Reflective learning & critical thinking

REFLECTIVE LEARNING & CRITICAL THINKING

PIR BUX JOKHIO

Objectives

• Define Reflective Learning

• Discuss process of Journal writing

• Define Critical nursing

• Discuss importance of critical thinking for Nursing education and practices

Reflective Learning Quotes• Style is a reflection of your attitude and your

personality. Shawn Ashmore• The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength

from distress, and grows brave by reflection.Thomas Paine

• I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.Leonardo da Vinci

•

• Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.Margaret J. Wheatley

• By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest. Confucius

•

Introduction

• Critical thinking as “putting it all together” through information seeking, reflecting, assigning meaning, problem solving, predicting, planning, and applying information.

• critical thinking skills, which include the capacity to evaluate and respond in novel circumstances and to self-reflect (Brookfield, 1991; Paul,1993).

Reflective Learning

• Learning to learn

• Metacognition = thinking about your own learning process

• Developing insight

• Deliberate process during which the candidate takes time, within the course of their work, to focus on their performance and think carefully about the thinking that led to particular actions, what happened and what they are learning from the experience, in order to inform what they might do in the future.

• (King, 2002)

• Reflection and learning • Reflection is a mental process of thinking and learning

often used in everyday life. It is more than just a common sense wisdom.

• John Cowan (1998:16) gives an example of what reflection is:

• “A student is reflecting when she notes that there is something different about the case that she is considering, in comparison with the examples she has encountered in class; and when she also identifies what the difference is, and what she should do about it.”

Reflective learners continually think…

• What they are learning

• Why they are learning it

• How they are learning it

• How they are using what they are learning

• Their strengths and weaknesses in learning

• Their learning priorities

• Improve and build upon their learning process

• how well they are working towards their short-, medium- and long-term goals.

Reflective learners consider:

• Their motivation

• Their attitudes and ideas, and changes

• Skills they need for different components of their study and learning

• What (if anything) is blocking their learning

• The gaps in their knowledge and skills, and how they might best work towards filling

Reflective learners engage with:

• The specialist discourse of their subject area

• -

• Discipline-specific conventions

• -

• The ways in which knowledge is constructed and meaning is created in their particular subject area(s).

DO YOU AGREE

• To be an effective reflective learner, students must recognize that ‘failure’ is part of success. Learning what does not work is on the same path as learning what does work.

• There must be room for ‘failure’ in the reflective process.

• Do you agree?

Reflection Involves

• Reflection involves describing, analyzing and evaluating our thoughts, assumptions, beliefs, theory base and actions. It includes:

• Looking forward (Prospective Reflection)

• Looking at what we are doing now (SpectiveReflection)

• Looking Backward (retrospective Reflection) Alsop and Ryan (1996)

• Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul. Meg Rosoff

• There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Denis Diderot

Process of Journal Writing

• A journal is a continued series of writings made by a person in response to their life experiences and events.

• Diaries contain a description of daily events. • A journal may include those descriptions, but it

also contains reflections on what took place and expresses emotions and understandings about them. It doesn't matter what you call your writing, either a diary or journal, as long as you see the distinction between these two ways of writing.

Process

• Process essentially is a course of action to achieve a given result, and

• Documentation provides information about the operation, use, or condition of something. As can be deduced, then,

• Process documentation is an attempt to narrate—usually in writing—the steps you have taken in your work.

Content for Process Documentation

• For your process documentation, you may want to ask yourself the following questions:

• What were the specific steps involved in each activity—for example, screening, building trust, understanding development issues, forming groups, establishing bye-laws, and conducting quality checks?

• When conducting workshops or campaigns, what were the steps involved in proactively planning your content? What were the stages involved in event management?

• What processes are involved in getting information from different stakeholders or participants—including your field guide and people staff?

Critical Thinking

• Critical thinking...the awakening of the intellect to the study of itself.

• The intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. (Michael Scriven & Richard Paul, 1987)

Critical Thinking in Nursing

• a composite of attitudes, knowledge, and skills that include “defining a problem, choosing information fort pense the solution, recognizing stated and unstated assumptions, formulating and selecting relevant and promising hypotheses, drawing conclusions, and judging the validity of the inferences”

• (Hickman, 1993)

Continue• Dewey defines critical thinking as “...active,

persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends” (Fisher, 2001).

• It is purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as the explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations up on which that judgment is based. (Facione, 1990)

• American Philosophical Association

Continue• Ennis (1991): “Critical thinking is reasonable,

reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do”.

• Fisher and Scriven: “the skilled and active interpretation and evaluation of observations and communications, information and argumentation”.

• Johnson (2000) indicates, “ A type of thinking where a person must organize, analyze, or evaluate given information”.

• “skilled readers do not read blindly; they read purposely.”

• They have an agenda, goal, or objective”

• Paul and Elder (2004)

• People who think critically can analyze their own thinking and realize they can improve their own reasoning; a highly cultivated critical thinker raises vital questions and problems, gathers and assesses relevant information, thinks open-mindedly, and communicates effectively

• (Elder, 2007; Scriven, Paul, 1987).

• “One’s worldview can be a major hindrance to being fair-minded”;

• Students must be willing to negotiate previously held positions and beliefs while considering opposing viewpoints.

• Teaching critical thinking through direct instruction in rhetorical analysis could improve students’ critical thinking ability, for in order to teach students to think critically, “we must teach them to try to understand how one’s worldview is likely to be embedded with prejudices, biases, and false notions” Carroll (2007)

• According to Yıldırım (2011), critical thinking is “the process of searching, obtaining, evaluating, analyzing, synthesizing and conceptualizing information as a guide for developing one’s thinking with self-awareness, and

• the ability to use this information by adding creativity and taking risks”.

Rhetoric Analysis

• A form of criticism (or close reading) that employs the principles of rhetoric to examine the interactions between a text, an author, and an audience.

• The point in ‘rhetoric analysis’ is merely reading with understanding

• Rubenfeld (2000). • Critical thinking in nursing is an essential component of

professional accountability and quality nursing care.• Critical thinkers in nursing exhibit these habits of the mind:

confidence, contextual perspective, creativity, flexibility, inquisitiveness, intellectual integrity, intuition, open-mindedness, perseverance, and reflection.

• Critical thinkers in nursing practice the cognitive skills of analyzing, applying standards, discriminating, information seeking, logical reasoning, predicting, and transforming

• knowledge. (p. 357)

Nursing And Critical Thinking

• The ability of critical thinking increases as the work years increase, and the critical thinking skills can be improved during nursing education.

• Be rapid and dynamic change in the health care system, nurses in providing optimal patient care, problem solving, ethical decision making, determine priorities and trends in clinical decision making and critical thinking skills you need to use (Yıldırım 2010b).

• Collucciello (1997) stated that it is “imperative for nurses to reason critically about the judgments they face in practice and to act on those judgments in such a way that management of care......exemplifies reasoned consideration, constructive thinking, and a particular disposition that leads to favorable outcomes”

• .

Critical Thinking in N Education

• Thinking and learning are interrelated; one must think to gain knowledge.

• Nursing Process, scientific reasoning, decision making

• “analysis of language use, formulation of problems, explication of assumptions, evaluation of conclusions, weighing of evidence, discriminating between good and bad argumentation, and justification of facts and values that result in credible beliefs and actions”.

• Sternberg (2003) reasoned that “a future of successfully intelligent thinkers is important to personal satisfaction and national achievement”

• Teaching students to think reflectively and critically should be a primary goal of educational institutions, for although students may be knowledgeable, they may not have been taught how to think analytically;

• ultimate goal for educators is to promote lifelong learning by enhancing students’ problem-solving abilities

• “Apply these steps not just in school problems, but in problems in everyday life”.

Adult Learning• Brookfield (2003) referred to the transfer of

those skills learned in the classroom and lifelong learning as “the organizing concept for adult education”.

• Adult learning

• is distinct to childhood and adolescent learning in that it includes the capacity to think dialectically, to employ practical logic, to know how one knows what one knows, and to think reflectively.

Critical Reflecting• “The process by which adults become critically

reflective regarding the assumptions, beliefs and values which they have assimilated during childhood and adolescence” (Brookfield)

• It occurs over a period of time as a result of interpersonal, work-related, and political experiences.

• Without the capacity to think and act critically, we would never move beyond those assumptions we assimilated uncritically in childhood

Cultivate the mind

• Paul (1995b) recommended that educators

• “cultivate minds that habitually probe the logic of the systems of the status quo as well as the logic of the possible variations and alternative systems”

• , and that rather than memorizing the conclusions of others,

• “students should reason to those conclusions on the basis of their own disciplined thought”.

Clinical Reasoning• It has been likened to the process of learning

to ride a bike (Benamy, 1996)

• “A verbal description of how to ride (a bike) would be of virtually no use to a listener wishing to acquire the skill – it needs to be experienced directly ... (This) accounts for the phenomenon that expert practitioners know more than they say.” (Benamy, 1996)

• Clinical reasoning is “the thought process that guides practice” (Rogers, 1982)

Clinical Reasoning• Ways of thinking that therapists use to

understand clients and their problems in doing routine occupations (Reed & Sanderson 1999)

• The cognitive process whereby conclusions can be reached on the basis of information available (Hagedorn 1995)

• Description: A person is unable to feed independently

• Observe (Cues), Link to knowledge base, Hypothesis

• Implement, and Evaluate

• The thinking that helps therapists understand clients’ problems and how to intervene.

• Description: • For example; a person cannot go to the shops.• Observe: • What might a therapist notice?• Link to knowledge base: • What knowledge does the therapist need? • Hypothesis: • What do these cues tell us and how can we explain this? • Implement: • What can we do about it? • Evaluate: • Did it work?• Based on Rogers and Holm (1991) in Reed and Sanderson (1999)

Procedural Reasoning• This is the easiest for us to understand. There are a few

reasons for this:

• It’s the most concrete.

• It’s a big focus in our curriculum.

• As students, we see it as being the most important.

• Procedural is the “how to ” of the therapeutic process. We see something is wrong, so we try to fix it. The focus is on the disability itself and we draw on our knowledge of diseases and conditions to fix it.

• Things like problem identification, goal setting, and intervention planning all fall under this type of reasoning (Fleming, 1991).

Interactive Reasoning• client as a person. begin to understand the person

better, and can appreciate the disability or illness experience for the client.

• “humanizes” the conditions that you identified through your procedural reasoning.

• To engage the client in the intervention session • To get to know the client as a person • To understand the disability from the clients point of

view • To match the goals and interventions to the client • To communicate a sense of hope, trust, and acceptance

to the client • To determine if the intervention is going well

• Procedural reasoning guides treatment. • Interactive reasoning guides therapy. Fleming, 1999• Conditional Reasoning• Requires experience; It usually can be seen in

therapists at the expert level. • Multidimensional process that involves complicated

forms of thinking. • Reflects on the success/failures of the interactive and

procedural reasoning. • The future of the client would be like, and is able to

constantly revise the therapy to suit this vision.• The thinking moves beyond the present to a deeper

level of interpretation of the person as a whole.

• Have you ever struggled with what realistic long-term goals might be for your client?

• Answering these questions comes with experience, and with conditional reasoning.

• QUESTION

• So how do procedural, interactive, and conditional reasoning fit together?

References

• Coughlan, A (2007-08). Reflective learning: keeping a reflective, learning journal. DCU Student Learning Resources. (p.1-4) https://www.dcu.ie/sites/default/files/students/Reflectivelearning.pdf

• Process Documentation and Journal Writing: Guidelines for Making the Most out of Your Field Experiences

References• Özkahraman, Yildirim, B. An Overview of Critical

Thinking in Nursing and Education. American International Journal of Contemporary Research (September 2011) ,1 (2). P 1-7

• http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/reflection.html

• Hagedorn R (1995) Occupational Therapy: perspectives and Processes. London: Churchill Livingstone

• Lisa Mendez and Jodene Neufeld. CLINICAL REASONING... What is it and why should I care? file:///C:/Users/Nursing/Downloads/Documents/Clinical_reasoning.pdf