SLP students can make significant improvements in both breadth and depth of written reflective practice over a six-week period. Implications for clinical teaching are discussed.
Background: Written reflective practice (WRP) is a teaching tool used across speech-language therapy (SLT) clinical education programmes. The process aims to support the development of reflective skills required for the workplace (e.g., problem-solving and self-evaluation). Aims: This cross-sectional and repeated-measures study design investigated students' demonstration of breadth of WRP across the clinical education programme.
Methods & Procedures:The participants were 77 undergraduate SLT students in their first, second or final professional year of the clinical programme. Participants wrote critical reflections following an interaction with a client/s as part of their clinical education experiences. Formative feedback was provided after each written reflection (WR). In total four WRs per participant were coded for breadth of WRP using a modification of Plack et al.'s coding schema from 2005. This was completed for each of the four time points across the academic year for each professional year.Outcomes & Results: There was a statistically significant association between time (i.e., professional year of the programme) and likelihood of demonstration of breadth of reflection for the lower level reflective element of 'attend' and higher level reflective element of 're-evaluate'. A positive trend between time and likelihood of demonstration of breadth of reflection was seen for the lower level element of 'reflection-for-action'. Final-professional-year students exhibited significant enhancements in the higher level elements (e.g., 'premise') compared with first-and second-professional-year students.
Conclusions & Implications:This group of SLT students exhibited significant change in breadth of WRP across the degree programme. This finding has positive implications for facilitating WRP with students and using the current coding framework in clinical programmes.
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