Self-reflectivity: a moment of professionalization in psychotherapy training

Abstract

The required basic skills of European psychotherapists were published by the European Association of Psychotherapy in 2013. One of these abilities is self-reflection. To mentalize oneself, to reflect on what circumstances and experiences in the past and present have led to the present desires, thoughts and convictions is an essential prerequisite for professional work in the psychosocial field. With the help of the thematic analysis a data set of 41 self-reflection reports of students is analysed at the end of the training. Since the training should be evaluated and if necessary optimized, it should be examined which elements of the online preparation course make the selfreflection ability visible. The analysis of the students’ texts gives a clear indication of existing self-reflection skills. It was surprising that for some students, besides the great importance of self-awareness lessons, affective integration into the blended learning program was an essential impulse for self-reflection.

The enablers and barriers to facilitating the development of reflective practice skills of third level allied health professional students through technology: A scoping review

“…As demonstrated in Table 1, the included studies were published over a 3-year period (2016-2018), with region of origin spanning Europe, North America, and Australasia. The study designs of these articles spanned mixed methods studies (Cleveland, 2018;Hanbidge, McMillan & Scholz, 2018), descriptive survey research (Urpi-Sarda et al, 2016), action research (Thompson, Smythe & Jones, 2016), and qualitative research (Cohn & Plack, 2017;Finger-Ossinger & Löffler-Stastka, 2018). The majority of studies aimed to describe differing aspects of the implementation of online technology to facilitate reflective practice (Table 1).…”

“…Study locations were HEIs, with one study also partnering with a local hospital (Thompson, Smythe & Jones, 2016) (Table 2). With regards to sampling methods, convenience sampling methods were used in 4/6 studies (Cohn & Plack, 2017;Cleveland, 2018;Finger-Ossinger & Löffler-Stastka, 2018;Hanbidge, McMillan & Scholz, 2018), while 2/6 did not specify the methods used (Thompson, Smythe & Jones, 2016;Urpi-Sarda et al, 2016). Similarly, recruitment methods were under-specified, with only 2/6 providing details (Thompson, Smythe & Jones, 2016;Hanbidge, McMillan & Scholz, 2018).…”

“…Within the realm of portfolios, other less frequent prompts included: descriptions of the context of clinical placements and common practices within these settings (Urpi-Sarda et al, 2016;Cleveland, 2018); prompts for practice and/or additional clinical resources (Thompson, Smythe & Jones, 2016;Cleveland, 2018); and explicit discussion/documentation of formal competencies achieved during placement (Hanbidge, McMillan & Scholz, 2018). Within studies which did not include such e-portfolios (Cohn & Plack, 2017;Finger-Ossinger & Löffler-Stastka, 2018), reflective prompts focused on the iterative development of a concept of Students attended an educational session on the basic use of the ePortfolio and then accessed online videos via Moodle Campus for further information regarding it's usage.…”

“…Three studies provided initial formal training in the use of online reflections for participants (Urpi-Sarda et al, 2016;Hanbidge, McMillan & Scholz, 2018;Cleveland, 2018). With regards to the timing of reflection submissions, three studies had a rolling submission throughout placements and across semesters (Thompson, Smythe & Jones, 2016;Cleveland, 2018;Hanbidge, McMillan & Scholz, 2018), with two studies having two timepoints for submission: before and during placement (Urpi-Sarda et al, 2016) and across two semesters (Cohn & Plack, 2017), while one study sought reflections after attending a course (Finger-Ossinger & Löffler-Stastka, 2018). With regards to the provision of external feedback to learners, two studies did not explicitly discuss the feedback process (Urpi-Sarda et al, 2016;Finger-Ossinger & Löffler-Stastka, 2018).…”

“…With regards to the timing of reflection submissions, three studies had a rolling submission throughout placements and across semesters (Thompson, Smythe & Jones, 2016;Cleveland, 2018;Hanbidge, McMillan & Scholz, 2018), with two studies having two timepoints for submission: before and during placement (Urpi-Sarda et al, 2016) and across two semesters (Cohn & Plack, 2017), while one study sought reflections after attending a course (Finger-Ossinger & Löffler-Stastka, 2018). With regards to the provision of external feedback to learners, two studies did not explicitly discuss the feedback process (Urpi-Sarda et al, 2016;Finger-Ossinger & Löffler-Stastka, 2018). Cohn and Plack (2017) discussed an informal formative feedback process in which the Word Clouds generated in Semester one were used to prompt a discussion of what "professionalism" means, although feedback on the second Word Clouds was not discussed in the article.…”