Presented at an ARLH-YH training day for librarians at Huddersfield University, 2018: approaches to reflective writing in the context of an AdvanceHE Fellowship application, with examples
3. Timeline
• Map your examples to required knowledge, activities, values
• Do you have enough examples? Think of new things you can do (eg, ask a lecturer to
let you mark a presentation).
• Do you have enough professional development activities (six in last 2 yrs
for Fellow)?
• Apply to go on some, or find some OERs/Webinars/Twitter chats to do. Set up teaching
peer review if needed.
• Background reading
• Write first draft of a section; give to mentor
• Edit that section; write first draft of another section; give both to mentor
• repeat until…
• Carry on reading as your drafts show you places where you need to
reference facts
• Write up your professional development activities
• Final draft to your mentor
• Remember that your referees will want to read your application to help
them write their references- build time for them to read into your timeline
• Final proofread
• HARD DEADLINE: Submission
First 4
or
8 weeks
At least
one
section
drafted
each
month
Aim for:
~ a month
or so
before your
submission
date
4. Making it reflective
• Tell your readers a story.
• What did you do? Why did you do it? What happened as
a result (what impact did it have on students)?
• Did it work? (How could you tell?) If not, how did you
change it/ how will you change it in future?
• How are your professional values reflected in what you
did?
• (For SFHEA and above: how have you influenced
others?)
5. Making the reflection show off your skills
• Brag! Active voice! Not “the sessions are designed to..”
but “I designed the sessions to…”
• Yes, this is the hard bit.
• Think about what’s good practice in teaching in general (will be
easier after you’ve done some reading) and find examples in your
teaching.
• Ask a colleague to praise you and write down what they say- or see
if you have positive comments from being peer reviewed.
• Have the HEA’s list of Knowledge, Activities and Values
visible as you write- keep checking you’re covering them.
6. Examples from an application
Remember you’re not telling them everything you do- you’re
giving examples of what makes you an effective teacher.
Students do an exercise and then you show them the
correct answer on the board. Common sense? No,
“provid[ing] a model of what the students need to deliver, which
guides them to a better understanding of whether their view of
how well they have done meets the reality (Egelandsdal
& Krumsvik 2017)”
“One example of evaluating my professional practices comes as
a result of peer reviewing a colleague’s teaching of referencing
[…] I will try both techniques in my next set of referencing
sessions and see which works better for my students.”
7. • “The approach to making this [online course] an effective
learning environment was to divide up the material into
short chunks, include activities, and give immediate
feedback to help the student create the correct mental
model of what is going on (Hendry 2013).”
• “a successful change I made for Design students, who
tend to be very practical and visually focussed and did not
respond well to my usual style (in a group of six students,
one of them falling asleep was noticeable) […] [the
change] made a fantastic difference, the students were
very enthusiastic and commented that they really saw the
point of “information literacy” now.”
8. Reflection in general
• You need to show learning from experience, and
connecting theory/evidence to practice.
• How have you developed? Who influenced you?
• What is your action plan? (show that you haven’t stopped
changing)
• Describe- reflect (gain fuller understanding- confirm through reading)-
link to future practice- apply- justify.
9. Models of reflection
You can’t, and don’t have to, write down the process of
doing all of this for each of your examples! This is to help
you as you analyse what you do; then what you write
should naturally show that you have followed a reflective
process.
• Gibbs (1988)
Describe (what happened?)- Give your thoughts/feelings at the
time- Evaluate (what was good and bad about the experience?)-
Analyse (what sense can you make of it?)- Conclusion (what else could
you have done?)- Action plan
10. Models of reflection
• Honey and Mumford (1986)
Do- Reflect (what went well/badly? What does theory say?)- Form
principles (If you were to advise someone about what you’ve just done,
what would the advice be?)- Plan (what are you going to do about it?)
And a nice simple one!
• Rolfe et al. (2001)
What?- So what?- Now what?
11. Examples of editing to be more
reflective
• Draft “One change that was very successful was for Design students, who
tends to be very practical and visually focussed and did not respond well to
my usual style. After attending a session from librarians at the University of
the Arts, London, at a conference, I introduced a session based around using
a Barbie doll as inspiration for students to seek different kinds of
information and create a poster as an output.”
•
Final “An example of planning a teaching session to improve
student engagement was a successful change I made for Design
students, who tend to be very practical and visually focussed and did
not respond well to my usual style (in a group of six students, one of
them falling asleep was noticeable). After attending a presentation
from librarians at the University of the Arts, London, at a conference in
2015, I developed an object-based session using a Barbie doll as
inspiration for students to seek different kinds of information, and then
create a poster as an output (V3). This made a fantastic difference,
the students were very enthusiastic and commented that they really
saw the point of “information literacy” now. I introduced this object-
based concept to my colleagues.”
Why
Result
12. • Early draft “For the EBO2 module, I give marks from 0-5 on the citation and referencing
element of a presentation following the mark scheme I created.”
• Notes on how to improve this: “EBO2- writing rubric + its being in Blackboard=student
facing- + potential of development for later, will be there from beginning
• benefits of marking: seeing errors; revising rubric for next yr, ref Biggs (2003 p9) on
good verbs for demonstrating learning in LOs? also adding new exercises to improve
results of most common errors”
•
Final “For EBO2, I mark the citation and referencing element of a presentation,
following the marking criteria I created to support the learning outcomes of the
module (the marking criteria are visible in Blackboard from the start of the
module). The language used in the mark scheme was chosen to allow the
students to demonstrate learning, following good practice (Biggs 2003;
University of Bradford Centre for Educational Development 2015, section 5.3)
(K2). The module leader agreed that the mark boundaries were appropriate.
• I found this marking very enlightening about what kinds of errors the students
made. For next year I will be altering the criteria slightly to better match what the
good and bad work looked like, and will also add exercises to my teaching to
cover the common errors (using this as a chance to almost give feedback before
the assessment- Nicol 2013) (K5).”
Action plan
13. • Notes “Which Professional Values you applied, how and why.
• V1 Respect individual learners and diverse learning communities
• V2 Promote participation in higher education and equality of opportunity
for learners
• Equality of opportunity (esp 1st gen & international students), ref Dale et al
2006 p 149. Reduction of “transmission of info” expectations of induction-
ref to QAA points on induction. also ref to Red Book of Groups (Houston
1990)?, & p 152 of Rogers, C 1994? Bligh (2000 p35). Knowledge of
library anxiety (ref Mellon 1986)”
• Final “ways that create an effective learning environment include: [...]
In inductions: being friendly and welcoming, and emphasising that
nobody starts out by knowing everything, we want them to ask for
help, asking for support is normal and they are entitled to it. My aim
is to reduce the barriers for first-generation and international students
particularly, who can be prone to library anxiety (Mellon 1986) and
fear of looking foolish; I feel that this approach is more likely to
help them in a successful transition to university (French et al 2015;
QAA 2017b) (V1, V2).”
14. Build on small reflections
• After every teaching session, spend five minutes before it
fades from your mind on:
• What went well
• What went badly
• How can you change it for next time (Adapted from Booth 2016)
• And… how can I use the change I’m going to make as an
example for my application?
• What’s the pedagogical theory/evidence behind my idea?
• What improvement will the change make for the students?
• Use the feedback from having your teaching peer
reviewed in the same way.
15. How do you motivate yourself to write?
Discuss this in your groups, you will feed back in a few
minutes.
16. What worked for me
• Don’t wait until you want to do it. Set a time and just start.
• Mini writing/editing retreats- turn off your wifi so you’ve got
nothing else to do for two hours.
• Lots of small deadlines. Remember how embarrassing it
will be if you meet your mentor and haven’t written/edited
anything.
• Your boss might want to know how you’re progressing once a
month too?
17. What worked for me
• Mindmap- eg ideas sparked from your reading, cross-
referenced to your examples and to the Ks/As/Vs.
• Embrace the concept of the terrible first draft: something
on paper is better than nothing. Edit later.
• Pretend you’re talking about somebody else.
18. If any of those don’t work for you- do something else!
• Maybe you reflect best by talking to someone (do keep
notes…)?
• Maybe give yourself a small reward for meeting a daily
wordcount?
• “Bad first drafts” don’t work for everybody- some people find
their ideas get “stuck” in the first form they’re written out in; if
that’s you, maybe do deliberately sketchy cloud-style notes
until you’re happy with the flow of ideas? Or try writing an
outline, or just some headings (you'll probably find a few
sentences start coming…)
A search for “Motivational writing exercises” will probably give
you some ideas.
• It gets easier with practice.
19. • References from the application examples, and the cat photo (licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0)
• Booth, C. (2016) Why reflect? The holistic value of stepping back. [Presentation] California State University San Marcos.
https://www.slideshare.net/charbooth/why-reflect-the-holistic-practice-of-stepping-back Accessed 12 July 2017.
• Egelandsdal, K. and Krumsvik, R.J. (2017) Clickers and formative feedback at university lectures. Education and information technologies
22(1), 55-74.
• Franz, M.F. (2013) Bruno- yawn [photograph] Flikr.com. https://www.flickr.com/photos/nwater/8868317004/in/photostream/ Accessed 26
February 2018.
• Hendry, G. (2013) Integrating feedback with classroom teaching: using exemplars to scaffold learning. In: Merry, S., Price, M., Carless, D.
and Taras, M. (editors) Reconceptualising feedback in higher education: developing dialogue with students. Routledge.
• Models of reflection
• Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning by doing: a guide to teaching and learning
methods. Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.
• Honey, P. and Mumford, A. (1986) In Mumford, A. Effective learning. IPD.
• Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D. and Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection for nursing
and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Useful little book
• Williams, K., Woolliams, M. and Spiro, J. (2012)
Reflective writing. Palgrave Macmillan.
