TY - JOUR
T1 - Determining the level of reflective thinking from students' written journals using a coding scheme based on the work of Mezirow
AU - Kember, David
AU - Jones, Alice
AU - Loke, Alice
AU - McKay, Jan
AU - Sinclair, Kit
AU - Tse, Harrison
AU - Webb, Celia
AU - Wong, Frances
AU - Wong, Marian
AU - Yeung, Wai Ella
PY - 1999/1/1
Y1 - 1999/1/1
N2 - To determine whether students are engaged in reflective practice it is necessary to have some means of identifying reflective thought and a measure of the depth of reflective thinking. Several measures of reflectivity have been proposed but there appears to be no widely accepted and clearly formulated procedure for determining levels of reflective thinking from students' written reflective journals. In this study we propose a scheme for estimating the quality of reflective thinking in students' writing in reflective journals, using categories based on Mezirow's work on reflective thinking. In an initial test of the scheme, reasonable levels of agreement were obtained from eight judges. Disagreements over coding resulted from differing interpretations of the significance of what students had written rather than from a lack of precision in the guidelines for coding categories. A second test, using students' reflective papers, showed acceptable levels of reliability between four assessors. The method is recommended for both assessing students and evaluating courses in programs which aim to develop reflective thinking.
AB - To determine whether students are engaged in reflective practice it is necessary to have some means of identifying reflective thought and a measure of the depth of reflective thinking. Several measures of reflectivity have been proposed but there appears to be no widely accepted and clearly formulated procedure for determining levels of reflective thinking from students' written reflective journals. In this study we propose a scheme for estimating the quality of reflective thinking in students' writing in reflective journals, using categories based on Mezirow's work on reflective thinking. In an initial test of the scheme, reasonable levels of agreement were obtained from eight judges. Disagreements over coding resulted from differing interpretations of the significance of what students had written rather than from a lack of precision in the guidelines for coding categories. A second test, using students' reflective papers, showed acceptable levels of reliability between four assessors. The method is recommended for both assessing students and evaluating courses in programs which aim to develop reflective thinking.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=22344439746&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/026013799293928
DO - 10.1080/026013799293928
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0260-1370
VL - 18
SP - 18
EP - 30
JO - International Journal of Lifelong Education
JF - International Journal of Lifelong Education
IS - 1
ER -