Should reflection be used as a form of assessment?

Critical reflection is an essential tool and skill for all health and social care professionals: it aids individual and personal development and supports lifelong learning. The principles of reflective practice are first introduced to students on pre-registration curricula within educational settings and form part of the core professional and regulatory requirements on professional programmes.

For all student health and social care professionals, reflective practice is seen as a vital tool to aid the development of an understanding of both clinical incidents, the process of deeper learning and the understanding of one's self. However, most educational institutions assess student use of reflection as part of their programme outcomes. This article explores the impact this can have on the process of reflection, and whether assessment itself, can limit the effect that reflection can have on student development.

Boud (2001:2) describes reflection as a process of ‘turning experience into learning’, with the aim of ‘exploring experience in order to learn new things from it’. Duckworth et al (2010) expand on this, stating that reflection enables the learner to identify what is already known and action any gaps for further personal development. King (2002) points out that the ability to reflect is associated with a higher stage of learning, in relation to Bloom's Taxonomy of learning. Students and clinicians are exposed to a range of reflective models (e.g. Schon's Reflective Practitioner (1983); Gibbs' Reflective Cycle (1988); Kolb's Learning Cycle (1994); Johns' Model of Structured Reflection (2000)), which form a process of learning through reflection.