Abstract
This paper reports on an interdisciplinary pedagogical research project involving academic literacy experts and lecturers at a School of Nursing. Specifically, the paper focusses on the development of a data-driven analytical rubric to teach and assess critical reflections in year-one nursing. The purpose of the project was to support the teaching and evaluating of critical reflections of nursing students after their initial clinical placement. Rather than focusing on inter-rater reliability or on pedagogical uses of rubrics, this paper is concerned with the ways the criteria that constitute these rubrics were devised. The data involved 200 student assignments, the existing marking criteria and two focus groups with the nursing lecturers. We analysed the data using aspects of a linguistic theory, systemic functional linguistics, and elements of a sociological framework, Legitimation Code Theory, to understand what constitutes ‘deep reflection’ in clinical nursing practice. Our findings led to a revised analytical rubric which makes visible what is highly valued in nursing reflection tasks. We conclude with a data-driven analytical rubric design framework which involves the analysis of student assignments at various levels of achievement to reveal academic literacy and knowledge practices requirements of reflection tasks.
Acknowledgements
We thank the nursing educator team at the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies (NUS) for their inspiring work dedication, their unmatched efficiency, their friendship, and support. We also thank the reviewers for their insightful comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Ethics approval
NUS-IRB Ref No: S-18-295E.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Laetitia Monbec
Laetitia Monbec is a Lecturer at the Centre for English Language and Communication at the National University of Singapore.
Namala Tilakaratna
Namala Tilakaratna is a Lecturer at the Centre for English Language and Communication at the National University of Singapore.
Mark Brooke
Mark Brooke is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for English Language and Communications at the National University of Singapore.
Siew Tiang Lau
Siew Tiang Lau is an Associate Professor (Education) & Director of Education (PET-Clinical) at the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.
Yah Shih Chan
Yah Shih Chan is a Senior Lecturer at the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.
Vivien Wu
Xi Vivien Wu is an Assistant Professor at the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore.