In this Special Issue, Reflective Learning in Higher Education explores on tertiary education and its practices. It looks at in-house and external individuals, and collective initiatives and activities that centre on generating and reflecting on knowledge. It also explores the transformation output of learning communities, the communities themselves and their reflective practices, and discusses how reflective learning and developing one’s professional identity through reflection are linked. The connections between the theoretical and applied research on reflective practices, knowledge generation in all areas, professional practice and identity through theoretical definition, situated and grounded practice and transformative knowledge are also considered. The nine manuscripts in this Special Issue manifest that reflective learning is likely to (i) help forge students’ professional identity and ensure sustainable competences are effectively developed, (ii) transform students’ preconceived perspectives and social preferences to foster new reasoned action plans for decision-making, (iii) promote understanding one’s personal professional strengths and limitations and develop the ability to identify resources and ways to solve existing and/or future professional challenges and (iv) modify the students’ beliefs, attitudes, and daily behaviour to develop competences that will ultimately result in promoting sustainability.
This paper focusses on university pre-service teachers developing cooperative physical challenges within reflective and cooperative learning frameworks. The pre-service teachers were involved in reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action and contemplated their professional identity in both reflective narratives and focus group discussions. The students’ reflections were scored using two rubrics. The first elements scored from the pre-service teacher’s reflective narratives included the focus of the reflection, awareness of previous beliefs, knowledge, and experiences, inquiring and focusing on possible actions through questions and hypotheses, and arguing for concrete learning objectives. The second rubric scored elements of the pre-service teachers’ professional identity, including self-esteem, task perception, job motivation, and expectations about future jobs. The results from the instructional cooperative approaches based on the reflections on the in-practice at a primary school disclosed the differences between them, with the non-structured approach scoring higher than the structured one. The cooperative challenges, when embedded in the reflection process, profoundly helped pre-service teachers to identify aspects of their professional identity that would ensure an effective intake of sustainable competences.
This paper describes a quantitative study that explores teaching practices in primary education to sustain the hypothesis that students’ critical thinking may be activated through individual and group reflection. The study examines the quality of the reflections from primary school students during group processing when participating in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) instructional approaches. The project’s core methodology lies in scientific (physics) and artistic (dance) instructional activities which were executed in a continuous reflective and cooperative learning environment. The educational approach was refined by analyzing the reflective discussions from focus groups where descriptive, argumentative, reflective and critical reflective knowledge about acquired knowledge, competences, beliefs, attitudes and emotions were considered. While the educational intervention proved that 1st-year (K-7) students essentially reflected at the level of description, 3rd-year (K-9) and 5th-year (K-11) students, however, attained higher levels of individual critical reflection development than initially anticipated. The STEAM approaches were found to produce significant use and understanding of both science and artistic concepts and to increase a sense of competence readiness and a perception of modes of cooperation such as individual responsibility and promotive interaction.
The basis of the study is the findings of scientific research dealing with experiential reflections of university students studying in the special education Bachelor degree study program in Lithuania. The special educator is a teacher of children with special educational needs, an educational assistance specialist who is able to recognize, assess, and meet children’s special educational needs arising due to disabilities, disorders, or learning difficulties, and to professionally provide special pedagogical assistance in the conditions of inclusive and special education. In order to analyze the experience of prospective special educators who study at the university for four years, first year students were chosen. At the start of their studies at the university, in the first month of their studies, students do their practice in the institutions of the educational system: Pre-school, general, and/or special education institutions. The aim of the practice is to get familiar with the subtleties of the future professional activity. It is maintained that students’ initial experience outlived at the start of studies is important and significant for further studies at the university. The article deals with the results of written reflections of students who have returned from practice. The phenomenological hermeneutics method enabled to disclose students’ experiences in their practical activities during their observational practice, providing deeper understanding of the study area, as a precondition for reflective learning in further university studies, and by interacting with participants of the (self) education process, the article presents future special educators’ practical experiences and perceptions of their roles in the profession. The results disclosed that self-reflection provides students with deeper perception of themselves as people with special educators’ needs and problems, personal strengths and competence limitations that enable them to identify sources and means for solving existing and future professional activity problems. It further reveals that cooperation with family members, university teachers, social pedagogues, teachers, children with special educational needs, sharing experiences with student colleagues could lead to greater self-confidence in oneself as a future specialist. Curiosity and personal initiative enabled students to identify positive and difficult moments of the professional activity and future professional role while learning from experience.
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