HLTH 4925 Week 1 Reflection Criteria Discussion Post Example

Week 1 Discussion: Initial Post

What a Reflective Statement Needs Before Anyone Could Mark It: Five Elements and a Line Between Reflection and Description

I came into this seminar thinking of reflection as something private, a kind of honest thinking that only the writer could judge. The prompt this week asks what would have to be present in a reflective statement before a reader could mark it, and answering it changed my view. I think a markable reflection needs five elements.

1. A specific occasion. The statement has to be about something that happened or was produced: a meeting, an assignment, a decision. A reflection on my growth in general gives a reader nothing to check.

2. The writer's thinking at the time. What did I assume, intend or overlook then? Without this, there is no starting point from which change could be measured.

3. A claim about what changed. The statement must say what the writer now understands or does differently. This is the part most often missing; many reflections describe events and feelings and stop.

4. Evidence linking the claim to the occasion. A reader should be able to see why the change followed from this occasion and not from something else.

5. A consequence going forward. What will the writer do differently, and how would anyone know?

Research on reflective writing supports drawing a line between description and reflection. Hatton and Smith (1995) distinguished descriptive writing, which reports events without reflection, from descriptive, dialogic and critical reflection, each of which reasons about events at increasing depth. Kember et al. (2008) proposed a four-level scheme, from habitual action through understanding and reflection to critical reflection, that teachers could use to code student writing reliably. Both suggest that reflection can be marked if its criteria are visible. A review of reflection in health professions education also found that reflective ability can be assessed, though the instruments vary and the evidence is still developing (Mann et al., 2009).

In short: a statement that names an occasion, the thinking then, a change, evidence for it and a consequence can be marked; one that only describes cannot.

Reply to Jasmine T.

Jasmine, you argued that grading reflection makes students write what they think the instructor wants, which defeats the purpose. That is a real risk. I think the five elements reduce it rather than increase it, because none of them requires a particular conclusion. A student can reflect that an assignment taught them nothing new and still meet every criterion, as long as they show the occasion, their thinking and the evidence. What the criteria rule out is vagueness, not honesty. Would you see a difference between grading the conclusion and grading the reasoning?

Reply to Marcus D.

Marcus, you proposed that a reflection should include the writer's feelings about the experience. Feelings can be part of good reflection, and some models build them in. But feelings alone, such as I was frustrated, describe rather than reflect. I would refine your criterion: feelings count when the writer says what they reveal, for example that frustration came from a mismatch between what I expected the assignment to ask and what it asked. That turns a feeling into evidence.

References

Hatton, N., & Smith, D. (1995). Reflection in teacher education: Towards definition and implementation. Teaching and Teacher Education, 11(1), 33-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/0742-051X(94)00012-U

Kember, D., McKay, J., Sinclair, K., & Wong, F. K. Y. (2008). A four-category scheme for coding and assessing the level of reflection in written work. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(4), 369-379. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930701293355

Mann, K., Gordon, J., & MacLeod, A. (2009). Reflection and reflective practice in health professions education: A systematic review. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 14(4), 595-621. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-007-9090-2