Equity in health profession education: Academics’ perceived challenges in assessing written reflections

This presentation explores the perceptions of academics on the challenges of including reflective writing tasks in nursing education assessment for diverse student cohorts. Reflection entails thinking, evaluating and making sense of experiences. Written reflective assessments may be daunting for students who are not familiar with this genre, such as students from diverse educational backgrounds (Chan & Lee, 2021). To encourage self-directed/experiential learning (Chan & Lee, 2021), writing reflection has become widely used as a pedagogical approach in health disciplines, which are grounded in reflective practice (Ferguson, 2018). Despite the theoretical value of reflections, little is known about implementation of it in higher education contexts (Chan & Lee, 2021), particularly from the perspective of academics teaching in programmes (e.g. nursing) with diverse student cohorts. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with six nursing academics with experience in teaching and assessment marking in nursing education. Using framework analysis (Ritchie & Spencer, 2014), the research team established three key themes focusing on perceived challenges in assessing written reflections. Results show that academics identify challenges relating to their own professional development, the perceived characteristics of their students, and the nature of reflective writing itself. While some believe reflective writing is unassessable, others consider it challenging to assess without explicit teaching of the genre. Findings also indicate a potentially uneven playing field in reflective writing assessment for English as an Additional Language (EAL) and non-EAL students. The study highlights critical equity implications of including reflective writing as an assessable task in health profession programmes.

References

Chan, C., & Lee, K. (2021). Reflection literacy: A multilevel perspective on the challenges of using reflections in higher education through a comprehensive literature review. Educational Research Review, 32, 1–18, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X20308368

Ferguson, H. (2018). How social workers reflect in action and when and why they don’t: the possibilities and limits to reflective practice in social work. Social Work Education, 37(4), 415–427. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2017.1413083

Ritchie, J., & Spencer, L. (1994). Qualitative data analysis for applied policy research. In A. Bryman & R.G. Burgess (Eds.), Analysing qualitative data (pp. 173-194). Routledge.