The aim of the study was to investigate to what extent integrating systematic reflection into the academic English courses at the tertiary level fosters learning. To this end, the teacher-researcher designed an action research study and carried it out with seventy-one students in the three sections of ENG 101 she taught at the Middle East Technical University. In the course of the action research, the teacher-researcher developed an interactive reflection model in which the teacher and students engage in a collaborative process of reflection to improve their performance. For each writing and speaking task in the syllabus, a related reflective task was developed, and the reflective writing assessment rubric was created. Students wrote reflective paragraphs through which they explored their strengths and weaknesses in their performance. Moreover, the teacher-researcher and students engaged in reflective dialogue. In their reflections, students were expected to develop an action plan for further improvement. The teacher-researcher kept a reflective journal in which she reflected on the research and her teaching skills. At the end of the semester, the students evaluated the effectiveness of the reflective activities. The data collection tools were student questionnaire, student work, transcripts of the reflective dialogues, students&rsquo / evaluation of reflective activities and teacher&rsquo / s reflective journal. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data revealed that the integration of reflection in the course increased students&rsquo / awareness of their strengths and weaknesses in relation to the tasks they performed, improved their self-assessment skills and increased their self-confidence. Reflecting with students and on students&rsquo / reflections became a journey of discovery for the teacher-researcher. She developed an action plan and put it into implementation.

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyses educators’ experiences of reflective conversations in their teams and part of teams in relation to their work with pupils in need of special support. Ten educators representing ten different teams have been interviewed since all had experiences of working in teams and working with pupils in need of special support. Focus has been on the educators’ experiences of the organisation, the effects of the reflections and the need to develop the reflective conversations in their teams and part of teams. The result showed that only a few of the educators described an organisation of the reflective conversations in their teams that met the conditions recent research point out as a way to use reflective conversations as a tool for development. These educators reached a deeper level of analysis and critical approach than the other teams which led to an improvement of their work with pupils in need of special support. The majority of the educators described reflective conversations with parts of their teams that content analysis and critical reflection. These reflective conversations led to development of their work with pupils in need of special support despite the fact that these reflective conversations showed a lack of organisation. All of the educators were aware of the need to improve the reflective conversations to achieve development of the educational practice, especially those in their teams. A conclusion was that reflective conversations in teams or part of teams can be a tool in the process of developed the work with pupils in need of special support provided that the conditions for the organisation were met and that there was a systematic reflection on high level.

Social work practice requires that graduates be prepared to deal with complex, multifaceted problems which cannot be defined completely, do not have absolute, correct answers and can be approached from multiple perspectives. This study evaluated the influence of case-based instruction on MSW students' reflective judgment, an aspect of critical thinking associated with the ability to reason through ill-structured problems. (King, Wood, & Mines, 1990). The Reflective Judgment Model, which describes a developmental continuum based upon epistemic assumptions regarding the source and justification of knowledge claims, served as the theoretical framework for the assessment of reflective thinking in this mixed methods study. A quasi-experimental pre-post nonequivalent control group design was utilized to explore whether students who participated in a case method course demonstrated greater increases in reflective judgment than those who did not. MSW students enrolled in a case-based capstone course at a major metropolitan university in the southeast served as the intervention group, while foundation year students enrolled in a research methodology course served as the comparison group. Both groups completed the Reasoning about Current Issues Test (RCI), which is an online, standardized measure that has been widely used to assess reflective judgment (Wood, Kitchener, & Jensen, 2002) at pre and posttest. Content analysis procedures were used to facilitate assessment of students' initial and final case analysis papers for evidence of changes in the reflective thinking skills and problem-solving approaches utilized on initial and final case analysis papers. The case method participants' mean RCI scores remained unchanged between pre and posttest, while RCI posttest scores of participants in the control group decreased significantly. Pre and posttest comparison of students' case analysis papers using a customized rubric based on Wolcott's Steps for Better Thinking (2006) similarly indicated no mean changes in problem-solving approaches between pre and posttest. However, students who began the course using strategies associated with pre-reflective judgment increased their scores on the rubric significantly while those who exhibited higher levels of quasi-reflective judgment at pretest decreased at posttest. Strategies for designing a developmental curriculum to target the reflective judgment levels of MSW students are proposed.

This qualitative study described non-science undergraduate majors' responses to controversial issues embedded in an introductory level environmental science course in a liberal arts college located in the southeastern United States. Participants enrolled in this 12-week summer course were both traditional college-age (late teens to early twenties) and non-traditional age student (thirties to fifties). Approximately 76 percent were female. Students demonstrated various lifestyles (e.g., gay, single-parent, living at home), socioeconomic statuses (e.g., middle-income, low income), employment (e.g., employed, unemployed, ex-military) and ethnicities. The structure of the environmental science course was consistent with the science education reform movement standards applied to K-12 public schools, but not yet pervasive in higher education. Some of the reform techniques included use of open discussion format, cooperative learning, field trips, classroom demonstration, and v arious media. The theoretical framework for the study was using controversial issues in science to stimulate cognitive dissonance, which may provide a pathway to higher level reflective thinking. Controversial issues triggering a response in students showed elements of injustice and unfairness. Examples included the CHEERS pesticide study on children in Jacksonville, Florida; human radiation experimentation, including the use of depleted uranium in military conflicts; and local groundwater cases that exhibited environmental racism. The study showed the use of controversial issues in the environmental science course stimulated reflective thinking and encouraged the expression of environmental advocacy beyond the classroom. Students expressed participation in energy and water conservation, recycling practices, political involvement, and joining environmental groups. Students shared information with outsiders, such as family, friends, and co-workers when they deemed it personally or societally relevant (e.g., pertaining to family, health, safety, homelife, politics). Generational differences in students were observed in their openness to discuss controversial issues, ability to self-express, attitude toward the environment, quality of writing, and involvement in the educational process.

Wireklint Sundström, Birgitta, 2005. Prepared to be unprepared. A phenomeno-logical study of assessment with a caring approach and how it can be learned in the ambulance services.A focal point in this dissertation is that there is knowledge in the ambulance ser-vice that is experience-based, which has not always been made explicit, and that provides the foundation for the caregivers’ assessment of the patients and their needs for care. The first aim of the study was to describe and analyse the ambu-lance services with a focus on the phenomenon of assessment from the lifeworld perspective in the caring sciences. The second aim of the study was of an educa-tional nature where the object was to be able to draw conclusions about the learning process in the ambulance service in the light of the knowledge generat-ed by the empirical findings. Thus the aim was to create a synthesis consisting of didactic ideas that are based on the caring sciences and describing how assess-ment can be learnt and can support future caregivers in the ambulance services.Assessment in the ambulance service entails, on an overall level, having a natu-ral caring attitude that includes striving in two directions at the same time. These are that on the one hand the caregivers strive to bring order to that which is dis-ordered as soon as possible, to structure the unstructured, and in short define the indefinite in order to provide medical assistance. There is a need to quickly as-sess the patient’s condition and which measures are necessary. On the other hand the caregivers strive to let the indefinite wait a while in order to be able to meet the patient’s suffering. There is thus a desire to listen attentively to the individual patient.The essential meaning of assessment of patients in the ambulance services is that there are conflicting demands on assessment and care, which entails that the caregiver adapts him/herself to the prevailing care situation in a way that means being flexible and adaptable to the patient’s medical condition. The caregivers also have a flexibility and adaptability in relation to their colleague, which leads to a mutual interplay in the assessment. Assessment in the ambulance services also means that the caregivers are paradoxically prepared at the same time as be-ing unprepared, i.e. they are prepared for the unprepared. The assessment thus starts before the caregivers have reached the patient and the actual situation. Even if they “know” what awaits them, they do not really “know”. It becomes a dynamic struggle between on the one side the expectancy that feels certain and on the other the unknown in every new situation. The struggle contains a desire for control and effectiveness in a care practice full of surprises. / Kunskapscentrum PreHospen vid Högskolan i Borås, Institutionen för vårdvetenskap.

The aim of this practitioner research is to explore and analyse how headteachers reflect on their own professional practice to help them sustain themselves and improve secondary schools. The research has two aspects: the first is an action participative enquiry between 2006 and 2009 into the realities of secondary headship; the second is an analysis of the significance of reflexivity in other headteachers and the participant headteacher researcher. Whilst there is a significant literature concerning school improvement and leadership there is very little of a longitudinal nature which examines the experience of secondary headteachers in depth. Therefore this research has significantly enhanced that body of knowledge. It is also appropriate in terms of professional practice as the government increasingly empowers headteachers to be free from the collaborative structures of Local Education Authorities. This (almost) four year study of seven secondary school headteachers within the same metropolitan area takes the form of 25 extended conversations between practising headteachers who established strong “conversational partnerships” (Rubin and Rubin, 2005 p79) over the study. The analysis from the data identified how headteachers sustained good practice in their schools and how they formed co-coaching or mentoring relationships with one another over time. The research is characteristic of a social constructivist tradition. It generated rich, qualitative data gathered through the use of interviews, the participant researcher’s field notes, Ofsted inspection reports and “naturally occurring” material. The research identified a range of themes in the area of school improvement common in the literature such as the importance of focusing on teaching and learning and appointing the ‘right’ staff. It also confirmed much of the existing research in the field of school leadership. It established that these headteachers readily engaged in reflexive practices which impacted positively in supporting the individual professionals and their schools. The research also identified the existence of meta-reflection (Burge et al., 2000, Watson, 1998b) in an educational setting. A definition of meta-reflection would be a type of reflective practice used by of Headteachers in a professional ‘power neutral’ context. It is commonly found in the analysis of headteacher dialogues and requires the passage of time for Headteachers to reflect on these dialogues which allowed allow some headteachers to access a reflective state which supported their professional sustainability and improved their decision making. This ultimately had a positive impact on their schools. The research found that all headteachers reflect on their professional practice at an operational level. It also found that they all were able to be reflexive almost to the degree of co-researching with the participant researcher headteacher. Finally a majority of the sample were also able to use meta-reflection to help then process decision making in their schools. Existing models of leadership (Bush 2011), research analysis (Layder 1993) and reflexivity (Archer 2007) have been used and adapted to illuminate meta-reflection in the headteachers in the sample and to re-define “authentic” headship in this context. This study is relevant not only to headteachers but also to policymakers and educationalists interested in how to improve schools over the long-term and sustain the workforce of headteachers in a manner which benefits all stakeholders.

In the dominant management discourse, managers and consultants are credited with the ability to move their organisation in a planned, controlled way towards an idealised future. The assumptions underpinning this discourse include the following: organisations are thought of as systems that can be designed and steered in an intended direction; culture is seen as a control system to align employees’ conduct in support of the organisation’s strategy; consultants are viewed as experts in designing and implementing effective and efficient interventions, being on top of the process. These assumptions are grounded in the natural sciences of certainty, in which rational, formative and linear causality are presumed. I argue in this thesis, through a reflexive enquiry of my own practice, that these assumptions do not sufficiently resonate with my experience as an internal consultant on leadership and culture change. I am offering a critique of the dominant way of understanding organisations, culture and control, with the implication of coming to reappraise the involvement of a consultant in processes of culture change. In understanding organisations to be self-organising patterns of human interaction, culture is a social phenomenon, as it continually emerges as social control in the day-to-day local interactions of people making sense of experience. Using webs of significance, present in one’s personal history and in society, people interpret and give order to their life as they negotiate and evaluate their engagements together. In their engagement, participants will negotiate how to functionalise general values in particular situations that involve differences and can cause anxiety or even conflict. In this process of negotiation and evaluation, they are forming and being formed by each other. In this interaction no one is in control, determining in a predictable way what will happen. The participants have an influence that impacts on potential next steps in their interaction. An internal consultant’s involvement is in facilitating these processes of local interaction, enabling participants to have the conversations they tend not to have themselves, perhaps due to the anxiety of the interaction being unpredictable and predictable at the same time while no one is in control of the process or the outcome. A consultant is, as fellow participant, involved in the interaction while forming and being formed by it. He is at the same time detached: by inviting participants to work with and reflect on their experience of engaging, he enables reflexive awareness of what they are involved in together. The internal consultant, through temporary leadership, facilitates the conversation by focusing on the present, and working with differences, allowing the potential for novelty and change to occur. This temporary leadership is not a designated role or the authority of being the expert, but emerges in social interaction, through recognition and acceptance of participants acknowledging the consultant as leader in having a stronger influence than others. I propose that this alternative perspective does not offer a set of techniques, a causal framework to improve organisations in an intended and controlled way, as supposed in the dominant discourse. Rather, the perspective of complex responsive processes of relating enables a better understanding of human interaction processes; of culture emerging as social control and consulting as a social process, within the paradoxes of predictability and unpredictability, of being and not being in control, and of stability and change at the same time. It requires an internal consultant to assume a form of temporary leadership by enabling participants, through reflexive understanding of their experience, to be responsible in a critically aware manner of the ways in which they influence the next steps of engaging.

This research proposes that design and visual thinking in combination with narrative theory contribute to enhance knowledge of innovation processes and support managers in their work. In particular, the focus is on the use of Storyboarding to support a better definition of a project’s brief. Innovation studies have shown that the initial phases of innovation processes (typically called the “front end of innovation”) are crucial for success. A proper definition of a brief, that occurs at the front of the front end, is therefore one of the most relevant events in innovation. This study investigates the early phases of innovation by developing and evaluating a new method for developing a brief. First, an explorative approach has been used in order to develop knowledge of challenges in the front end of innovation and how design thinking, visual thinking and narratives can bring new insights in teamwork. In this explorative search the use of case studies has been employed. Then, the explorative search has focused onthe use of Storyboarding as a tool for reflection, and in particular for igniting dynamics of framing and reframing of innovation problems. Finally, in order to create a deeper knowledge in the use of storyboarding three hypotheses has been evaluated, four experiments has been conducted with the involvement of more than 60 people defining innovation briefs. In these experiments, storyboarding (visual and narrative) has been used to support “thinking” that leads to the brief. In other words, storyboarding has been seen as a process to enable innovation teams to think differently or more precisely, rather than just a tool to represent or to communicate the brief. The experiments show that using storyboarding has effects that can support innovation management. First, storyboarding is useful if management wants to “stimulate” a reflection on meaning when developing a brief, i.e. when they want an innovation team to consider both utilitarian and emotional/symbolic factors in an innovation process. Second, Storyboarding brings a narrower focus, compared to traditional written briefs, within the “area of interest” brought up by management, which sometimes may be asked for when the organization is in search for reframing the direction of innovation. / Denna avhandling föreslår att design och visuellt tänkande i kombination med narrativ teori kan bidra till en bättre förståelse och ledning av innovationsprocesser. Framför allt med fokus på användningen av storyboarding för att stödja en bättre definition av ett projekts uppdragsbeskrivning, eller som det kallas en ”brief”. Tidigare innovationsforskning har visat att de inledande faserna av innovationsprocesser (vanligen kallad “the front end of innovation”) är av avgörande betydelse för att innovationer skall nå framgång. En ordentligt utformad ”brief”, formulerad tidigt, i de inledande faserna av innovationsprocessen är således en av de mest relevanta händelserna för framgångsrikt innovationsarbete. Denna forskning bidrar till kunskap i de tidiga faserna av innovationsprocessen genom att utveckla och utvärdera en ny metod för att utveckla en ”brief”, storyboarding. Först så har en explorativ metodik använts för att skapa förståelse för de tidiga faserna av innovation och hur metoder och teorier från design, visuellt tänkande och narrativ kan ge nya insikter i teamarbete. I denna explorativa del så har fallstudier använts som forskningsstrategi. Därefter så har mitt sökande efter förståelse fokuserats på användningen av storyboarding som ett verktyg för reflektion, och i synnerhet att formulera och omformulera inramningen av möjligheter för innovation. Slutligen, för att skapa en djupare förståelse av storyboarding, så har tre hypoteser utvärderats med hjälp av ett antal experiment med mer än 60 personers deltagande där team utvecklar en ”brief”. I dessa experiment så har Storyboarding använts för att stödja teamens “tänkande” för att utveckla en ”brief”. Med andra ord så har Storyboarding setts som en process för att möjliggöra för team att tänka annorlunda eller mer exakt, snarare än bara ett verktyg för att representera eller för att kommunicera en ”brief”. Experimenten visar att användningen av Storyboarding har ett antal effekter som kan stödja ledning av innovation. För det första kan vi se att Storyboarding kan vara användbart om man vill “stimulera” reflektion kopplat till innebörd (meaning) när man utvecklar en ”brief”, dvs. när man vill att ett team ska överväga både funktionella så väl som känslomässiga/symboliska faktorer i en innovationsprocess. För det andra så skapar storyboarding en ”smalare” definition, jämfört med traditionella skriftliga ”briefs”, inom det av ledningen valda fokusområde. Detta kan vara önskvärt när ledningen söker efter nya möjligheter för innovation.

Scheduled time for reflective work is common at many Swedish preschools. Reflection is a complex concept that is being used with many different purposes in preschools. The reflective work in Swedish preschools today has its roots in the theories from Vygotskij about how children learn by watching and cooperating with others. Also, many Swedish preschools have taken inspiration from the preschools in Reggio Emilia in Italy, who see the reflective work as something necessary in their work around children’s learning processes. “The learning group” is a way of seeing children and adults as members of groups who capture knowledge by social interaction, taken from the preschools in Reggio Emilia. In 1998, Swedish preschools got their first curriculum, which also took inspiration from Vygotskij and his visions of children’s learning. The aim of this study is to find out how reflective work can be done at some Swedish preschools, and also to investigate a group of teacher’s thoughts on reflective work. The issues in my study are: What meaning can lie in the concept of reflection in preschools? In what situations can teachers and children in preschools use reflection? What can be the purpose of this reflection? To answer these questions, I did interviews with teachers and observations of meetings and of the work that was being done with the children. The result shows that the term of reflection is ambiguous and is being used with different interpretations in the preschools I have studied. Reflection is for instance retelling events, solving problems, cooperating and curiosity. Teachers and children use reflection in various situations everyday, both at planned and spontaneous activities. The purpose of the reflection at the preschools I have visited was for instance to find a focus in working with the children, to know how to move on and to get deeper into what you do.

This study used explanatory mixed methods to examine the effects of two computer-based reflection writing scaffolds, question prompts and writing process display, on preservice teachers’ levels of reflection in their online reflective journal writing. The scaffolds were embedded in a system simulating the Professional Accountability Support System Using a Portal Approach (PASS-PORT). The outcome measure was the level of reflection achieved in participants’ writing. The researcher collected data at the College of Education of a major southern university in the United States. Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in a technology integration course in fall 2007. Sixty-five preservice teachers participated in quantitative phase of the study; sixteen out of the 65 preservice teachers were purposefully selected to participate in qualitative phase of the study. The majority of the preservice teachers were white females between the ages of 20-29 in their junior year. During the quantitative phase of the study, participants in control group and two treatment groups were randomly and evenly assigned to one of three different Web pages associated with their treatment conditions. The participants reflected on a critical incident that happened during their practical teaching. Two raters, blind to the participants’ treatment conditions, coded the highest level of reflection achieved in their writing samples using the reflection rubric developed by Ward and McCotter (2004). The researcher employed ANOVA to assess the group differences in the highest level of reflection reached and in the length of the reflective writing in the number of words. The alpha level was set at .05 for all analyses. During the qualitative phase, the researcher conducted open-ended interviews with the participants as a follow-up to their reflection writing. The participants’ reflection writings and interviews served as data sources. Miles and Huberman's (1994) data analysis procedures guided the qualitative data analysis. The quantitative results indicated that computer-based scaffolds significantly enhanced preservice teachers’ levels of reflection in their online journal writing. Preservice teachers who used the scaffolds wrote longer reflection than those in the control group. Correlation analysis revealed that there was a positive relationship between the level of reflection and the length of journal writing. Three overarching factors emerged from the qualitative data analysis that explained how and why the computer-based scaffolds enhanced their reflective journal writing. The factors included (a) the specific requirements conveyed in the scaffolds; (b) the structure of the scaffolds; and (c) the use of the critical incidents to anchor reflective journal writing. How to improve preservice teachers’ critical reflection capability and skills remains an actively debated topic. Recent years have witnessed an emergence of research and development in Web-based educational systems to help prepare highly qualified teacher candidates. However, the articulative/reflective attribute of meaningful learning does not seem to be evident in most of these systems. Although there is considerable research on the potential for embedding scaffolds in technology-enhanced learning environments, mechanisms intended to facilitate reflective practice in such environments also seems to be lacking. In order to help fill this gap, it is hoped that the analyses and results of the current study can be used as a building block for research on how to leverage the affordances of computer-based scaffolds to enhance preservice teachers’ reflective practice in technology-enhanced educational systems.