Assessing reflective writing: A case study

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Assessing reflective writing A case study

• Barry Stierer (CLT), Alison Atkinson Avril
  Loveless (School of Education)

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The programme

• An accelerated two-year u/g programme leading to
  qualified teacher status (QTS)
• The programme
• provides an opportunity for mature students,
  possessing relevant, advanced qualifications and
  experience, to develop the personal and
  professional qualities required to qualify as
  graduate teachers in shortage secondary subject
  areas. The course covers the 11-18 age range and
  leads to an honours degree with a professional
  teaching qualification.

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The students

• Mature learners with considerable work experience
  and a range of non-traditional educational
  qualifications
• Engaged in an intensive transition to a new
  professional identity that of secondary school
  teachers in shortage subjects (Design
  Technology, IT, Maths, Science)

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The module

• An Education Studies module, taken in the first
  semester of Year 1, but described as Level 2
• The only Education element of Year 1
  (everything else is subject-based)
• The aim of the module is
• to support the development of students
  professional values through an informed and
  critical awareness of current issues in learning
  to teach

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The assignment

• A reflective essay on the theme
• How might my experiences as a learner inform my
  professional development as a teacher in the
  current context of formal education? (2000
  words)

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Assessment criteria for the assignment

• The work should provide evidence that you have
• critically reflected on personal experience of
  learning and the relationship with theories of
  learning
• critically discussed the identity and roles of
  the teacher in the context of formal education
• evaluated strategies, resources and networks used
  to inform critical discussion

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The problem

• Tutors troubled by
• the great difficulty students appeared to have in
  (a) understanding the idea of reflection and
  (b) doing reflection in their writing
• the great difficulty tutors had in assessing the
  quality of students reflection some of which
  was highly personal/revealing

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My role

• Alison (the module tutor) approached Barry for
  advice in his role as an Academic Developer
• Barry has a long-standing interest in the growing
  use of personal forms of student writing in
  academic contexts
• We agreed to treat The Problem as a research
  opportunity

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The data

• Various course documents
• Module Tutors feedback sheets and grades for all
  25 students assignments
• Discussions with tutor and module designer
• For 6 students in 2004-05 cohort (of 25)
• Their assignments, as submitted for assessment
• 1-hour interviews with each student (taped and
  transcribed)

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Emerging themes

• 1. Ambiguities and inconsistencies in the design
  of the module, and in the setting of the
  assignment

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• What precisely is the function of this module?
• Is it to help in the transition fromlay
  person to teacher (overt purpose), or from
  non-student to student?

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• What precisely is the concept of reflection
  and reflective practice that underpins the
  module and the assignment?
• Disparities between course documents, tutor
  accounts and tutor feedback on assignments

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• What precisely is the purpose of the assignment?
• Disparities between course documents and tutor
  accounts

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• Why were students expected to write
  autobiographically?
• Was this the reflective element?
• Or was this merely the material upon which they
  were expected to reflect?
• High marks for personal revelation?

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• How precisely will students analyses of their
  experiences as learners prepare them to be
  reflective practitioners when they begin
  teaching in the classroom?
• Is there an implicit assumption that writing
  about experience and analysing experience are the
  same?

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Emerging themes

• 2. Students struggles with the assignment

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Students struggles with the assignment

• The essay was their first piece of assessed
  writing on the programme.
• Few of them had previous experience of writing in
  a personal style within academic contexts, or of
  writing about educational ideas, or in some cases
  of writing essays of any kind (most have
  Science/Technology backgrounds)

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Students struggles with the assignment

• No separate provision of induction to HE, or
  study skills support for this group of
  students, since they are deemed to be Level 2
• No specific attention to writing within the
  module though tutor offered to comment on
  drafts
• A few students had previous experiences that
  enabled them to recognise the assignment task
  otherwise they were pretty bewildered

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Students struggles with the assignment

• Writing the assignment was variously described as
  agony, nightmare, awful, hated it
• Writing about education a distraction from
  the job of becoming a teacher?
• Were particularly perplexed (and often irritated)
  by the terms reflection, reflective practice
  and reflective essay.

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Students struggles with the assignment

• They offered a wide range of definitions of these
  terms often drawn from discussions with family
  members or fellow students
• Several claimed to have no idea what the terms
  meant even after successfully completing the
  task, and despite having received high grades on
  the assignment

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Students struggles with the assignment

• Analysis of their assignments suggests that their
  writing was informed by a number of different
  models of reflection, ranging from linking
  theory and practice to personal confession
• Found it especially difficult to make links
  between their previous learning and their future
  development as teachers

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Emerging themes

• 3. Students accounts of the actual process of
  writing their assignments

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• Students were much more inclined to seek help
  from, and show drafts to, their spouses, children
  and fellow students, than from the module tutor,
  despite the offer of feedback on drafts.
• Few students felt that they had learned anything
  from the writing process itself.

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• The ambiguities and inconsistencies in the design
  of the module and in the setting of the
  assignment came to be experienced by students as
  personal inadequacy

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Emerging themes

• Where and how do students learn todo
  reflection?

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From tutor feedback

• You have a naturally reflective approach to
  learning and have used this to very good effect.
• Your opening comments suggest that you are not a
  naturally reflective thinker and this has
  probably made this assignment a difficult one for
  you, which is reflected in the final grade.

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From tutor feedback

• Although you say you do not like discussing
  yourself (and this is fine so long as you know
  yourself) what you demonstrate within this
  assignment is the ability to reflect on your
  learning and on your school environment. You
  make some very pertinent comments about your
  learning experiences particularly in terms of
  the teaching you received. You have also
  reflected on the learning of another group of
  pupils with whom you had little in common but for
  whose schooling you clearly have some affinity.

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From tutor feedback

• You have not really made explicit use of any of
  the reflective tools we considered within the
  module such as rich picture analysis, the
  learning styles inventory etc. This would have
  helped you to more effectively address the
  assignment criteria.

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From interview with student

• speaking about experience as a volunteer on a
  youth development programme
• The programme does it reflection as well.
  The purpose is not to provide kindergartens, it
  is to provide development for really, for the
  young people, but also for the staff that go on
  it. Thats when they take you out of your
  comfort zone. But then you talk about it
  afterwards, they do a lot of reflection and after
  every activity you had to discuss what you had
  done and how was it for you?

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From interview with student

• I went back to the first one or two diary
  entries that I had done and looked at them and
  talked to my wife about it and she went This
  isnt reflective. You are not putting down how
  you are feeling about it. You are not putting
  down what did you think about you had done. And
  I dont know if thats right. But thats what
  she seemed to think it was.