Penitent performance, reconstructed rumination or induction: student strategies for the deployment of reflection in an extended degree programme

ABSTRACT

While reflection has long been held to be central to learning, not all reflection leads to insight or learning. Drawing on distinctions in psychology between ‘constructive self-regulation’ and ‘rumination’ and educational literature that distinguishes descriptive from reflective writing, this article employs a novel approach to assign student reflective writing to one of four quadrants (categorised as ‘selfie’, ‘quick-fix’, ‘rumination’ and ‘action’) and uses this model to consider the reflection strategies deployed by students in transition to student, disciplinary and professional identities. Findings suggest that students who appear to master reflection adopt one of three strategies: ‘reconstructed rumination’, ‘induction’ or ‘penitent performance’. Identifying which strategy a student is adopting can aid timely intervention to facilitate student success.

KEYWORDS:

• Student reflection
• reflective writing
• student transition
• rumination

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 ‘Conceptual thought is abstract, logical, reality oriented, and aimed at problem solving. Primordial thought is associative, concrete, and takes little account of reality.’ https://provalisresearch.com/products/content-analysis-software/wordstat-dictionary/regressive-imagery-dictionary/.