Reflective Writing in Course Design for Active Learning in Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explores student learning progression through reflective writing on a tertiary-level course in social work. The study is based on the content analysis of three sets of data: student reflective writing, instructor formative feedback on this writing, and student end-of-course reflections. Our findings demonstrate that structured, scaffolded reflection and continuous formative feedback stimulated learning progression, increased awareness of one’s own learning strategies, and supported the adoption of an explorative, reflective stance in students. Therefore, the experimental course design with several reflective tasks created the sought-after intersection of the academic and professional literacies. This design stimulated student engagement and resulted in high attendance. This design is particularly suitable in heterogeneous classrooms and promotes student inclusion and active learning.

Similarly to other professions, social work sets its own explicit demands on practitioners’ academic literacy skills concerning analysis, writing, and documentation. Previous studies of social work education programs have demonstrated the benefits of students processing subject knowledge of social work through strengthening their academic literacy skills, in particular through writing (e.g., Christensen et al., 2017; Horton & Diaz, 2011; Rai, 2004). Working with academic literacies in social work educational programs—and, indeed, in higher education in general—can enrich, reinforce, and develop student learning (cf. McWilliams & Allan, 2014). Furthermore, student development of academic literacies can support their development of professional literacies. However, Rai and Lillis (2013) claimed that “there is currently no clear progressive link between academic writing in social work and the writing in practice required of graduate social workers” (p. 352). In the present study, we explore to what extent both disciplinary knowledge and academic literacy skills can be stimulated and made manifest through reflective writing on a social work course populated by a heterogeneous group of international students.

Reflective writing “focuses on the writer’s learning experience itself and attempts to identify the significance and meaning of a given learning experience, primarily for the writer” (Fink, 2003, p. 117). It is not a neutral tool for the reproduction of knowledge. Rather, it is a tool that can be used to foster various desirable qualities of learning and knowledge production. For example, several studies have shown that engaging in reflective writing socializes the student into academic language use, which, in turn, promotes a more active learning and development of the student’s academic identity (e.g., Gee, 2002; Gibson et al., 2016; Granville & Dison, 2005). Other studies focus on how reflective writing may facilitate students’ metacognitive development (e.g., Lew & Schmidt, 2011; Menz & Xin, 2016). Furthermore, Carstens (2012) presented examples of how students, through their reflective writing, develop from being dependent on the teacher’s support to becoming independent learners. Balgopal and Montplaisir (2011) demonstrated how reflective writing can reveal to teachers their students’ metacognitive understanding and affective answers (convictions, feelings, and motivation to learn) when encountering disciplinary concepts. Furthermore, Balgopal and Montplaisir (2011) showed that how students approach reflective writing can predict their performance. Kathpalia and Heah (2008) provided examples of how the design of an academic course that promotes reflection can also support the development of several abilities: the ability to identify and illustrate communicative skills, the ability to develop the capacity to review concepts, the ability to evaluate assumptions critically, and the ability to perform significant revisions during the writing process. Consequently, learning activities that include reflective writing—which, in addition to supporting student disciplinary knowledge development and academic literacy skills, also stimulate their metacognition—should be a necessary and natural part of professional educational programs of social work because reflection is crucial in social work practice.

Unsurprisingly, reflective writing is often linked to the development of metacognition. In an educational context, metacognition is usually defined as an ability to monitor, delineate, evaluate, and change one’s thought and learning processes (Flavell, 1979; Schraw & Dennison, 1994). Metacognition can be manifested through specific skills such as task analysis, planning, monitoring, checking, and recapitulation (Veenman et al., 2004, p. 90). Furthermore, the metacognitive ability has been shown in several studies to be a powerful tool in illuminating and explicating learning processes (Menz & Xin, 2016; Veenman et al., 2004). To be successful in their studies, it is thus crucial that students understand their own learning strategies and learning processes. Being conscious of their meta-learning may also help students take control over and shape their learning and evaluate their learning strategies (Colthorpe et al., 2018). Reflective writing tasks can thus be instrumental in achieving student development of metacognition and academic and professional literacy skills (e.g., Badenhorst et al., 2020; Dean O’Loughlin & Miller Griffith, 2020; Ono & Ichii, 2019; Redwine et al., 2017; Sweet et al., 2019; Szenes & Tilakaratna, 2020). In their reflective assignments in this study, the students were asked to write about their meaning-making processes concerning several key terms in social work, which intended to foreground the connection between “academic writing in social work” and “writing in practice” (Rai & Lillis, 2013, p. 352).

Aim and research questions

The present qualitative study aims to explore students’ learning progression, if any, in a social work course where the learning activities include several reflective writing tasks intended to support students’ development of academic and professional literacies and facilitate assessment. The following research questions are addressed: (1) To what degree is the students’ learning progression manifested in their reflective texts? (2) To what degree can the students’ learning progression be traced in the instructor’s continuous formative feedback? (3) What meta-awareness of their learning progression do the students report after completion of the course?

Background

The authors of this article represent two different academic disciplines—social work and linguistics/literacy studies. This fact has necessarily affected our understanding of social work as a discipline and how it is to be taught. Notwithstanding our differences, we view social work as an action-focused discipline, where preventive work and interventions constitute a significant part of its practitioners’ professional identity (see International Federation of Social Workers [IFSW], 2014; Mattson, 2017; Sunesson, 2003; Terum & Heggen, 2016; Wittington, 1977). Social work occurs in contexts where the practitioners’ ability to gather, analyze, and synthesize information about individuals’ interactions with their environments is essential. These contexts can be described in terms of different levels (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 2004): (a) the microsocial level refers to how the individual understands their identity vis-à-vis their immediate environment; (b) the mesosocial level refers to how the individual understands their identity in interaction with different groups; (c) the exosocial level refers to how the individual understands their identity as part of and in interaction with society, and its various institutions and educational systems; (d) the macrosocial level refers to how the individual understands their identity vis-à-vis culture, nation, traditions, and language; and, last, (e) the macrosocial level refers to how the individual understands their identity as part of a global society, internationalization, and international relations. Students can reasonably be expected to relate the academic content of social work studies to their future professional identities in these contextual levels. Yet they also require purposeful, structured instruction to achieve this goal.

In this study, we outline how a reflective learning environment (as instantiated by a tertiary-level course in social work) is understood and used by students to guide their learning. Thus, we allow different parts of the learning environment to support each other and create an ecosystem: a course design that facilitates interpersonal and intrapersonal interactions between the students and the instructor, and between the educational program and the professional field.¹

The ecosystem of the course

The course aims to enable the student to develop knowledge of social politics, social problems, and living conditions from a multicultural perspective and relate this to social work in a local or global context. Social studies in an international context constitutes the main focus of the course. This free-standing course is taught in English.

Based on Bronfenbrenner’s model (1979, 2004) and Christensen et al.’s (2020) adaptation of this model for professional education in social work, the course content covered the different contextual levels and was grouped into several content themes. The themes were on different levels, from the microsocial to the ex-macrosocial. Classroom discussions pertained to societal challenges, the consequences of social organization, and the individual (the citizen). The course content reflected that social workers, instructors, academics, and students need to understand how their practices, research, and studies are connected to international developments, whether they work locally or globally (Healy & Link, 2012). This entailed that students becoming aware of the interaction between different levels was given special significance in the course’s learning activities. In addition, the students and the instructor interacted with each other through separate, independent processes (e.g., the students’ writing processes) and in dependent, reflective processes (e.g., the development of the students’ writing in relation to the instructor’s feedback).

Learning activities

During the course, the learning activities primarily consisted of lectures, self-study of the course literature, classroom discussions of case studies, and several individual and group-based reflective assignments. In addition, individual supervision sessions supported the students’ writing processes and provided practical method exercises. The course design facilitated the students’ development of disciplinary knowledge and metacognitive skills through reflective writing. The targeted skills included the abilities to identify and illustrate communicative competencies, develop the capacity to review concepts, evaluate assumptions critically, and perform substantial editing of one’s writing (Kathpalia & Heah, 2008).

Scaffolding learning through reflection

During the first 5 weeks of the course, one or two key terms were selected weekly and used as a starting point for the students’ reflections. In total, the students were tasked to write four reflections on the following key terms: social work, resilience, welfare, society, culture, and mistrust. These terms were communicated to the students via the course webpage before the beginning of each week. The students had a relatively limited amount of time (2 working days) to read up on the term and submit a short reflective text highlighting their understanding of this term. This time limit situated the writing process in time and space. Apart from being told that they should use American Psychological Association reference formatting, no other demands regarding formal language use were placed on the students with the intent to—within each student’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978)—enhance their metacognitive development and concept knowledge and facilitate the academic socialization process (see Granville & Dison, 2005). However, the students were asked to logically structure their reflections and connect them to the course materials (see Appendix A for the formative and summative assessment criteria).

The students were provided with individual formative feedback on their weekly reflections based on a specific set of assessment criteria on the structure, relevance, and how closely the reflection was related to the course literature and other course materials (see Appendix A). The instructor formulated the assessment criteria based on previous research and his assessment experience, and aligned these criteria with the course learning outcomes and design. The criteria were communicated to the students at the beginning of the course and used for the summative assessment of the final examination. As the instructor had used these criteria for formative feedback and summative assessment, the students had the opportunity to develop a comprehensive awareness of the course learning goals and academic requirements.

Assessing learning through reflection

After weekly reflection exercises, the students were given 2 weeks of preparation to consolidate their knowledge. This time was consciously generous to further promote the students’ engagement with the course content. During this time, most of the students chose to participate in optional individual supervision sessions. The reflective course design and student reflective writing processes prepared the students for the form of the final examination, in which they were asked to articulate their knowledge and reflect on the key terms of the course. During the 4-hour-long examination, the students had access to all of the course materials and their previous reflections. The examination form mirrored the course design and focused on the students’ understanding of the course content, not their ability to remember it. Therefore, we argue that the examination was part of the learning process and not just the final proof that learning had occurred.

Method

This study is a qualitative practice-oriented case study at an intersection of action research and educational design research. While educational design studies have a long tradition of researchers as “outsiders” (Merton, 1972, pp. 15–16) who can draw generalizable conclusions (Fritzell, 2009), action research studies are often performed by “insiders” (Merton, 1972, pp. 15–16), driven by locally situated queries and do not necessarily presuppose generalizability. In the present study, the researchers define themselves as “inbetweeners” (Milligan, 2016, p. 237). Together, we discussed the course design and designed, carried out, and described the present study; however, only one of the authors taught the course, assessed the students’ work, and collected the data. This distribution of duties allowed for “double reflectivity” (Blackman & Commane, 2012, p. 241). That is, the authors themselves could reflect on what happened during and after the course. The design of the course and the study enabled us to collect and triangulate from three sets of rich data.

Participants

In total, 10 students participated in this study. Nine of these students came from European countries, including several students from Sweden; one student came from a non-European English-speaking country. All of the students had previously completed 2 years of social work studies at their home universities. Three of the students were native speakers of English, while the rest were at least at the C1 level of English proficiency (which, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, indicates an advanced level of language proficiency). All classroom communication was in English, and all students actively participated in discussions during lectures and seminars. The three students who emerged in the subsequent analysis to represent the different learner profiles on the course are described in more detail below. In addition to the students, the authors may also be seen as participants in this study, with reference to our position as “inbetweeners.”

Data

The choice of the written data for the analysis was informed by previous research. By investigating the students’ written discourse, we were able to examine what they had learned (Fellows, 1994; Wärnsby et al., 2021), how they developed their academic voices (Gee, 2002; Wallace, 2004), how they appropriated the meaning of the key terms (Balgopal & Montplaisir, 2011; Balgopal & Wallace, 2009; Osborne & Wittrock, 1983; Shahn & Costello, 2000), and how the students reflected on their knowledge (Mason & Buscolo, 2000). Because reflective writing is a critical process, especially as students may struggle with their interpretation of scientific concepts (Davis & Linn, 2000; Mason, 1998; Saul, 2002), researchers can use student texts to gain insight into their learning and metacognition (Fellows, 1994; Wärnsby et al., 2021).

For this study, we collected textual data in the form of the students’ weekly reflections, final examinations, and end-of-course reflections. Before the data collection, the students were informed that their data will be kept anonymous and used as part of the academic quality assurance work and for research purposes. The students were also informed that their participation in the research project was voluntary. All of the students gave their written consent for the data to be used in the present study. Therefore, the study design followed all conventions outlined for good research practice (Swedish Research Council, 2017) and, as part of a larger research project (FO4.2–2016/411), was exempted from ethical review (Regional Ethical Review Board in Lund, protocol 2016/11). The data set also included the instructor’s formative feedback to the students’ weekly reflections and the final examination.

Content analysis

In this article, we have used directed and conventional content analyses (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) of instructor formative feedback and student end-of-course reflections. In directed content analysis, theory informs the initial coding and helps determine the relationships between the codes. In our case, the key terms (social work, resilience, welfare, society, culture, and mistrust) constituted the point of departure for the analysis. In conventional content analysis, on the other hand, the codes and categories emerge naturally from the data through a process of repeated close reading. As we had no prior understanding of the instructor formative feedback and student end-of-course reflections, we have also decided to conduct a conventional content analysis of these two sets of data. We coded all of the data sets separately first and then, through discussions, arrived at a mutually agreed-on coding schema and overall analysis. The content analysis of the students’ reflective writing in the section Students’ Learner Profiles was based on Balgopal and Montplaisir’s (2011) coding system.

Learner profile codes

Balgopal and Montplaisir (2011) differentiated between four learner profiles: superficial, subjective, objective, and authentic. Superficial learners do not establish concrete conceptual links between their knowledge and their affective reactions to what is learned: they are cognitively and affectively distant from the course content. Subjective learners make meaning by establishing links to primarily personal or emotional responses to scientific concepts but demonstrate a cursory understanding of the course content: they are affectively close but cognitively distant from the course content. Objective learners can articulate their content knowledge but offer no, or only a few, personal or emotional links to what is being learned: they are cognitively close to but affectively distant from the course content. In contrast, authentic learners can articulate both their content knowledge and their affective responses: they are cognitively and affectively close to the course content. Balgopal and Montplaisir (2011) claimed that student language use in their reflective writing may reveal what type of learner the student is; furthermore, this claim is substantiated irrespective of whether students write in their first or second language (Wärnsby et al., 2021). Also at this stage of analysis, we coded student reflections separately first and then, through discussions, arrived at a mutually agreed-on analysis. The codes we used to analyze the students’ reflections in this study are listed in Balgopal and Montplaisir (2011, p 145).²

Results and discussion

This section describes each discrete data set in turn: the students’ weekly reflections, the instructor’s formative feedback, and the students’ end-of-course reflections.

The students’ learner profiles

By applying Balgopal and Montplaisir’s (2011) coding system to our data, we attempted to divide the participating students into four different learning profiles (superficial, subjective, objective, or authentic learners). Collected and analyzed over the course period, the students’ reflections suggest that learner profiles are fluid rather than static. Although some of the students could not be consistently and exclusively matched to the four learner profiles, we still found learner profiling to be a useful tool for illuminating typical student learning processes through their reflective writing. In the following, we describe three students on this course whose reflections displayed distinct learning paths. These students are assigned fictitious names: Heather, Karl, and Pia.

Heather was a native speaker of English, had an academic background, and took her fourth term in the social work program. She started her university studies immediately after completing high school without obtaining any work experience. Her goal after the completion of her studies was to work in an international context. She was goal-driven and engaged in her studies. Although she was not particularly active in the classroom, she worked hard on her writing. This student demonstrated a consistently high level of writing ability and other academic literacy skills, such as critical thinking and synthesis abilities. However, in her first few weekly reflective assignments, her writing style was reporting rather than reflective, which can be seen in her use of pronouns, for example:

1. As social workers, building rapport with our clients is essential in understanding their situation and needs. We must ensure to remain unbiased and empathetic with those around us.

Example (1) originates from Heather’s first reflection. She signaled a certain distance through filtering her statements, in part via her reference to the professional group identity (as social workers, we) and in part via her use of the modal construction (we must ensure) that expresses a type of universal, objective necessity for being “unbiased and empathetic,” without her taking responsibility for this happening or appointing someone else to ensure this happening (see, e.g., Wärnsby, 2006 for a more detailed discussion of nondirected deontic modality). Although Heather continued, on occasion, to use reporting style and generic pronouns in her subsequent reflections, she developed a more reflective writing style as the course progressed. For example, in her later reflections, she often used the first-person singular pronoun (I), often in combination with various cognitive verbs (I acknowledge, I feel) as illustrated in (2):

• (2) I acknowledge that I occasionally feel uncomfortable with silence and act in the heat of the moment. I must learn to refrain from acting impulsively, as clients may require these moments of silence to think.

Furthermore, the necessity expressed in (2), I must learn to refrain, is presented as her own evidence-based conclusion. The student intended to take action to satisfy the necessity she had identified. The phrasing in (2) is in contrast with that found in (1), where it was not apparent who should be held accountable (see Wärnsby, 2006 for a discussion of directed deontic modality).

Heather’s transition from a reporting to a more reflective writing style is made particularly visible in example (3), which describes a positive conceptual change in the student and relates a deeply personal learning experience, given the student’s background:

• (3) However, I have also discovered that it is vital to understand how your personal biases, experiences, and culture may influence your perspective on others. This week, I have developed an increase in understanding of how privileged I am. I have been very fortunate to grow up in one of the most multicultural cities in the world, […], with access to affordable education and healthcare. Many individuals throughout the world are not as lucky as I have been and, therefore, I must ensure that I do not assume that everyone has had the same opportunities in life as I have.

In (3), while such reflection and self-contextualizing may result in positive professional development, Heather initially distanced herself affectively, and possibly even cognitively, from the content, by, for example, shifting from personal I to impersonal you, thereby voicing certain resistance to the idea of privileged personal bias. Nevertheless, the student persisted in her reflection and articulated a plan to avoid future bias. As the course progressed, Heather consistently demonstrated signs of developing her ability to engage in reflective writing: she learned to describe her metacognitive understanding of key terms while simultaneously linking these terms to her personal experiences and shared her affective responses to these terms. Consequently, we claim that the student was developing from an objective learner to an authentic learner.

Karl was a nonnative speaker of English in his fourth term of the social work program. He had some various work experience before he commenced his university studies. His choice of the social work program was dictated by his aspirations to “make a difference” and assist others in the same way that he was supported during his challenging upbringing in a family where drug abuse was present. His goal was to use his education to start a private business that would provide coaching for clients, which is articulated in (4), for example:

• (4) Doing social work is relevant to me even as an entrepreneur because I stand for the same principles as social work stands for, and I always want to work with other human beings and help them live [an] even greater life of higher wellbeing.

Karl was very active and outspoken in the classroom and frequently offered up his observations and reflections during class discussions. However, he was somewhat unsure about the academic context of the course. For the most part, Karl wrote reflectively using the first-person singular pronoun (I in [6]), shared his affective responses to the course content (Of course in [6]), and alternated between somewhat unprocessed references to academic sources (as in [5]), which he related to his own experience of social work as a child (as in [6]):

• (5) Another way that focuses even more on how DOING social work affects society could be seen by connecting what we learned on the 10.09 from X with what we know about society. She argued that communication is the core of social work and that skilled social workers, or really any communications highlights through asking questions and summarizing certain parts of someone’s story and by doing that influences the identity of a person. She then kept on explaining how Interactions precedes identity, and identity precedes language. She ended with a bottom-up theory of thinking—that language could be described as productive—meaning that language isn’t just simply describing society; rather, language is creating society.

• (6) Of course, I’m writing now from the perspective of a potential future social worker, and I do also understand why one wouldn’t always tell the truth to one. When my father sued my mother for child custody when I was 10, I had to talk to a lot of social workers from the other perspective of a client. And I often mistrusted them to actually work in my best interest.

In (5), for example, Karl articulated several perspectives on social work (cf. the transitional expression Another way) and was able to recognize the three key points made by the lecturer (X). Moreover, his use of appropriate, albeit quite informal, attributive tags (argued, kept on explaining, ended up with) exemplified Karl’s critical thinking. In (6), with his childhood experiences as a point of departure, Karl was able to successfully shift between different angles of vision—that of a social worker (I’m writing now from the perspective of a potential future social worker) and a client (I often mistrusted [social workers] to actually work in my best interest)—to reevaluate both roles.

When we examine this student’s reflections more closely, a very sympathetic image emerges of a young person who exhibits a considerable degree of social engagement and a distinct motivation to learn. However, he engaged with the course’s academic content through a lens of his own experiences and in his own rather vernacular language. Karl was gradually developing from a subjective learner to an authentic learner: he focused on making meaning by forging connections between his personal and affective responses to key terms in social work; and, as the course progressed, he exhibited a gradual increase in his metacognitive understanding of the key terms.

Pia was also a nonnative speaker of English. For several years before her enrollment in the social work program, she worked in an area unrelated to social work. She had a challenging family upbringing, which inspired her to study social work. During the course, it became apparent that Pia was motivated by an interest in and a desire to work with social issues. However, she viewed her academic education as a necessary evil and expressed very little interest in it. This attitude was manifest in this student’s reflections throughout the course. Nevertheless, the student was very active and outspoken during the lectures and seminars and submitted quite lengthy reflective texts. These reflections, however, were not cohesive or overtly coherent. Furthermore, her writing style was reporting rather than reflective. This reporting style is exemplified in (7), which also clearly articulates the student’s cognitive distance to the subject matter:

• (7) It has to be avoided that you will compare apple[s] to pears but you can learn and transfer. A globalized world requires knowledge about many relationships for implementation plans in the[ir] own environment.

In (7), we find several linguistic constructions typical of this student’s writing. First, Pia used passive constructions (be avoided) far more often than Heather and Karl. In English, the passive voice is typically used when the subject is unknown or unimportant. There is also a persistent misconception that using the passive adds objectivity to scientific writing. Therefore, it is often overused in misdirected attempts to strengthen one’s research ethos. Moreover, the student used it as the subject in the first sentence: this type of subject is called a “dummy” subject as it is merely a placeholder and has no informational value. In addition, Pia often used a generic pronoun you, which signals even a greater distance than a generic or collective we in (1). The necessity expressed (it has to be avoided) is another example of nondirected deontic modality, first described in (1); moreover, coupled with the dummy subject and the passive construction, this necessity is further weakened. There is an attempt to use a conventional metaphor (compare apples to pears) to express common-sense wisdom, but this does not lead to content development relevant for the task. Furthermore, the two verbs learn and transfer require objects (e.g., learn to write or transfer energy) to express clearly what is learned and what is transferred. Here, on the other hand, the actions these verbs depict remain without explicit meaning. The second sentence in (7) is just an unsupported generic, or commonsensical, claim. Even considering that this is a text by a nonnative speaker, these linguistic features collectively point to a lack of understanding of the task and the subject content.

After several explicit prompts from the instructor, Pia changed her writing style somewhat to incorporate overt reflective markers, like the personal pronoun I and the construction from my point of view in (8):

• (8) I asked myself what is the right one? I came to the conclusion that we need diverse perspective[s] because the need of people is changing and people’s satisfaction is the most important scale for themselves. From my point of view social work is starting with situations which don’t match a positive situation for clients in society. Various solutions can help create jobs e.g., time-limited supported jobs, teaching and training of clients, satisfying basic needs etc.

Despite these overt reflective markers, the student’s writing did not become more reflective in itself. Like (7), (8) consists of three unsupported, seemingly unconnected, generic claims. Another tactic that Pia employed in her reflections is raising a question without providing an answer, as in (9). This rhetorical strategy was probably used to avoid dealing with the subject matter directly, while still alluding to the reading and the other academic work that the student had supposedly done:

• (9) When is Social Work necessary and what measures the needs of society?

Pia seldom cited or referred to the assigned course readings in her reflective writing. Example (10) represents one of the few instances where course literature was explicitly mentioned. However, even this example signals the student’s weak conceptualization of the subject matter: while the attributive tag used in this example (describe) usually precedes a definition or a description of some subject matter, the quote provided is a question (How much can you chan[g]e without losing your identity?), and it is mismatched not only in relation to the attributive tag but also with regard to the concept of resilience in social work:

• (10) Dr. Walker describes resilience as “How much can you chan[g]e without losing your identity?”

From Pia’s reflective writing, we conclude that her work illustrates the superficial learner profile: She neither articulates her understanding nor signals relevant affective responses to the course content. This student’s learner profile remained constant during the course.

Feedback for learning

This section presents our analysis of the formative feedback that Heather, Karl, and Pia received on their weekly reflective assignments from the instructor on the course. As we previously mentioned, the instructor used the same assessment rubric for formative feedback on the weekly assignments and for summative assessment of the final exam. The assessment criteria included clarity, relevance, analysis, and consistency (see Appendix A). Moreover, the formative feedback was intentionally formulated as close as possible to the wordings in the rubric, including just a few individual-based comments from the instructor.

Heather received mostly affirmative feedback on the clarity and relevancy of her reflections in relation to the formulated course goals. Moreover, in all reflections, her analysis of the key terms was deemed to contribute to her understanding of the course material. However, at the first feedback point, she received the following deficit-focused comment:

• (11) There are clear connections between the material/documentation from the thematic content. The self-criticism could have been more developed in the sense of your own biases, stereotypes, preconceptions, and/or assumptions. However you define new modes of thinking as a result in a good way.

Given this student’s learner profile described above, her privileged academic background, and the lack of life experience, her transition from objective to authentic learner was gradual, but it occurred, nevertheless (cf. example [2]). While attempting to achieve a higher degree of reflectivity in the second reflection, Heather appeared to have been cognitively challenged and lost track of her clarity of expression, which resulted in a deficit-focused comment from the instructor that prompted the student to structure her reflections better in the future:

• (12) The thematic content out of the two key words doing social work and society is explained accurately and your expression make sense in several ways. In the upcoming reflection-/s, you should try to structure your text even more out of the criteria, making it even more clear when it comes to linking description, analysis, and discussion.

All her subsequent reflections received affirmative feedback on the structure and clarity of her writing. Moreover, Heather was consistent in her learning efforts throughout the course and received a “Pass with Distinction” in the final examination.

As early as his first reflection, Karl received affirmative feedback on his clarity and relevance but also deficit-focused feedback on certain shortcomings in his analysis and ability to make connections between the content areas:

• (13) In your analysis, you show how the thematic content contributed to your own understanding and your attempt to problematize, however the analytical part could be developed. There are connections between the material/documentation from the thematic content. The self-criticism could have been developed in the sense of your own biases, stereotypes, preconceptions, and/or assumptions.

While Karl improved in making connections between the different content areas in his subsequent reflections, the instructor continued prompting more complex reasoning, as in (14):

• (14) There is a lack of linkage to references in order to make a proper analysis. Your way to express your own understanding is fine, however your problematization could be developed and linked even more to the literature.

As we have demonstrated earlier, Karl did not possess the same level of academic literacy skills as Heather, and the instructor’s requests for more complex reasoning and analysis were justified. Although this student was willing and motivated to improve his work and let himself be guided by the formative feedback he received, he never attained quite the same level of academic achievement as Heather. Examining the formative feedback this student received on his weekly reflections, we can confirm that, as the course progressed, Karl was slowly developing into an authentic learner, which is also reflected in the high-end “Pass” grade that the student received on his final examination.

Thus, both Heather and Karl acted on the deficit-focused feedback. They demonstrated the development of skills and abilities this feedback had targeted, thereby engaging in active learning. That deficit-focused situational criterion-based feedback is a more effective means of prompting revision than affirmative feedback is consistent with Olsson Jers and Wärnsby’s (2018) findings, who investigated revisions made by PhD students in their oral presentations based on different types of peer and instructor feedback. Of note here is that both in Olsson Jers and Wärnsby (2018) and in the present study, the student population was heterogeneous and mostly highly motivated.

The motivation to learn seems to be a crucial factor for learning to occur. In contrast to Heather and Karl, our analysis of the weekly reflections revealed that Pia was reluctant to invest in her studies. Moreover, the instructor continuously pointed out this consistent lack of motivation and lack of learning in his feedback:

• (15) Your text is descriptive with some lack of problematization and discussed in the contextual frame of welfare. You relate to your own understanding which is good, however the references to the literature are missing.

In all four feedback points on Pia’s four weekly reflections, the instructor offered mostly deficit-focused comments that were intended to prompt the student to (a) make more connections to the course literature, (b) engage in more complex reasoning in her analysis and reflection, and (c) structure her writing better. As demonstrated in (8), Pia’s improvements to her reflective texts were superficial; while, in her later reflections, the writing was embellished with overt reflective markers, the style remained reporting rather than reflective. Moreover, while the student employed headings in her later reflections to structure her writing, the paragraphs that fell under the different headings still demonstrated a profound lack of cohesion and coherence. In short, Pia did not attempt to appropriate the course content but continued to shape her understanding of social work based mainly on her preconceptions and opinions. Consequently, her reflections remained consistently superficial and subjective. This lack of learning was reflected in the low-end “Pass” grade the student achieved on her final exam.

To sum up, the three students dealt with the course content and were influenced by the situational and contextual conditions enforced by the course design in three distinct ways. Heather, the authentic learner, would (probably) successfully complete any academic course, irrespective of the course design. However, in this course design, she was stimulated to transform the course content through reflection. Karl, the emergent authentic learner, would (probably) not benefit from a more traditional course design with a traditional final exam: his developing academic literacy skills would have posed an obstacle in his studies. Instead, in the reflective course design, his learning progression became manifest due to this student being able to appropriate and transform new knowledge with the help of his collective literacies, and we could discern considerable learning progression. We can only speculate whether learning progression of an emergent authentic learner, like Karl, would have become visible to instructors to the same degree in a more traditional course design. Pia’s performance, on the other hand, would (probably) not have improved on any academic course, irrespective of its design, due to her lack of study motivation and reluctance to act on instructor feedback and guidance.

The students’ experiences of the reflective course design

At the end of the course, all 10 students were required to reflect anonymously on the perceived effect of various aspects of the course on their learning (see Appendix B for the reflective prompt). First, the students were asked to report their experiences of producing the weekly reflections. Among the recurring comments, the students appreciated the opportunities for repetition and recycling (Nunan, 2004) in the weekly reflections and reported growth of awareness of self and others. Moreover, while several students reacted to the discrepancies between their preconceptions of how an academic course should be designed and the actual course design, they reported that they understood the reasons that informed this particular course design once they had completed it. The following three quotes from the end-of-course reflections are representative of these sentiments:

• (16) I believe it was a very good way of learning. Thinking or re-thinking the contents of each week helped me a lot.

• (17) At some point I was annoyed of it [weekly reflections] but now I really understood the meaning of it.

• (18) I love it. It makes the discussions during the lessons so much more important, because I can actually use what we have discussed.

However, most students reacted negatively to the formative feedback not being individualized to a desired or expected degree. Although the reflections reportedly contributed to their learning, the students also pointed out that the weekly reflections were time-consuming.

Second, the students were asked to relate their experiences of the reflective examination form in relation to their learning. Among the positive aspects of the examination form, the students reported that they experienced the reflective examination as “realistic” and “authentic” in relation to their expected future professional settings (cf. Rai & Lillis, 2013, on the discrepancy of writing in education and writing in practice). They realized that the examination foregrounded their understanding of the key terms rather than in what academic form they articulated their understanding. Furthermore, they appreciated the additional opportunities that the exam afforded them for repetition and recycling. However, the examination form was also seen as time-consuming.

Third, the students were asked to list aspects of the course they felt had a positive effect on their learning. In their responses, the students again foregrounded their perceived importance of repetition and recycling, discussing and reflecting in groups, gaining new perspectives, using their own words, and developing their language and literacy skills through reflective writing. Thus, the students’ reflections confirm the benefits of collaborative learning expressed in sociocultural learning theories (Vygotsky, 1978) and echo previous research on the benefits of reflective writing outlined at the beginning of this article. In the end-of-course reflections, the students also alluded to the different metacognitive skills they had to employ while producing their weekly reflections. Although, naturally, the students did not use terms such as appropriation and transformation (Säljö, 2000, 2013) or explicitly referred to declarative, procedural, or conditional knowledge (Raphael et al., 1989), our interpretations of what and how the students reported they had learned during the course are shaped by these concepts.

Finally, when asked what may have impeded their learning, the students focused on outside circumstances largely unrelated to the course design, such as illness, housing problems, and the early morning start of some classes.

Summary and conclusions

This study has explored the students’ learning progression as manifested in their reflective writing in a tertiary-level course in social work. We have demonstrated that the three chosen data sets we analyzed (the students’ weekly content reflections, the instructor’s formative feedback on the weekly reflections, and the students’ end-of-course reflections) were well-suited to answer our research questions about the students’ learning progression. The richness of the data and the consistent picture of student learning that emerged from the three data sets compensate to a degree for the limited scale of this study involving 10 students, one instructor, and two researchers. From the instructor perspective, we argue that the reflective course design in an international heterogeneous social work classroom fulfilled its intended purpose to no small degree. However, there are still aspects of design that can be further improved: the individualization of formative feedback and formalization of supervision opportunities from optional to obligatory.

First, we conclude that each of the students we described above (Heather, Karl, and Pia) represented the typical variations in the heterogeneous student group in the course: they differed in their personal and academic backgrounds, academic abilities, academic literacy skills, and motivation. They reacted to the ecosystem of the course and its content and design quite differently and acted within this context in different ways. Our analysis of the students’ reflections informed their categorization into different, and fluid, learner profiles. Similar to Balgopal and Montplaisir (2011), we observed that learner profiles correlated to a large extent with student performance on the course. Therefore, we claim that student learning progression can be successfully explored by analyzing their reflective writing.

Second, we conclude that the course design created different, but equal, learning opportunities for students with different learner profiles. We cannot reasonably assume that every student will benefit from traditional course designs; but, based on the results of this study, we can claim that every student who strives to learn can learn in a reflective classroom. Thus we maintain that the course design described in this study—through its collaborative learning activities, reflective writing assignments and examination, and several formative feedback points—fulfills the needs of heterogeneous student groups and stimulates students to engage in active learning. Reflective writing tasks offered to the students in this course allowed them to make meaning of key concepts in social work in their own words while still adhering to the relevant academic conventions. Moreover, these tasks allowed the instructors to gain insight into the students’ meaning-making processes. Therefore, these reflective tasks were at the sought-after intersection of the academic and professional literacies (cf. Rai & Lillis, 2013).

Third, we conclude that student learning progression can be effectively tracked by analyzing instructor formative feedback, as we have demonstrated above. Moreover, we found that the formative feedback on the weekly reflections and the summative assessment of individual students’ performance on the final exam correlated to a high degree. On the one hand, this indicates that the rubric and the criteria were well-suited to assess student learning through reflective writing in the context of this course. On the other hand, several formative feedback points prompted students to engage in active learning and arguably resulted in student development. This positive effect on learning motivates the use of several formative feedback points in a course design, despite the unquestionable increase in instructor workload. Furthermore, the content analysis of student end-of-course reflections has largely confirmed our analyses of weekly student reflections and instructor formative feedback.

Finally, the course design aimed to stimulate and support student learning processes, not just student end results, as often happens in courses in social work programs. Our findings demonstrate that structured, scaffolded reflection and continuous formative feedback stimulate learning progression, increase awareness of one’s own learning strategies, and support the adoption of an explorative, reflective stance in students. The combination of lectures, seminars, reflective writing, and situational criterion-based formative feedback shaped each student’s learning path toward the final exam and the increased awareness of the skills and tools necessary for writing in practice and modeling successful interventions in the field. An additional perk of the course design was the high levels of student attendance and engagement with the course content. Moreover, a reflective course design can help objectively identify promising students and students needing additional support. Consequently, our study may inspire instructors to experiment with course designs in social work and make a concerted effort to scaffold student learning through (reflective) writing processes. The potential effect course designs may have on student learning warrants further research in different educational contexts and on different sets of data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jonas Christensen

Jonas Christensen is a Senior Lecturer at Malmö University.

Anna Wärnsby

Anna Wärnsby is a Reader at Malmö University.

Notes

¹ The course Social Work in a Local and Global Context is offered at Malmö University, Sweden (see https://mau.se/en/study-education/course/hs165e/).

² In our analysis, we have omitted one of the original codes, Type of prompt, because it was not relevant to the present study.

Appendix A.

Grading criteria

In this course, grades are awarded on a scale from A to E and U (Failed). To be awarded points for each of the keywords, you must have answered all the questions satisfactorily.

A = Excellent (min 9 points per each of the criteria for each of the keywords)

B = Very Good (min 8 points per each of the criteria for each of the keywords)

C = Good (min 7 points per each of the criteria for each of the keywords)

D = Satisfactory (min 6 points per each of the criteria for each of the keywords)

E = Emerging (min 5 points per each of the criteria for each of the keywords)

F (U) = Failed (less than 5 points per each of the criteria for each of the keywords).

Clarity (0–9): Language is clear and expressive. The reader can create a mental image of the situation which is being described. The thematic content is explained. The explanation of the thematic content is logical for an informed reader.

Relevance (0–9): The learning experience that is described is relevant and meaningful for the reader and to the course’s learning outcomes (consult the course plan, if needed).

Analysis (0–9): The reflection is more than a simple description of an analysis of how the experience contributed to the student’s understanding of the Self, other, and/or the thematic content.

Consistency (0–9): The reflection demonstrates a connection between experience and the course materials or documentation of the thematic content, previous experience, and/or personal goals. Self-criticism: The reflection illustrates the student’s ability to question their prejudices, stereotypes, preconceived ideas and/or assumptions, and the student’s ability to define new ways of thinking as a result. After the reflective writing is handed in, each student will be provided written and oral feedback according to the above evaluation criteria. Formative feedback thus forms part of the course design since these evaluation criteria can be viewed as a method of supporting the student’s progression in writing and self-reflection.

Appendix B.

End-of-course reflection prompt

Please answer the following question to help us evaluate the impact of course design on your learning progression:

1. What is your experience of the weekly reflections in relation to your learning?

2. What is your experience of the examination form in relation to your learning?

3. What have you experienced as beneficial to your learning?

4. What do you feel impeded your learning?