All Ireland Society for Higher Education
| Name: | Redmond , Bairbre |
|---|---|
| Email: | bairbre.redmond@ucd.ie |
| Institution: | Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning, University College Dublin |
Over the past twenty years reflective theorists have suggested that the gap between client need and the professional response to that need may be rooted in the nature of professional learning and the limitations of professional knowledge. This paper explores the design and implementation of a new reflective model of teaching and learning for use with a multi-disciplinary group of professional students in the area of health and social services. This reflective teaching and learning model has been designed to encourage professionals to explore their existing perspectives of clients and, by doing so, to be helped to develop more composite, multi-dimensional perspectives of service users. Ultimately the model helps professionals to develop an increasingly reflective practice that will lead to more deliberate, flexible and productive work with clients. This paper describes how, using an action research approach, this model was applied, with a group of N=19 post-graduate health and social service students, all working in the area of intellectual disability. Through the model these students, from different backgrounds (including nursing, psychology, medicine and social work) initially examined their existing perceptions of service users with whom they worked. Through the model's increasingly complex teaching and learning these students were encouraged to re-examine some of these perspectives and to explore, attempt and critically analyse more reflective, responsive ways of working with service users. Results from this research revealed that this new reflective teaching and learning model was successful in encouraging students to examine and re-evaluate their perceptions of, and their responses to, clients. It also revealed that this training model offered students new ways to monitor, evaluate and re-assess the ways in which they work with their clients and to consider alternative, more effective approaches to their work.
(Abstract ref: #14.)