In recent decades, reflective practice has become a key driver and an increasingly influential referent in the professional development of student teachers. Yet, the complex, somewhat elusive boundaries of reflective practice make this phenomenon difficult to define. The purpose of this study was to analyse and synthesise existing literature and research in order to better understand the multi-faceted nature of reflective practice. From an informed platform, a new conceptual framework was designed both to capture and investigate nine dimensions of reflective practice in which student teachers could demonstrate capacity and commitment. Eighty year 4 student teachers, who had undertaken action research projects during their final school experience, and thirteen university lecturers, who had guided the student teachers throughout this enterprise, were participants in this study. Data were gathered through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews that incorporated a series of closed and open-ended responses. Quantitative data were analysed to calculate statistical frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations; and, qualitative data via analytic induction methods to identify common themes and to extract narratives of experience. Findings showed that a majority (>90%) of student teachers perceived their capacity and commitment to engage in six dimensions of reflective practice [and most (>80%) in eight] had influenced their professional development. These perceptions were not wholly congruent with those of dissertation supervisors with variance between supervisors also evident. Qualitative distinctions, in the use of three types of reflective conversation, were found between male and female student teachers and within each gender group. Several constraints in the development of student teachers’ reflective practice also emerged. Further research is recommended into: what evidence and criteria shape judgments about reflective practice; how school-based staff might effectively support student teachers’ development of reflective practice; and, how the framework designed for this study might be replicated and refined to enhance reflective practice in personal professional development across disciplines.

The aim of this thesis is to promote a dialogue about constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996) with a particular focus on the use of reflective writing as an assessed task in courses of teacher education and the influence it has, or does not have, on teacher reflection and/or in improving practice. The work is set against a national context in which time to reflect is being written out of teacher education as a consequence of policy which locates ‘training’ to teach increasingly within the busy-ness of school life. Persuaded by principles of constructive alignment and, therefore, troubled by student teachers’ perceptions of complex assignments which appear to have little relevance to their practice as teachers, I have undertaken an action research study (McAteer, 2013; Norton, 2009; and Wells, 2001), beginning with a conviction that it is possible to design assessment tasks which truly integrate professional and academic requirements and influence the learning activity of student teachers in ways which are meaningful for their development as teachers. Using an adaptation of the Ward and McCotter (2004) ‘Reflection Rubric’ to locate characteristics of reflection within the reflective writing submitted for assessment, the study evaluated the relationship between written reflection and academic and professional attainment and found little evidence that engagement in the reflective writing assignment had contributed to the participants’ development as teachers. I conclude that the assessment strategies of students and of the course had been either not aligned or destructively aligned. The thesis narrates my journey to the adoption of a socio-constructivist perspective, leading to greater insight into the relationship between established assessment practice and the learning activity of student teachers, and a questioning of my practice. Crucially, the notion of a ‘framework for assessment’ is broadened to encompass all assignment-related activity, the people involved and the timeframe, in addition to the task and criteria. I conclude by identifying a desire to know more about the national view of assessment in teacher education, seeking a network of colleagues in order to explore ways in which counterparts in other institutions are supporting student teachers to develop reflective practice and assess reflective writing.

This thesis is a story of how I came to construct and illuminate a reflexive narrative as a journey of self-inquiry and transformation towards personal realisation. It shares a view of reflection as lived in being and becoming a reflective nurse educator in higher education. My narrative draws upon, autoethnography, critical social theory and hermeneutic perspectives. Johns (2010) six dialogical movements have been used to give structure to my narrative. Nineteen reflections generate the reflexive narrative in a hermeneutic spiral, as each text informs the other along the journey. Insights become clearer through guidance, dialogue, and engagement with the literature. Early reflections show anxiety, emotional distress and entanglement as I tried to solve student problems. Maternalism influenced my approach to being with distressed and struggling students. Gradually these feelings give way to being available, becoming student kind as an enabling relationship with students. Becoming student kind is framed through my adaptation of the Being Available Template (Johns 2013). It is realised through; listening, presence, caring, empathy, compassion and emotional intelligence. Poise, a self-management practice ensures that personal concerns and tensions do not hinder my relationships with students. Mindfulness expressed as spirituality sustains this process. This path to becoming student kind creates a learning space for student growth and development. In so doing, students are enabled to enter into a nurse patient relationship through being available. I express my empowerment through a dialogical voice, transforming my practice with individual students, in the classroom and beyond. Understanding the tensions within the complexity of university culture influencing nurse education, informs collaboration with colleagues towards a shared vision of nurse education. I turn to reflect on a journey of constructing a reflexive narrative. Five stepping stones for dialogue in advancing guided reflection as a foundation for nurse education are offered. My inquiry weaves a story of reflection as testimony to a fusion of practice and theory. I reveal practice wisdom, informing my day to day work in being available becoming student kind in relationships with students. I explore the contribution to knowledge, my practice and future research, considering the strengths and challenges therein.

The nature of reflective practice in teaching and its development is the focus of this research. The research approach is reflexive narrative through systematic self-inquiry using Johns (2010) six dialogical movements. This methodology is new to researching the practice of teaching. The research process involved constructing stories of practice experiences, culminating in the construction of the reflexive narrative charting the entire journey over three years and four months. Creating the stories involved in-depth reflection using the disciplined practice of journaling. Reflection was deepened using reflective models, and dialogue with a range of literature sources also supported the creation of the stories. Central to the study was guided reflection through regular engagement with an established inquiry group, which provided a high level of challenge and support for the research. The reflexive narrative was constructed from 25 stories of practice experience, which represents the journey of being and becoming a reflective teacher and teacher educator. The research presents aspects of the lived experience of teaching which includes foregrounding some of the complexity of classroom practice. The research demonstrates how engaging in in-depth reflective process can transform moment to moment practice within the fast-paced crowded classroom experience. This is achieved through gaining an in-depth understanding of self as a teacher, and of the education system and its policies and practices. As a result of in-depth reflection on practice, aspects of teaching which usually remain hidden are exposed. The research identifies how emotion impacts on teaching in some depth. An understanding of one’s emotional self in practice, and one’s personality preferences are essential in developing desirable practice. The research makes a contribution to knowledge about narrative research in educational practices. The methodology demonstrates a valuable approach to developing teaching practice, and enabling a teacher to identify issues which impact on practice but which have been hidden. Teachers also gain an understanding of the fear and constraints which limit desirable practice and enable one to find ways to work that are liberating rather than limiting.

In order to enhance teaching it is important to understand how students learn. The aim of this study was to discover the interventions needed to enhance the support offered by teachers and tutors in a Business Accounting programme to develop in students an intrinsic motivation and deep learning strategy which could be used later in life in other areas of study. The data came from a number of sources, including the Biggs’ revised two-factor Study Process Questionnaire: R-SPQ-2F, administered to students. The second source was tutors’ responses to a set of questions, and the third source was an interview held with an experienced tutor. In the main, the data was analysed using phenomenographic methodology. The study yielded valuable insights into the tutorial context and tutors’ perceptions of the factors that hinder or enhance student learning.

This thesis concerns a longitudinal study of the practice of Live Peer Assessment on two University courses in Computer Science. By Live Peer Assessment I mean a practice of whole-class collective marking using electronic devices of student artefacts demonstrated in a class or lecture theatre with instantaneous aggregated results displayed on screen immediately after each grading decision. This is radically different from historical peer-assessment in universities which has primarily been asynchronous process of marking of students' work by small subsets of the cohort (e.g. 1 student artefact is marked by < 3 fellow students). Live Peer Assessment takes place in public, is marked by (as far as practically possible) the whole cohort, and results are instantaneous. This study observes this practice, first on a level 4 course in E-Media Design where students' main assignment is a multimedia CV (or resume) and secondly on a level 7 course in Multimedia Specification Design and Production where students produce a multimedia information artefact in both prototype and final versions. In both cases, students learned about these assignments from reviewing works done by previous students in Live Peer Evaluation events where they were asked to collectively publicly mark those works according to the same rubrics that the tutors would be using. In this level 4 course, this was used to help students get a better understanding of the marks criteria. In the level 7 course, this goal was also pursued, but was also used for the peer marking of students' own work. Among the major findings of this study are: • In the level 4 course student attainment in the final assessment improved on average by 13% over 4 iterations of the course, with very marked increase among students in the lower percentiles • The effectiveness of Live Peer Assessment in improving student work comes from o Raising the profile of the marking rubric o Establishing a repertoire of example work o Modelling the 'noticing' of salient features (of quality or defect) enabling students to self-monitor more effectively • In the major accepted measure of peer-assessment reliability (correlation between student awarded marks and tutor awarded marks) Live Peer Assessment is superior to traditional peer assessment. That is to say, students mark more like tutors when using Live Peer Assessment • In the second major measure (effect-size) which calculates if students are more strict or generous than tutors, (where the ideal would be no difference), Live Peer Assessment is broadly comparable with traditional peer assessment but this is susceptible to the conditions under which it takes place • The reason for the better greater alignment of student and tutor marks comes from the training sessions but also from the public nature of the marking where individuals can compare their marking practice with that of the rest of the class on a criterion by criterion basis • New measures proposed in this thesis to measure the health of peer assessment events comprise: Krippendorf's Alpha, Magin's Reciprocity Matrix, the median pairwise tutor student marks correlation, the Skewness and Kurtosis of the distribution of pairwise tutor student marking correlations • Recommendations for practice comprise that: o summative peer assessment should not take place under conditions of anonymity but that very light conditions of marking competence should be enforced on student markers (e.g. > 0.2 correlation between individual student marking and that of tutors) o That rubrics can be more suggestive and colloquial in the conditions of Live Peer Assessment because the marking criteria can be instantiated in specific examples of student attainment and therefore the criteria may be less legalistically drafted because a more holistic understanding of quality can be communicated.

Despite many Clinical Psychology training programmes utilizing reflective practice groups as part of clinical training, there remains little research examining the experiences of such groups from a trainee perspective. However, it remains the preferred method of developing reflective practice skills during training. This research used interviews and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to explore the experiences of attending reflective practice groups as part of doctoral Clinical Psychology training. A purposive sample of eight participants were recruited for a single, semi-structured interview. The interviews were audio-recoded, transcribed and analysed by the researcher. Five superordinate themes were constructed: 'the process: there were so many layers', 'the impact: an ongoing process', 'the facilitator: a presence who was not always present', 'commitment: I hated it, but I still went' and 'getting through it: finding ways to cope'. Nineteen corresponding subordinate themes were constructed from the data. The research findings illustrate the varied and complex experiences of the participants. Whilst the experience was often difficult, participants appeared committed to attending and sought out ways in which to navigate the experience. The results are conceptualised in terms of existing psychological theory and literature. A critique of the research and suggestions for future studies are offered, which include exploring the views of the facilitators of such groups and comparing how groups are utilized within different training institutions. Recommendations are made related to the development of future reflective practice groups, which include recommendations related to the style of facilitation and the frequency and size of the group.

This study is a first of its kind for New Zealand journalism education, following 20 students at two different schools throughout a year-long training programme. It used two methods to gain a deeper understanding: a discourse analysis of their news stories written at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the year, and retrospective protocol analysis, to provide insight into their thinking processes, through their taped reflections. The research found that journalism education controlled by the New Zealand Journalists Training Organisation still resembles that of 20 years ago, despite increasing numbers of students learning journalism as part of degree programmes. Students are trained for the media industry through learning by doing. They receive basic instruction and then are expected to perfect their skills by practising their writing and to learn the conventions and routines of the media industry through socialisation and work experience. In the first half of the year, the students developed some skills in writing the traditional inverted-pyramid news stories. However, by the end of the year, their news writing showed technical signs of regression. Firstly, they were not writing in a succinct, clear fashion, emphasising news values. Secondly, they had been inadequately trained to write outside of the inverted-pyramid news story or to use popular “soft” lead sentences, so that their writing tended towards being promotional. Thirdly, journalism institutions strongly favour subediting by tutors and this detracted from the students gaining understanding of their own writing and being able to self-monitor and evaluate it. Lastly, they failed to show the critical thinking skills and independence necessary for a professional journalist so that they could research thoroughly, reflect deeply and write entertaining, informative and important news stories with flair. Their reflections confirmed these findings, suggesting some stress and disillusionment. The students could “declare” what they knew about writing a news story but could not put it into practice. They blamed their failure to write high quality news stories on the pressures of the course, the deadlines and high volumes of stories. The gaps in their journalism education were also revealed through what was not mentioned in their taped reflections: in particular, they failed to mention the importance of news values in making their stories more appealing. The major influence at first was the students’ tutors, followed by work experience and the “real world” of the media industry. The concentration on job skills and gaining a job coupled with a lack of knowledge and discussion provided the students with an incomplete understanding of the pressures of the media industry they were entering. The study recommends more debate about journalism education and more research, as well as a change away from “learning by doing” to a more critical, reflective approach.

The study aimed to investigate how continuing professional development (CPD) activities, through the development of a CPD educational framework, can assist Medical Radiation Science (MRS) practitioners to engage in reflective practice while entrenched in a protocol driven workplace culture. The study, with action research as the chosen methodology, and used both quantitative and qualitative methodology, was divided into two phases. The first phase of data collection aimed to inform the researcher of the needs of the MRS profession. The second phase of the study involved the design and development of an educational framework for CPD, based on current theories of learning and teaching using the framework and data collected from the first phase of the study, an online module was developed. The objectives of the module were to increase participants' knowledge in breast planning in radiation therapy by assisting participants to engage in reflective practice. The cyclical process of action research was used to pilot the module twice with two groups of volunteer radiation therapists. The online module was evaluated using Kirkpatrick's four level evaluation model (Kirkpatrick, 1998; Guskey, 2000). Based on Boud et al.'s reflection model (1985), all participants showed evidence of action, affective and perspective outcomes. They also demonstrated successful development of lifelong learning attributes, were empowered and their learning had a positive impact in their workplace. They began to assume a more proactive role and increased clinical responsibilities, engaging colleagues in collaborative reflections and adopting evidence-based approaches in advancing workplace practices. The study shows that it is possible to assist MRS practitioners to engage in reflective practice within a CPD educational framework online. The study also shows the importance of reflective practice, lifelong learning and transformative learning in CPD. Reflective practice liberates and empowers participants, lifelong learning equips them to continue learning and transformative learning facilitates perspective transformation. Thus, an effective educational framework is one that adopts a holistic approach towards CPD, by incorporating reflective practice, lifelong learning and transformative learning. The educational framework adopted in the present study may be extrapolated to CPD programs in other MRS disciplines and other healthcare professions.

“There is no need to reinvent the wheel” – a cliché, often told when you want to come up with something new that in someway can be connected to something that already exist. This study shows the opposite – that inventions emanate from what is given. It can be a detail, a problem in a thing - a wheel - or a situation that catches the inventor’s attention. It is something that seeks a solution or something that generates an idea, a hint or a clue of something new and useful. The art of invention emerges from the ability and skill to broaden the seeing and put thinking, substance and tradition into motion. An old radio dial generates a new ergonomic steering wheel. The connection of memories between a chestnut, a cello and an early morning at a water pump creates three works of art. The epistemology of this study is based on a dialogue between voices from different times and traditions. Some voices are normative examples, drawn from a dialogue between Swedish inventors. The others are those of philosophers from the Age of Enlightenment, fetched from their original writings. Through that dialogue, perspectives and ideas of inventors and classical philosophers meet and are compared. A deeper understanding thus emerges that shows the essence of invention and in fact the essence of all creative work: i) Freedom – in thought and in action ii) Dialogue - to test and try new ideas and things in the ever changing circumstances. iii) Doubt - not taking established fact and assumptions for granted iv) Action – testing and breaking established praxis and rules. The study also illustrates the need for an alternative scientific form and expression concerning studies in the fields of invention, innovation and other practical work. Invention can not be captured or shaped by exact measurements, concepts, definitions or abstract models. It takes place in the borderland between fact and fiction, where technique, aesthetics and philosophy are one working entity. The strive for knowledge is endless and without limits and it is nurtured by wondering, searching and ambiguity. With inspiration from the dialogue seminar method used within KTH Advanced Programme in Reflective Practice – this study point out the actuality and vitality in using the classical philosophical writings, dialogue and analogical thinking as a scientific method within higher education.