graphic facilitation, should assist learners to articulate and document their learning coherently and cohesively. 

In light of this, it's useful to remember, what have been termed the " 4 C's of Critical Reflection. " [Eyler and Giles]

4 C's of Critical Reflection

Provide learning opportunities to reflect before, during, and after the experience. The most common error that designers make is to limit reflection until after the experience. Improvements in CR capacity improve with time, practice and scaffolding. When integrating only within a course but across a program of study in order to build capacity for metacognition and critical consciousness building. Remember anything is reflection worthy. It is helpful to use a pre-mid-post structure, relative to the unit of time [session, week, semester, etc.], that focuses learner attention on changes in their assumptions and reasoning processes and on progress toward meeting objectives.

Experience, including service and community-based experiences, bring theories, concepts and statistics to life in palpable, contextualized and unscripted ways. Effective designers of CR, make sure to draw clear connections between the experiences and the frame/lens through that should be applied to the experience. Designers can use a variety of means to communicate the connection between academic content, as well as, other categories of learning [ professional, civic, personal, etc.] and "the experience" [e.g. syllabus, assignment instructions, lecture, etc.]

CHALLENGING

Critical Reflection requires stretching learners outside of their comfort zone to explore more difficult or challenging questions. It requires that the facilitator balance challenging learners while creating a supportive, safe space for learners to express doubt, frustration, and inspiration.

CONTEXTUALIZED

The mode of reflection/reflection mechanism should reflect the setting, be scaffolded appropriate to the learner.

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The Importance of Critical Reflection in Early Childhood Education

Butler Diaries @ May 24, 2022

What is Critical Reflection

Simply put, critical reflection is critical thinking directed inwardly rather than outwardly. It’s a lens we use to look at our own practices and beliefs as childcare professionals. Through it, we examine what it is we do and why we do it: Are our actions and decisions valid or are they influenced by another person or group? Is there a better way to teach children?

If you struggle understanding where to focus your attention, the Weekly Programming and Reflection Child Educator Diary can help provide you the prompts you need to critically reflect on your program and use your reflection to improve your program, practice, and outcomes for children.

Reflection vs. Critical Reflection

What is meaningful reflection in childcare? In education, reflection and critical reflection are both used to describe an opportunity for educators to evaluate and improve upon their methods. The main difference between reflection and critical reflection is that critical reflection requires an educator to look at a situation from a different perspective or standpoint than he or she normally would—often in order to explore alternatives for improvement. Critical reflections also allow educators to consider multiple perspectives as well as challenge their own thinking, leading them toward more informed decision-making.

These prompts can help you critically reflect.

How do the Frameworks Define Critical Reflection?

The EYLF and MTOP V2.0 describe the difference between Reflection and Critical Reflection for Educators:

"Reflection involves educators thinking intentionally about their own and others’ practices, with certain aims or goals in mind. Critical reflection is a meaning-making process that involves a deeper level of thinking and evaluation. It requires engagement with diverse perspectives such as philosophy, theory, ethics and practice and then evaluating these in context, leading to pedagogical decisions and actions that are transformative. As professionals, educators collaboratively explore, identify and evaluate diverse perspectives with respect to their own settings and contexts. In this way, critical reflection informs future practice in ways that demonstrate an understanding of each child’s ongoing learning, development and wellbeing, and have implications for equity and social justice."

https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/EYLF-2022-V2.0.pdf We have found that the reason most educators struggle to successfully critically reflect is because there aren't quite sure how to apply these reflections to improve practice. When you address diverse perspectives as you reflect in the Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary , collaborate with your team, children, and families, and use these reflections to inform your following week's program and children's learning, you are critically reflecting. Our  Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary  is designed to help make this cycle of planning visible.

If you need more help understanding the cycle of planning and would like practical examples, you can check out this article.

Why is it Important in Early Childhood Education?

To understand why critical reflection is so important, let’s talk about its opposite: unreflective practice. We do things every day without questioning whether they’re right or wrong. This can be helpful if we know our actions are grounded in years of experience and a deeper understanding than others possess. But when we don’t think critically about what we do, we aren’t growing and learning from those experiences as a professional educator should. Unreflective practice means you’re not learning from your mistakes. In fact, most educators are so busy taking care of young children that they don’t always have time to stop and reflect on how they could have made things better for those children. A lack of critical reflection leads to apathy and an inability to self-correct or improve. As early childhood educators, we should reflect critically on our practices and beliefs, just as anyone in any profession does; it’s part of practicing our craft to ensure we are getting better at what we do. It is important that you reflect critically on what you have observed and how you will use these observations to improve your practice.

As an educator, it is important to consider how your own values and cultural beliefs may influence your practice and how children are viewed. It is also useful to consider how children might view themselves or others around them within their social context. This ensures that as an early childhood educator, you are always questioning your own practice for improvement but also striving for equity for children and their families.

How do you use Critical Reflection Effectively?

There are different ways in which you can critically reflect in early childhood education. Discussion with your peers and colleagues, observing children in their environments, reviewing current research and even consulting subject experts are all ways to work out how to observe a child effectively. Over time, you will get a feel for when something needs to be questioned or challenged within your practice. Observing children is an integral part of quality early childhood practice but it is always important to critically reflect on what these observations mean for your teaching practice. In Early Childhood Education, it is important these reflections are documented and a record of your reflective journey is kept for Accreditation.

The Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary is designed to support you in embedding critical reflective practice into your every day work with children through a weekly Reflection Spread that informs your following week's practice.

When to Critically Reflect?

If you’re wondering how often you should critically reflect, we suggest starting at least once per week. This may seem like a lot, but if you make a goal of doing one reflective session per week, over time it will become easier to incorporate more critical reflection into your daily practice. Eventually, critical reflection becomes a part of your daily programming, practice, decisions, and conversations with your team and families.

Some Questions to Consider when Critically Reflecting in your Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary

Some suggestions of critically reflective questions to ask yourself from EYLF V2.0 and how they can be recorded in your Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary are:

• "What is our understanding of each child, their culture and context?"  Learning Data, Parent Input
• "What questions do we have about our work? What are we challenged by? What are we curious about? What are we confronted by in relation to our own biases?"  Professional Inquiry, Was it a good/challenging week? Why?
• "What theories, philosophies and understandings shape and assist our work?"  Professional Inquiry, Intentional teaching/Learning experiences covered
• "In what ways – if any – are the theories, knowledges and world views that we usually draw on to make sense of what we do limiting our practice?"  Professional Inquiry, Intentional teaching/Learning experiences covered
• "What other theories or knowledge and world views could help us make sense of what we have observed or experienced? What are they? How might those theories and that knowledge affect our practice?"  Learning Data, Professional Inquiry
• "Who is advantaged/included when we work in this way? Who is disadvantaged, excluded or silenced?"  Were programmed goals & projected outcomes achieved?, Intentional teaching/Learning experiences covered, Professional Inquiry

https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/EYLF-2022-V2.0.pdf

How to Embed Critical Reflection into your Practice and Inform Future Planning

As stated above, critical reflection can be a powerful tool to analyse what is happening during your interactions with children. It also helps you to become more self-aware as a person and thus becomes an important practice when working with others. However, it can be intimidating to begin reflective practice and often people are put off by its potential complexity. You need not worry! The key to embedding critical reflection into your work is just getting started - making time and space to think about your experiences is vital. Using tools that encourage critical reflection as part of your programming and documentation can help you embed it into your practice. Our Weekly Programming and Reflection Diaries include a weekly critical reflection with prompting points to assist you in effectively reflecting on your program and making recording your reflections manageable. You can access a guide for reflecting in the diary's weekly reflection space here  and download your handy Linking Theorists to the EYLF Outcomes PDF to support you in linking experts in your programming and reflections. Also see some critical reflection in early childhood examples here.

The Early Years Learning Framework V2.0,  https://www.acecqa.gov.au/nqf/national-law-regulations/approved-learning-frameworks 

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Teaching of reflection in higher education: a narrative review

Tharin phenwan.

1 School of Health Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, DD1 4HN, UK

Associated Data

• Phenwan T: Extended data for Teaching of reflection in higher education: a narrative review.University of Dundee, Extended_data_ 1(.docx), Article_List(.docx),2024. 10.15132/10000254 [ CrossRef ]

Underlying data

No data associated with this article.

Extended data

Discovery: Extended data for Teaching of reflection in higher education: a narrative review 38

http://doi.org/10.15132/10000254

This project contains the following extended data:

• Included studies

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).

Healthcare professional students (HCPs) are encouraged to utilise reflection during and after their study programmes as a part of their life-long learning skill and professional competencies. However, the way in which the concept of reflection is taught and its’ influence students’ capacity to reflect have not been fully explored. This narrative review aimed to explore how the concept of reflection is taught in higher education and how the teaching of reflection influences HCP students’ capacity to reflect.

Articles that were published during 2014–2024 within three databases, PubMed, CINAHL and ERIC were searched. 1929 articles were eligible for screening. 93 articles were further assessed for eligibility.

18 articles were included. The included articles were geographically well-distributed in both the Global North and Global South countries, indicating universal interest in the topic. Eight articles had qualitative study designs; six had quantitative designs and four had mixed-method designs.

Conceptually, the teaching of reflection could be categorised as a spectrum, ranging from: i) structured format (reflective templates or debriefing); ii) semi-structured format (physical/virtual small group discussions, video recordings, AI generative arts, in-verse reflection and concept mapping) and iii) flexible and creative (art-based pedagogy or narratives).

All included articles indicated students actual and perceived better understanding of reflection. This claim is supported both quantitatively and qualitatively via either validated instruments or narratives and themes based on students’ textual outputs.

Conclusions

This review identified several teaching methods that help facilitating students’ capacity to reflect. Findings are unable to recommend the most efficient way to teach reflection since it depends on students’ progress in their programmes. However, a more relational approach to teaching of reflection is recommended. Students might begin their reflective journey with a structured format of teaching of reflection then gradually move to less-rigid format of the teaching to empower students’ autonomy.

Introduction

Reflection is one of the metacognition skills that enhances lifelong learning capacity as well as professional competencies 1 – 3 . As such, any practice to enhance capacity to reflect is highly encouraged, particularly in healthcare professions education since it relates to better learning outcomes and long-term professional performances 2 , 4 – 7 . In the UK, reflective practice (RP) is encouraged by several professional bodies such as the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) as a strategy to foster healthcare professionals (HCPs)’ competencies 8 , 9 .

Still, the concept of reflection is relatively abstract hence it is challenging to frame the appropriate way to teach the concept to students, particularly those who are new to the concept 6 , 10 – 12 . Furthermore, reflection could occur in various contexts and activities such as during small group discussions, online learning environment, writing or art-based activities 12 – 15 thus making it harder to capture.

Additionally, students in higher education - particularly in the UK - have become increasingly diverse 16 . This includes students from non-traditional background, international students or students who disclosed as disabled hence may need additional support for their learning 17 . Consequently, the notion of Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity (EDI) in the teaching of reflection warrants further exploration to scrutinise if the existing teaching methods sufficiently address such diversity or not.

There is a need to systematically understands the way in which the concept of reflection is taught in higher education and how it influences students’ capacity to reflect hence, a narrative review was conducted. This narrative review aimed to:

• explore how the concept of reflection is taught in higher education
• explore the teaching of reflection and its influences over HCP students’ capacity to reflect

Methodology

A narrative review was undertaken as a part of the author’s study for UKPSF’s fellowship title. The justification was to balance between the time constraints within the module (four months) and the robustness of the searching process. Although some researchers argue that a narrative review may be prone to bias, subjectivity and is not replicable 18 , this argument is less relevant to this review and strategies have been applied to mitigate these limitations. Given that this review aims to explore a conceptual and broader understanding of how reflection is taught in higher education as well as its influence on students, a more focused approach such as a systematic review is not appropriate; instead, a broad approach such as a narrative review is deemed more appropriate. Next, the notion of ‘bias’ is not relevant to this review since the phrase is deeply rooted with post-positivist research paradigm that considers knowledge to be quantifiable, measurable and repeatable 19 ; all of which do not relate to aims of this review.

The search terms and strategies, developed with support from an academic librarian, are described below to ensure that the search process is transparent and replicable.

The PCC framework (Population, Concept, and Context) were used to frame the scope of the review 20 :

P opulation: undergraduate healthcare professionals students

C oncept: teaching of reflection or reflective practice

C ontext: Higher education institutes and their associated clinical placements or hospitals, colleges, global context

The inclusion criteria were any peer-reviewed empirical studies that were published between 2014–2024 and were published in English that discussed the influence of reflection teaching methods with students. The focus was any undergraduate HCPs students in the context of higher education settings, including any associated clinical placements.

Articles were excluded if they were reviews, grey literature or focused on any theoretical discussions, debates or opinion pieces as well as dissertations and theses. Articles that did not focus on reflection teaching methods, higher education settings, were published before 2014 or were published in non-English were excluded (see Table 1 ).

From December 2023 to March 2024, three databases were searched: PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) and Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). Eight duplicated articles were removed (see Table 2 ). One article was retracted by the journal due to systematic manipulation of the publication process and was subsequently removed from the screening process. Five articles were not accessible, leaving 1929 articles for title and abstract screening. 93 articles were further assessed for eligibility with the full-text reading.

The Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied and 76 articles were excluded:

• 24 articles were not related to students’ capacity to reflect
• 20 articles were not related to teaching of reflection
• 16 articles were not related to undergraduate HCPs students
• 12 articles were opinion pieces, debates, dissertations and student theses

Six articles also were manually searched from the reference lists; five articles were excluded and one was included for the final analysis 2 . Together, the final numbers of the included articles were eighteen (see Figure 1 ) 21 .

Data extraction

Data from the included articles were extracted into Microsoft Excel. The extraction process was iterative and the focus of the extracted data was revised to ensure that they were relevant to the aims of the review. The final data extraction file included:

Title, Author’s name, Year, Country, Type of study, Aims, Teaching methods employed, Data collected/generated, Data analysis techniques, Underlying theory/pedagogy, Participants, How the teaching methods influence reflection, Themes and Limitations of the study.

Data analysis

Narratives were used to describe the findings. The author read and reread the included articles to see the patterns, similarities and differences within them. The focus related to the aims of the review. Given that there were diverse types of study from several countries within different groups of students, the underlying theory and pedagogical approach was examined to conceptually capture the findings in a more meaningful way. The included articles were not critically appraised since this review did not intend to determine the quality of each article and intended to explore a broad range of existing practices.

General description of the included articles

The included 18 articles were published from 2014 to 2024. There was a well-distributed geographical distribution of the included studies. The majority of the included articles (5) were conducted in the United States 5 , 22 – 25 , followed by the UK (3) 26 – 28 . Two articles were conducted in Australia 10 , 29 . One article each originated from The Netherlands 30 , New Zealand 15 , Norway 31 , Singapore 32 , Spain 33 , South Korea 34 , Taiwan 35 and Thailand 2 .

Eight articles had qualitative study designs. Six articles had quantitative designs and four had the mixed-method designs. The HCPs students in these articles were also diverse. Almost all of the articles predominantly focused on students from one field which were medical students (8), nursing students (8) and healthcare assistants (1). Only one study focused on the first-year students from various fields 35 , indicating a universal interest of reflection from the educator’s standpoint from various disciplines.

The most frequently used underlying theory employed in these articles was Constructivism (4) followed by social constructionism (2), Sociocultural learning theory (1), Social cognitive theory (1) and Sociocritical paradigm (1). Kolb’s experiential learning theory were mentioned in two articles. Seven articles did not explicitly mention their underlying learning theory utilised; two were implied to utilise positivism research paradigm and five were implied to base on constructivism (see Extended data 1).

This section respectively discusses the findings and relates them back to the aims of this review.

How the concept of reflection is taught in higher education

Based on the included articles, the teaching of reflection could be categorised as a spectrum, ranging from:

• ⅰ) structured format of reflection
• ⅱ) semi-structured format of reflection

The structured format of reflection approach usually involves any teaching with reflective templates or reflective models that students could use to enhance and demonstrate their reflection. The reflective models used were Gibb’s reflective model 2 and Bain’s reflective framework 10 . Often, structured tools such as a reflective journaling 34 , or post-activities debrief were offered to students to facilitate on how they could express their reflection. In such instances, reflection was often not the main focus of the activities but students could demonstrate their increased capacity to reflect as well. This mainly occurred in high fidelity simulations with debriefing 5 , 10 , 32 which suggested multiple benefits of the learning activities.

This approach, whilst perceived as useful, was paradoxically seen by students as rigid. Students from several articles expressed a dislike of this approach since it was perceived as inauthentic and repetitious 15 , 22 , 30 . Pedagogically, students could even become a reflective zombie 36 ; that is, they might emulate the reflective process but did not actually reflect thus making it more challenging to ascertain the authenticity of their reflection 1 .

Alternatively, the semi-structured format of reflection provides more flexibility to students to express their thoughts but still offers scaffolding of their reflection. This approach includes Balint student support group 28 , Schwartz round 27 , video recording of students’ performance 31 and AI generative arts 25 , problem-based learning group discussions 22 , virtual classrooms 23 and concept mapping 30 and in-verse reflection workshops 29 .

The teaching methods under this approach tend to include group learning experience, utilise social constructionism and offer several methods for students to express their reflections e.g., either verbally or in writing. The process almost always includes an extensive preparation for the students before during and after the sessions and is mainly dependent on facilitator’s skill to lead the sessions. For instance, Reed et al. (2023) piloted a novel approach to integrate the use of generative AI to facilitate nursing students’ reflection. The learning process included students, who are also the coauthors of the article, creating AI prompts to create photos that were related to nursing. They were subsequently encouraged to write and reflect on the photos and subsequently joined a small group discussion.

As the description attest, the process is rather laborious and comprised of several preparations, making this approach relatively time and resource extensive. This limitation is similar to what Gleeson et al. (2020) acknowledged. That is, they agreed with the usefulness of the medical Schwartz round to enhance students’ capacity to reflect yet found it financially and logistically challenging to facilitate the sessions thus may not be applicable to scale within their institution or beyond.

Finally, the flexible and creative format of reflection almost always relates to art-based pedagogy. This approach leverages the use of art forms to empower students to creatively express their reflections without any constraints. The studies included an offer to use various creative outlets namely poetry, visual arts, narrative prose, photography, sculpture, music, needlework 15 . Or, one alternative approach over the formal reflection form of writing was offered such as poetry 26 or narrative writing 24 , 33 , 35 . Still, despite the creativity freedom within this approach that empower student’ agency, some expressed concern over their learning process since they found it harder to express themselves or could not fully relate its relevance to a more ‘formal’ reflective assessment which tends to be dominated by a written format 15 , 26 . This was compounded from the educators’ standpoint; that is, it is impossible – and even inappropriate – to assess the quality of students’ reflection with this approach due to their subjectivity. As such, the flexible and creative format may be suitable for learning activities that do not involve any assessment.

How the teaching of reflection influences students’ capacity to reflect

All of the included articles reported that students had either an improved understanding of reflection or improved reflective capacity. This claim was usually asserted by validated instruments to demonstrate students’ improved capacity to reflect before and after the class such as the Groningen Reflection Ability Scale (GRAS) 22 , 23 , 32 , or the Reflective Thinking Level 34 . Zhang et al. (2020) conducted a study to assess 63 third year nursing students GRAS post-class and one week after the class after their high-fidelity simulations with the use of video-assisted debrief. Results showed that participants had significantly improved their debriefing reflective abilities (p<0.01) after the video-assisted debrief intervention from the median of 84 to 87 pre- and post-class; this trend is also similar to other included studies, indicating the usefulness of the teaching methods employed.

For qualitative or mix-method studies, students’ textual outputs or interview transcripts were often used to support the claim that they have a better understanding of reflection. McBain et al. (2015) offered 14 fourth year medical students to freely choose their medium to reflect which could be either a traditional reflective essay or more creative options such as poetry, visual arts, or sculpture; their textual commentaries that accompany their works were used for the analysis. Participants universally expressed that creative outputs were more effective for them to express emotion or ideas that are difficult to articulate. This is particularly important since these students were doing a clinical rotation in a palliative care department which may be rather emotionally demanding, indicating that it might be useful to have certain tools to ease the cognitive load of participants when they were reflecting 24 , 31 , 33 . Students also stated that the arts created were helpful since they could reflect in a different way that was not as repetitious or perceived as just another reflective essays 15 . Still, most of the studies tend to capture participants’ self-perceived of enhanced reflection. Or it could come from educators’ perception that these students had a better capacity to reflect which might be challenging to verify.

Suggestions to enhance the teaching of reflection

Findings from this review indicate that there are several approaches to enhance student’ capacity to reflect. This could be achieved either via a more structured approach which could be perceived as repetitious and inauthentic 15 , 30 . Or, students could be offered a semi-structured approach or even more creative and flexible form of reflection to empower their autonomy 24 , 26 .

Despite the various approaches to teach reflection, both the educators and students suggested that there is a need to balance between being directive and being flexible 28 , 30 . That is, for students who are relatively new to the concept e.g., those who are in the first year of their programme or have limited exposure to clinical experience, it might be more appropriate to have a structured guidance to scaffold their learning process 29 , 32 . Conversely, those who are in their later years or are more experienced reflective practitioners may find the structured reflective format repetitive or even restrictive to their reflection. Consequently, a more flexible and creative expression might be an alternative option for students to demonstrate their reflection.

Strengths and limitations

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first review that has explored the way in which the concept of reflection is taught in higher education for HCPs students. The review demonstrates a comprehensive view of the teaching methods available that educators could consider and apply the most appropriate ones to their contexts. The review process was also thoroughly described hence making it transparent and replicable.

Still, this review poses few limitations:

First, despite the attempt to outline the screening process, this review was conducted by one person. As such, there might be certain articles that the author has overlooked. Second, the review only included articles that were published in English. This further perpetuating the dominant Western-centric scholarship, restricting the latest call for citational justice and may not be fully transferable to wider contexts 37 . Still, this review was conducted with a limited time and resource hence the author could not include more diverse scholarly outputs that were not in English.

Third, although this review did not intend to appraise the quality of the included articles, some articles indicated either poor study designs or superficial level of analysis that lack criticality. Also, almost all of the included studies except two were conducted with a relatively small sample size from a single institute thus makes it even more challenging to transfer the findings to other contexts.

This narrative review has identified several teaching methods that help facilitating HCPs students’ capacity to reflect. Even though findings are unable to recommend the most efficient way to teach reflection, it might be more appropriate to consider students’ learning needs and adjustments the teaching method accordingly. This could be achieved via a more relational approach to teaching that might begin with a structured format of reflection which gradually increases students’ autonomy to express their reflection throughout. Given that there is no one-size-fits-all to teaching due to different leaning contexts, the focus should be how educators could scaffold the students’ learning process to empower them to become a lifelong reflective practitioner.

[version 1; peer review: 2 approved]

Funding Statement

The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.

Data availability

• Version 1. MedEdPublish (2016). 2024; 14: 53.

Reviewer response for version 1

Tanisha jowsey.

1 Bond University, Robina, Queensland, Australia

Hi there, thanks for undertaking this work, which I read with interest. 

Here are recommendations to make this solid paper even better:

The title and introduction suggest your review is of the entire higher education field; we need clarity on the scope of your study throughout. I suggest you reword the title from higher education to 'undergraduate health professions students' and hone the focus of your introduction to match that focus.

methods suggest replacing this sentence: "Articles that were published during 2014–2024 within three databases, PubMed, CINAHL and ERIC were searched. 1929 articles were eligible for screening. 93 articles were further assessed for eligibility." I suggest this instead: "I searched three databases (PubMed, CINAHL and ERIC) for articles published between 2014–2024 using the following search terms and their derivatives: XXXX    1929 articles were eligible for title and abstract screening. 93 articles were further assessed (full text screening) for eligibility."

Methods is fine. I found it unusual and insightful that you've applied a narrative focus to the included studies but I didnt see a evidence of this unique method in the way the results are presented. Did I miss something?

Results - Ah yes, the reflective zombie - a constant frustration for teachers (!) I found Reed's approach to this - the Gen AI image reflection - a great example of one possible avenue to engage students and get them out of zombie mode. 

The paragraph about "creative format of reflection almost always relates to art-based pedagogy" - I was surprised that creative outputs as evidence of reflection were deemed impossible to assess. There are whole schools of practice that do exactly that. For example, critical arts therapy. I myself published a book called Medicine Reflections (2017 1 ) where we showcased how creative elements in the reflective portfolios of our undergrad medical students were assessed. I would suggest that it can be done. The question of whether this is appropriate or not is another matter. Perhaps you could rework those last two sentences of the paragraph to split out whether you can assess from whether you should assess?

The remaining sections read well. Thanks.

Is the review written in accessible language?

Are all factual statements correct and adequately supported by citations?

Are the conclusions drawn appropriate in the context of the current research literature?

Is the topic of the review discussed comprehensively in the context of the current literature?

Reviewer Expertise:

I have used critical reflection in assessment in medicine for the past 12 years and currently supervise a doctoral student who is researching the role of critical reflection in paediatric surgery training. We have a published literature review in this space called 'Reflecting on insight and insights into reflection: a systematic review of insight and reflection in post graduate medical education.' I have also published a book called Medicine Reflections.

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Weeratian Tawanwongsri

1 Walailak University, Thai Buri, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand

Well-written article. Your insights into this interesting topic are enlightening and comprehensively supported by citations. The use of easily understandable language makes the content accessible, and the conclusions drawn are appropriate in the context of the current research literature. The comprehensiveness and clarity of your article make it a valuable resource.

Some suggestions:

1. The title may be edited to reflect the specific issue on healthcare professional students/learners.

2. The methodology is well-written, constructed, and valid.

3. In the discussion section, the author may provide a subsection about further considerations or gaps in studies that need to be explored.

Placing Science and Technology in Society: A Critical Reflection

• First Online: 02 September 2024

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• Sambit Mallick 2  

Technology and science, on the one hand, and, economy, culture and polity, on the other hand, are inseparable. The interface between technology, science and society has significant implications for the transition from science being a curiosity-driven research to contract obligations. Putting it succinctly, this paper captures the transition from ‘science as public resource’ to ‘science as intellectual property’ by examining an implicit disjunction between the state and society, slurring over questions about the social foundations of political power and the making of public policy.

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Mallick, S. (2024). Placing Science and Technology in Society: A Critical Reflection. In: Mandal, S. (eds) Roadmap for Humanities and Social Sciences in STEM Higher Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-97-4275-2_2

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Postgraduate Advanced Clinical Education (PACE) study support guide: 6.2 Reflective practice & writing

• 1. University jargon-buster
• 2. Library resources
• 3. Literature searching
• 4. Plagiarism
• 5.1 Using EndNote
• 6.1 Academic writing
• 6.2 Reflective practice & writing
• 6.3 Understanding feedback
• 6.4 Presentations
• 6.5 Preparing for exams and OSCEs

Reflective thinking is essential for success in unpredictable and complex situations such as working in healthcare.  Reflective thinking helps you to:

• Develop a questioning attitude and new perspectives
• Identify areas for change and improvement
• Respond effectively to new challenges
• Generalise and apply what you have learned from one situation to other situations

You will be asked to think reflectively when completing assignments that draw on your experience in the workplace, or when considering your own skills and experience and where you might need to develop.  Being able to think reflectively is an important transferrable skill that will help you to showcase your learning to the programme team, but also provide the skill of being a reflective healthcare practitioner.

Reflection will enable you to consider aspects of your practice in depth. By using a structured approach, you will be expected to describe and critically analyse an incident which is significant to your learning. Reflection is an important stage in effective learning and reflective practice is an integral part of continuing professional development (CPD) for health care professionals. Successful reflection enables self-awareness, personal and professional growth and it is important to develop these skills as a healthcare professional. A reflective account documents the way you have thought about and experienced a particular event or experience.

In all cases reflection is an active process that involves reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse, evaluate and so inform learning about practice. Reflective skills can include the ability to be:

• descriptive
• constructively evaluative

In a clinical working environment, this process should be continuous or cyclical, i.e. actions continually reviewed in light of most recent developments but may also be sparked by a particular event or experience.

You will also have access to resources from your regulator (GPhC, HCPC or NMC) on the role of reflection and revalidation which will help you link reflective practice to your registration.  If you are a member of your professional leadership body (e.g. RPS, RCN, CoP, CSP) they often have resources you can also access to support your development.

Developing reflective skills

• Developing your reflective insights
• Using theory & evidence
• Videos on reflection

Be prepared to:

• Stand back from the events and try to be objective
• Be critical of your own actions
• Think of alternative explanations of events
• Make use of evidence from a range of sources e.g. theories
• Recognise that your own point of view will change with time
• Discuss with others to deepen your insight and explore a range of perspectives

Reflective questions to ask yourself

• Why did I respond in this way?
• What was I thinking and feeling - did this influence me, and why?
• What was the client thinking and feeling, what is the evidence for this?
• What else could I have done?
• What would I do in a similar situation?

Consider the following

• How does my experience compare to what I have read? Are there any theories that would help explain what happened?
• What might be the results of doing things differently? What evidence is there to show things might change if done differently?
• How has the experience changed my understanding?

Keep comparing theory to practice and exploring the relationship between the two

Assignments involving reflective thinking often ask you to refer to both relevant  theories ,  evidence  and your  own experiences , but what does this mean? Academic theories and your professional observations are both evidence that you need to use to support your points, but they are different types of evidence:

Academic theories  provide a generalised model or framework to help you understand what might be happening in a situation - the reflective model discussed in this section are examples of theoretical models - they gives you a structure to compare your own experiences to and language to help you explain what is happening

Evidence  provides a means to compare your understanding of the situation to published evidence to analyse your real-life experiences.  These might be papers, journals, books, guidelines or good practice recommendations - evidence is something you can reference to critique your experience against.

Your own experiences  are what happens in practice; these may be more complex and richer than the evidence or theories, but it can be harder to see what is relevant. By analsying your experiences using a theory (i.e. a reflective model), you can develop some more insightful explanations for what happened. Also, use your own experiences to interrogate and question the evidence - does it fit what happened? If not, why? Does the evidence only explain part of the story? Does the evidence need to be adapted for different situations?

The Art of Reflection

This video was developed by Cardiff University to help their students develop reflective skills (5 min 19 sec).

Introduction to Reflective Practice

This short video (2 mins 42 sec) was produced by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) gives a brief introduction to reflective practice.

Reflective writing

• Assessed reflection
• Gibbs model
• Analytical not critical

What is reflective writing?

Reflective writing involves an exploration and explanation of an event. It may feel particularly difficult and more challenging than other forms of academic writing as it involves thinking and writing about anxieties and errors as well as successes in your interactions with an individual or when carrying out a practical task. Try to stand back from the situation and be as objective as possible. Although you are writing about your own experiences and feelings, you need to be as rigorous and thorough as you would be for any other assignment.

Reflective writing is a way of processing your practice-based experience to produce learning. It has two key features:

• It integrates theory and practice. Identify important aspects of your reflections and write these using the appropriate theories and academic context to explain and interpret your reflections. Use your experiences to evaluate the theories - can the theories be adapted or modified to be more helpful for your situation?
• It identifies the learning outcomes of your experience. So you might include a plan for next time identifying what you would do differently, your new understandings or values and unexpected things you have learnt about yourself.

Approaching reflective writing

It is a common misconception that reflective writing is describing an event, it requires much more depth and largely focusses on the analysis of the event/experience/learning/topic.  There are some tips in the box on the right about the questions you can ask yourself which encourage reflective thinking.  Being about to reflect on your own practice is a key skill as a competent healthcare professional - analysing how you react to situations and the impact they have had on your learning and development are the key aims.  When done well, reflective writing can help develop a better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, challenge your own assumptions and biases to provide better patient care, deal with you own anxieties, support a learning plan and allow you to understand your own values and beliefs.

Topics for reflective writing

There are too many topics to list here, but almost any healthcare related experience can be used for reflective writing.  Common examples include:

• Analysis of experiences in your workplace with a patient and/or another healthcare professional
• Retrospective analysis of an incident in which you were involved
• Analysis of a past experience that relates to your current situation studying for this module
• Analysis of learning you have undertaken related to the module

Reflective writing will take many forms throughout the PACE modules and programmes.  You should refer to the assessment criteria for the piece of coursework to identify the expectations. Some coursework will be a specific reflective essay or you might need to reflect on a topic/event/experience as a much smaller part of a piece of coursework.  Do not forget in professional exams you will also be required to reflect verbally on your learning, experiences and/or performance.

Follow the guidelines for your module. There is likely to be a word limit: you cannot write about everything, so select what will illustrate your discussion best. Remember that most of the marks awarded for your work are likely to be for the reflective insights and not for the description of events, so keep your descriptions brief and to the point.

Gibbs' reflective cycle

This model was developed in the 1980's by Graham Gibbs and is widely used because of the clear framework and depth of reflection are well suited to coursework tasks.  It has six stages:

• Description - 
• Feelings - 
• Evaluation - 
• Analysis - 
• Conclusion - 
• Action plan -

However, this model has some disadvantages in that it is introspective and tends to focus on the writer. In some postgraduate study it it necessary to demonstrate critical analysis and reflexive skills in your reflective essay writing. You need to show how you are developing new perspectives and to do this you will need to refer to the available literature. So we have adapted Gibbs by using the work of Atkins and Murphy (1993) to ensure you take a robust academic approach: 

• Description - a simple description of the incident or case
• Feelings - use reflexivity to consider how you felt about the situation 
• Evaluation - use criticality to decide the main focus points and assign a value (good or bad) and then consider the wider concepts around these points. See examples in the 'Analytical not critical' tab in this box.
• Analysis - analyse each concept using the relevant literature.  (e.g. Why did the problem arise ? What wider systems were involved? What are the main concepts to be considered? What does the evidence tell us about the impact of such systems problems and concepts? 
• Conclusion - this is where new perspectives can be consolidated. 
• Action plan - what will need to happen now? This plan will need to specify your actions in the change process. .

Make sure that you read the assignment brief carefully and check with the course handbook to understand what is expected for each individual assignment. If you are unsure, please ask your tutor.

How to write reflectively

• This will be one of the only assessments in which you can use the  first person , critiquing your own practice cannot be done in the third person - this does not mean it should be written informally
• You may find that you write your account in a mixture of tenses, again this is unusual for coursework but describing the situation in the past tense and analysing it in the present tense will allow the writing to flow more structurally
• Where you describe future events think about how you use the words  could ,  would, might  and  will -  what is the tense and how does that affect your hypothetical arguments?
• If you are writing a fully reflective account, rather than part of a bigger piece of work, ensure your description is less than a third of the total length - you should concisely describe the situation for context but this is not a case study where each small detail is important
• Do not be judgemental - you must remain professional in how you describe and analyse events

Getting the language right

As a large proportion of your reflective account is based on your own experience, it is normally appropriate to use the first person ('I'). However, most assignments containing reflective writing will also include academic writing. You are therefore likely to need to write both in the first person ("I felt…") and in the third person ("Smith (2009) proposes that …"). Identify which parts of your experience you are being asked to reflect on and use this as a guide to when to use the first person.

You will produce a balance by weaving together sections of 'I thought… 'I felt,…' and the relevant evidence in the same section or paragraph. This is more effective than having a section which deals with the evidence and a separate section dealing with your experiences.

Try to avoid emotive or subjective terms. Even though you are drawing on your experiences (and they may well have been emotional), you are trying to communicate these to your reader in an academic style. This means using descriptions that everyone would understand in the same way. So rather than writing, "The patient was very unhappy at the start of the session", it might be better to write, "The patient was visibly distressed", or "The patient reported that he was very unhappy". This shows that you are aware that the patient's understanding of 'unhappiness' may be quite different from yours or your reader's.  

When writing about your reflections use the past tense as you are referring to a particular moment (I felt…). When referring to theory use the present tense as the ideas are still current (Smith proposes that...).

Try to move beyond being critical and think about being analytical - use your feelings to ask questions and challenge assumptions, where you can then draw in evidence from the module this will move towards excellence in reflection

Read the example statements below and  think about how they demonstrate moving from descriptive to analytical to self-reflective:

Example 1:  I identified a prescribing error and asked the doctor to re-prescribe it.  They stated I was wrong and the prescription was correct.  I checked the BNF and they were right as the BNF I had was out of date.  The literature states that 50% of these errors are due to incorrect resources (source).

Example 2:  I identified a prescribing error but when I asked the doctor to re-prescribe the medicine, it transpired I was wrong and the original prescription was correct.  I was embarrassed that I had not correctly reviewed the prescription and need to remember to use the most up to date reference sources in my practice.  I have looked at the literature on prescribing errors and was surprised that 50% of errors are due to incorrect resources (source)

Example 3 : I identified a prescribing error but when I asked the doctor to re-prescribe the medicine, it transpired I was wrong and the original prescription was correct.  I was embarrassed that I had made such an error and the doctor appeared frustrated that I had wasted their time.  It is important that all prescriptions are checked before administration and it is key in my role to do so thoroughly.  I have spent a lot of time building a relationship with the multi-disciplinary team to show my advancing knowledge and I feel this has set back their confidence in me.  It is my responsibility to ensure I have the correct resources to do my job well and on this occasion I felt under pressure to give a quick answer.  This made me reflect on how external factors can influence the quality of patient care.  In analysing prescribing errors I was surprised that 50% of errors were due to incorrect references but following this experience, I understand how they occur and I must safeguard my practice to prevent it recurring (source).

Example 4 : I identified a prescribing error but when I asked the doctor to re-prescribe the medicine, it transpired I was wrong and the original prescription was correct.  I was embarrassed that I had made such an error and the doctor appeared frustrated that I had wasted their time. It is important that all prescriptions are checked before administration and it is key in my role to do so thoroughly. I have spent a lot of time building a relationship with the multi-disciplinary team to show my advancing knowledge and I feel this has set back their confidence in me. This made me think about prescribing errors and how 50% of errors are due to incorrect or out of date information sources (source). However, although I recognise that it was part of my role responsibility to ensure I use up to date resources (source), I began to reflect on team relationships and how they impact team function and support. Author (source) explored the hierarchy of MDT membership and discovered that certain professions tend to regard their positions as more senior to others within any MDT. This impacted the ability of team members to questions the actions of other team members. This positional hierarchy seemed to be based on perceived value of qualification; medical qualification being most often seen as the most valuable. The concept of professional value is seen in the work of Author (source) who found that historical professional power had a significant impact on decision making within MDTs, with particular regard to accepting questions on clinical decisions from other team members. I realised that my own position within the team could be perceived, by some, as being less valuable in a prescribing setting. I have decided to speak to my manager and ask her to consider two things: firstly how we can make sure all the team have access to the most up to date information and secondly, how we offer and react to constructive criticism in the clinical setting (source). 

NB (source) would be an in-text citation for the relevant reference and a full reference would be given at the end in the Vancouver or Harvard style.

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What Riots and Transphobia Teach Us About Critical Thinking

A reflective summary of global issues in the headlines and the need for critical thinking..

Posted August 29, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

• Misinformation is fueling societal issues including civil unrest and riots.
• Expecting governments and social media platforms to contain it is unrealistic.
• Critical thinking can be the solution.

At the beginning of August, the United Kingdom was swept up by news of the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a dance class, ultimately culminating in race riots. Meanwhile, globally, Olympics mania was overshadowed by a wave of transphobia. Both were triggered by targeted disinformation campaigns, leading to widespread civil unrest and waves of hate. If nothing else, they highlight the urgent need to bring critical thinking education to the forefront of curricula, with a tangible focus on media literacy skills to dampen the wildfire spread of fake news sweeping social media platforms.

So, what happened?

Olympic boxer: Imane Khelif

A single punch that saw her opponent surrender after just 42 seconds, catapulted Algerian female boxer, Imane Khelif, into the second round of the preliminary welterweight. Commenting that she had “never been hit so hard in my life,” competitor Carini attracted the global spotlight onto the women’s boxing event, sparking a wave of transphobic attention to sweep social media, fuelled in large part by misinformation and targeted disinformation.

At the World Championships in March 2023, Khelif was disqualified from participating due to “medical reasons,” which were later published as a failed drug test for high levels of testosterone . The problem was, the test was conducted by the now-defunct IBA, and what’s more, the IBA drew the conclusion that elevated testosterone was a symptom of male chromosomes, despite no other evidence to support this conclusion. In short, the IBA declared Khelif a man, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. Interestingly, the IBA, which had strong Russian links and some strange timings for several of their decisions, has since been stripped of its governing body status, in light of a lack of transparency and suspicion of corruption around several of its major dealings.

What followed was a flurry of misinformation and disinformation posts taking the IBA’s decision at face value, despite Khelif passing subsequent testing. The posts claimed Khelif was a man, transgender , with no right to compete. Calls to boycott the Olympics only fuelled the fire, and celebrities and influencers weighed in to offer "fair fights," condemn the Olympics, and ignite transphobic hatred, too. All against a woman, who has trained as a woman, fought (and lost) as a woman, and has a birth certificate registering her as a woman. It highlights the emotive danger of fake news.

Southport stabbings to race riots

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the fatal stabbing of three young girls and the injuries of numerous adults hit the headlines, as a ferocious knife attack took place at a Taylor Swift–themed dance class. Initial motives for the attack were unclear, but the perpetrator—who we now know to be British-born 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana—has been charged with three counts of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder, in addition to possession of a bladed article.

A tragic event, and one that should have simply seen a community mourn, became even more heartrending, when far-right protestors clashed with police in Southport, after attacking a mosque. Perpetrator Rudakubana was not Muslim or a foreign national, nor did he have any connections to the mosque. Yet, a misinformation thread, originating in Pakistan and quickly spreading across far-right accounts and Channel3Now, misclaimed that the attacker was Muslim, an asylum seeker, a foreign national, and/or a refugee. It triggered far-right and national race riots, a tidal wave of racism , and an epidemic of civil unrest that was quickly condemned, but hard to contain. This, despite media coverage and the naming of Rudakubana as the attacker.

More than 1,000 arrests have now been made, including children as young as 11, and 100 people have been imprisoned. A journalist in Pakistan has also been charged with misinformation under misinformation laws in Pakistan, as a direct contributor to the unrest. While many argue that the attack merely created an excuse for far-right rioting, it nonetheless highlights the terrifying reality of misinformation spreading unchecked.

What can be done about it? The need for critical thinking

The fastest and most effective method of inoculating the population against misinformation and disinformation in all its forms is to teach and then practise critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a deliberate thought process used to evaluate information. It means specifically and intentionally examining information to determine its validity and relevance. It is an essential skill in improving your cognitive processes but, importantly, is your first line of defence for preventing coercion and coercive control, including identifying misinformation and fake news, as well as gang membership, religious extremism, and cults.

Our brains encounter thousands of pieces of information a day, requiring quick indexing of information to support decision-making . If we didn’t aggressively filter information and take it at face value, we would quickly become paralysed by the size, scale, and scope of our day, and find ourselves paralysed by indecision. While these processes deliver significant benefit in helping us function, it makes us susceptible to accepting information at face value, regardless of its origin. This makes us extremely vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation campaigns, many of which seek to destabilise social function.

Critical thinking is the antithesis, offering tangible, effective strategies to combat our natural shortcomings. It is a learned skill that teaches us to think better, as well as teaching us when we need to think more slowly, allowing time for fact-checking, reflection, and a rational, rather than emotional reaction. At its core, critical thinking is a commitment to remaining open-minded and accepting of other viewpoints; being curious and actively seeking out information; testing your own assumptions by looking for contrary opinions; and pausing to allow emotional reactions to pass and logical reasoning to reassert. The key stages are these:

• Pause and observe: Take time to notice the critically important details and the context of the information.
• Ask questions: Seek to clarify the information and, if necessary, seek alternative sources.
• Determine bias: Every source has a bias—some innocuous, some malicious. Consider the context of the information and the angle they may want to take.
• Infer the implications: What are the implications of the information in that context? What purpose are they hoping to achieve?
• Remain open-minded: Accept that there are other viewpoints; try to understand these respectfully and see how they overlay your own.
• Reason and logic: Apply reason and logic to the information to determine what it tells you. Check facts again at this stage if you need to.
• Re-evaluate and conclude: Sticking doggedly to your beliefs, even in light of new evidence, is a common but difficult trait, and critical thinkers will actively challenge their own ideas.

Critical thinkers are typically not afraid to admit they were wrong or to change their stance in light of new information. In addition, applied critical thinking skills, such as improving your media literacy, can help reduce your susceptibility to misinformation.

Critical thinking in education

At the Open Minds Foundation, we have been tenaciously working to get critical thinking embedded in Western education frameworks, as a method for improving societal thinking and combatting common issues. While misinformation and disinformation are obvious examples, manipulation and coercive control are rife in everything from gang behaviours and cults to religious and political extremism. We have a partnership with teaching resource provider Jigsaw to bring our primary-school resources into schools and are delighted to see the recent statements from Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson vowing an end to “putrid conspiracy theories” with changes to the National Curriculum to help pupils spot fake news.

Traditionally, Western education systems are geared toward knowledge acquisition and spend the majority of time conveying what we know rather than how we know it. Importantly, introducing critical thinking skills to children as young as 5 years helps form the basis of intelligent enquiry and helps determine future capability in critical thinking. When we shift away from pure knowledge acquisition and into a process of learning to learn, we sow the seed for the future skills that young people need to protect their own autonomy.

The Open Minds Foundation is dedicated to undermining the effects of coercive control, through critical thinking education and training.

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