Reflection By Design: Embedding Reflective Practice into the Student Learning Journey

There are multiple forms of reflective practice, such as models developed by Kolb (1984) and Gibbs (1988), which are routinely drawn upon within Higher Education (HE) teaching, learning and assessment. However, in the authors’ experience, these are used in an ad hoc manner across different modules and activities with little attempt to embed a coherent longitudinal approach to support development of reflective practice across an academic programme or within the wider student journey.  

This chapter reflects on a project which used service design thinking to inform and develop student engagement with reflective practice across one year postgraduate courses within a UK Higher Education institution. It reports on the authors’ experience of: introducing reflective concepts; co-creating interventions with the students; embedding these within the student journey and evaluating the effectiveness of a pedagogical approach derived from service design thinking to engage students in the reflective process.