Becoming a Reflective Practitioner, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 15Grading Reflective Assignments

Christopher Johns

What should a student’s reflective assignment look like? Assignments are designed to test the student’s achievement of curriculum objectives, whether as an essay, portfolio, case study or suchlike, with a deepening criticality through academic levels. By criticality, I mean the ability to access and critique theory to inform argument or insights. However, there is much more to reflective learning than juxtaposing theory with practice. This may be hard to see if teachers view learning through a technical rational lens. To reiterate Coleman and Willis’s (2015) assertion that a paradigm shift in nursing pedagogy grounded in reflective learning is necessary for reflective learning to fulfil its potential.

Students naturally approach an assignment mindful of the grading criteria set to judge it. Teachers must talk through the grading criteria with the students so it is understood and any doubt answered.

Self‐assessment through grading is integral to the reflective process. Indeed, grading is a further level of reflection. As such, it is good practice for students to grade themselves. Hooks writes (2003, p. 16):

I worked through my tensions around grading by teaching students to apply the criteria that would be used to grade them and then grade themselves so that they could remain aware of their ability to do needed work at the level of achievement they desired … the difficult part of the process was teaching students to ...