Extending higher education recognition programs through a dedicated post-award reflective practice tool

ABSTRACT

Higher education professional recognition programs, which lead to the awarding of such accolades as teaching and learning fellowships, offer participants opportunities to reflect carefully on their practice. However, few resources exist to help participants engage in reflection after the award-receiving stage. This reflection is important in helping participants not rest on their laurels and, instead, build on the practices for which they received recognition. Through a process of collaborative reflection, a group of fellowship-recipients, from different disciplines and higher education institutions, addressed this gap as stakeholder-participant-researchers by developing a transdisciplinary approach to undertaking post-award reflective practice. From this collaboration, a novel two-stage tool was developed using an iterative design methodology. The tool presented in this paper as the result of this research can be understood as a means of supporting self-paced, continued post-award reflective practice; the tool’s first stage guides users through retrospective reflection, looking back on previous achievements, while the second stage leads users through anticipatory planning, looking towards the future, to achieve fresh goals. The tool thus deepens the reflective practice of recognition program awardees and supports their ongoing professional development. This paper reports on the development of this bespoke tool, which may be enacted in varied settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-award reflective practice
• higher education professional recognition programs
• ongoing professional development
• design-based research
• practitioner-based enquiry

Acknowledgments

The authors sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their generous and insightful feedback, which helped to strengthen the paper on multiple levels. Also, the authors thank Lee Partridge for the feedback and input provided during the tool-development process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The research project reported in this paper was supported by the Higher Education Research and Development Association of Australasia (HERDSA) through a 2020 HERDSA Grant.

Notes on contributors

Lukasz Swiatek

Lukasz Swiatek lectures in the School of the Arts and Media – within the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture – at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia. He has taught a range of undergraduate and postgraduate (junior and senior) courses in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. His research in higher education focuses mainly on wellbeing in the academy, as well as reward and recognition. In 2019, he was awarded a Fellowship of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA).

Ana Maria Ducasse

Ana Maria Ducasse is an English/Spanish Bilingual/Bicultural Applied Linguist teaching sociolinguistics and Spanish language and culture at all proficiency levels. Her research interests are Higher Education Classroom-Based Language Assessment and Feedback, with doctoral supervision spanning discourse analysis, language teaching and English for Academic Purposes. In 2022, she was awarded a Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) Fellowship.

Jennifer Coburn

Jennifer Coburn is a Senior Lecturer at The Cairnmillar Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Jennifer is a psychologist who co-ordinates a Bachelor program and teaches and supervises within the School of Psychology and Counselling. In 2021, Jennifer was awarded a Learning and Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA). Her research interests include the scholarship of teaching and learning, and how counselling practitioners work productively and sustainably with uncertainty and ambiguity.

Maria Northcote

Maria Northcote is the Director of Higher Degree Research at Avondale University in NSW, Australia. She is a researcher and educator who has worked in the Australian higher education sector for over 20 years. She has managed many research projects on topics including assessment design, professional learning, researcher education, pre-service teaching and online learning. In recognition of her service to higher education and her commitment to ongoing professional development in teaching and learning, she was made a Fellow of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) in 2013.

Nirma Samarawickrema

Nirma Samarawickrema is the Co-Head of Teaching and Learning for the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She is a teaching-intensive academic who teaches the Bachelor of Medical Science and Doctor of Medicine, Bachelor of Biomedical Science, Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Nutritional Science students. Her SoTL research has focussed on the evaluation of peer assessment approaches and the benefits of peer partnerships in assessments. In recognition of her contribution to teaching, learning and SoTL, she was made a Fellow of the Monash Education Academy in 2017, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) in 2019. She is also the winner of the 2020 Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education Award and the winner of the 2022 Federation of Asian and Oceanian Biochemists and Molecular Biologists Education Award.