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This paper explores how reflective practice can act as a catalyst for change and ‘add value’ to the learning process of the partners involved in professional development programmes. The concept of added value is widely used in business and education but to what extent can the concept be articulated and realized? This paper provides some insight into how the process of reflection was introduced and sustained within professional development programmes. We evaluate and reflect upon four key interventions designed as a catalyst for change with the aim of enhancing the transfer and articulation of learning across the educational and the work community. We question if reflecting upon learning can add value and whether the partners involved in the learning process can support the transition from reflection, to action in order to maximize the change process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My inspiration for this paper arose at the third Carfax international conference, Reflection as a catalyst for change , through two different papers presented to the conference: Margaret Ledwith’s paper that told her mother’s life story, and Robert Grossman’s paper on Perry’s stages of intellectual and ethical development. For me, the connection between these papers lay in their resonance with my approach to reflection and practice in professional development and learning. In this article, I address working with memoir to identify how this process awakens our sensibilities, linking life story with moral development and the process of coming to know and learn. I will explain how the process of reflection was undertaken and address how this approach can facilitate the way reflection is taught and most meaningfully learned in a professional development context. I will point to the benefits this approach can facilitate, by indicating albeit briefly, the impact this approach has had on others, their work and my role as a tutor. I suggest this approach to reflection can facilitate renewed professional identities and practice improvement that is driven by a desire to bring rationality and justice to our work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher reflection on action has been studied extensively in the last 25 years. To appreciate the concept and its use, we should look at the key features of reflection on action (TRA) as identified in research and what teachers state is typical of reflection. In three other studies we have explored possible alignments among (1) what has been claimed (using 50 conceptual papers); (2) what has been disseminated to teachers (using 122 articles on teacher development); and (3) what has been described by teachers (analyzing 49 teacher accounts of reflection practices). As a result of this exploration, we found little empirical evidence for what has been stated in theoretical essays. The research-based papers revealed that the studies conducted were not very relevant for key characteristics of TRA as identified by the theoretical papers. Furthermore, in attempting to gauge teachers' reflections, the research does not really reflect what is advocated by models of reflection. These findings led us to conclude that the concept of teacher reflection on action is still very much in flux and may not be adopted as intended in programs of teacher professional development and teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of academic and professional development programmes engender reflective practice. There is little doubt that participants leave such programmes equipped and keen to utilize reflective practice in their own workplace practices. There is evidence to suggest however that the workplace itself may conspire to limit the extent to which reflection is practised. Reflecting at a meta-level upon why and how reflective practice is inhibited may be valuable in helping reflective practitioners secure more widespread reflection at work. This paper reports a methodology for an exploration of the workplace features of a National Health Service (NHS) manager’s job that determined the ‘reflective space’ in his work sphere. The study involved a provisional classification of work events where reflection was notably high or low and the subsequent use of the repertory grid procedure to elicit the personal constructs of this notion of reflective space. A principal components analysis and factor analysis of the repertory grid data indicated five major characteristics of the reflective practitioner’s workplace that can inhibit or facilitate reflective practice. These were the degrees of prescriptiveness; engagement; role-based, demarcated and political features; threat; and task versus process orientation. A discussion of the implications of these findings and the potential of the methodology is held. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many course providers in a variety of fields have chosen to include a required reflective practice assignment for purposes of instilling a spirit of professional development. However, the very notion of forced and evaluated self-exploration raises certain moral and practical issues that cannot be avoided. Relying on recent research at a Trinity College London TESOL certificate course where course participants were required to complete a teaching practice journal, this article examines the problematic nature of required reflective practice, namely, that requiring individuals to be open and honest in the context of assessment tends to provoke strategic response and often hostility. These reactions, documented in other research as well, point to an underlying problem with any required reflection that has serious implications for teacher education as well as any other field that employs forced reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]