Play in Three Acts

In some fields, written reflection is commonplace whereas in others it is uncommon. While athletic therapy education aims to produce reflective practitioners, written reflection is not a typical pedagogy employed. In 2014, the athletic therapy program at our institution began the implementation of a clinical presentation (CP) approach to facilitate competency-based curriculum requirements. This innovation to pedagogy required a reimagined approach to teaching, learning, and assessment. We describe one aspect of a larger SoTL study on this transformation, inquiring into the development of reflective practice through reflective writing. Students were asked to regularly reflect on their experiences in the clinic or field as part of their program. In this qualitative component of the study, we were able to gain insight into how students perceived the reflective process, how that evolved over their program, what were enablers and barriers to their reflection, and what was the role of feedback in their learning. The characteristics of student perceptions in each year, which followed a learning arc which we describe sequentially as “confused, conflicted, and convinced,” is explored, along with implications for pedagogy in assisting students to develope reflective professional practice.

Socially Engaged Art as Creative Pedagogy in Educational Spaces

This chapter looks at socially engaged art to realize and explore pedagogical creativity. Socially engaged art is interested in creating art that can be viewed as a process to navigate a deeper understanding of individuals and society. As this process relates to pedagogical creativity, the social practice artist is engaging the participant in a creative activity or process that often calls for a reflective notion. The essential shift socially engaged practice offers is a variant on the reflective process from self to a community, social, and collective reflective practice. This process of engaging with the community is critical for gaining community participant input to direct the practice. When applied to educators, teaching through a social practice lens can offer students a culturally responsive curriculum. Remote and virtual experiences can offer diverse opportunities for creativity, engagement, and discourse.

Autofiction and Film: Archival Practices in Post-millennial Documentary Cinema in Argentina and Spain

This chapter examines three recent autofictional documentaries produced in Argentina and Spain—Albertina Carri’s Cuatreros (Rustlers), Mercedes Álvarez’s Mercado de futuros (Futures Market), and Víctor Erice’s Vidros partidos (Broken Windows)—which share a distinctive “archival impulse.” These films propose a meaning in a specific political sense which we read in relation to the contexts of the Iberian financial crisis and the memories of political violence during the last dictatorship in Argentina. We address the autofictional strategies through which the filmmakers “re-stage” the archive by adopting an aesthetics of ambiguity that unsettles the modern paradigm of the archive as static evidence of a given reality, revolving instead around a conception of the archive as a self-reflective process that becomes the subject matter in its own right.

Power to the People: A Beginner’s Tutorial to Power Analysis using jamovi

Authors have highlighted for decades that sample size justification through power analysis is the exception rather than the rule. Even when authors do report a power analysis, there is often no justification for the smallest effect size of interest, or they do not provide enough information for the analysis to be reproducible. We argue one potential reason for these omissions is the lack of a truly accessible introduction to the key concepts and decisions behind power analysis. In this tutorial, we demonstrate a priori and sensitivity power analysis using jamovi for two independent samples and two dependent samples. Respectively, these power analyses allow you to ask the questions: “How many participants do I need to detect a given effect size?”, and “What effect sizes can I detect with a given sample size?”. We emphasise how power analysis is most effective as a reflective process during the planning phase of research to balance your inferential goals with your available resources. By the end of the tutorial, you will be able to understand the fundamental concepts behind power analysis and extend them to more advanced statistical models.

Characterising collaboration: Reflecting on a partnership between academic support staff and lecturers to help university students learn how to write for the discipline of chemistry

Academic staff often lament their students’ abilities to write for academic purposes. To address these writing challenges, faculty members can seek support from their university writing centres. Despite the expertise that can be found in areas of writing pedagogy in this location, these partnerships can often be asymmetrical with the academic staff members’ ways of knowing overpowering those belonging to members of the writing centre. Perhaps these issues of inequity and disregard between disciplines are one reason at least half the collaborations that form in universities context fizzle rather than flourish. This article reports on findings from a reflective investigation done by three members of a collaboration that is currently flourishing in its efforts to help first and final year chemistry students learn how to write for academic and research purposes in their discipline at one university of technology in South Africa. Using in-depth interviews, we, two members of the chemistry department and the coordinator of the university writing centre, reflected on our experiences beginning, implementing, and moving the partnership forward. From this reflective process, we have realised that the team members possess particular characteristics (i.e. ways of thinking and being) that have perhaps enabled this enterprise to successful work towards its goal.

Autoethnographic Journey to Discover the Heart and Art of My Nursing Practice

<p>This thesis presents an autoethnographic study of the concept of 'compassionate listening' within my general and palliative care practice. I examined my care for people in critical life course moments to gain insight into the process of listening with compassion. This insight evolved through a process of layered reflection using a series of texts, particularly stories that captured critical moments in working with people who were facing crisis situations or who were dying. Writing and reflecting on these stories enabled me identify how I engaged with patients and their loved ones. I was able to explore how compassionate listening could be used to ascertain their needs, particularly when they were unable or unsure how to proceed. Compassion implies the capacity to acknowledge another human's suffering or predicament. Compassionate listening is a form of active listening that begins with the intention to be present for the person. It brings humanness, patience, an acknowledgement of one's own vulnerability and a willingness to interact with a person in a meaningful way that could alleviate some of their suffering. During this special encounter both nurse and patient reach an embodied knowing. In studying this aspect of caring I chose stories from my practice that were written over a number of years in different locations. I reflected again on these stories to gain deeper insight and asked colleagues to read some of the texts and give me feedback on my practice. Their comments were a valuable part of this layered reflective process. This thesis presents eight stories and a series of reflections on those stories and colleague's comments, which enabled me to explore compassionate listening as it evolved in my practice. This study contributes to an understanding of how the ability to develop refined awareness of meaningful interactions with people can enhance wellbeing for both the patient and nurse.</p>

Autoethnographic Journey to Discover the Heart and Art of My Nursing Practice

<p>This thesis presents an autoethnographic study of the concept of 'compassionate listening' within my general and palliative care practice. I examined my care for people in critical life course moments to gain insight into the process of listening with compassion. This insight evolved through a process of layered reflection using a series of texts, particularly stories that captured critical moments in working with people who were facing crisis situations or who were dying. Writing and reflecting on these stories enabled me identify how I engaged with patients and their loved ones. I was able to explore how compassionate listening could be used to ascertain their needs, particularly when they were unable or unsure how to proceed. Compassion implies the capacity to acknowledge another human's suffering or predicament. Compassionate listening is a form of active listening that begins with the intention to be present for the person. It brings humanness, patience, an acknowledgement of one's own vulnerability and a willingness to interact with a person in a meaningful way that could alleviate some of their suffering. During this special encounter both nurse and patient reach an embodied knowing. In studying this aspect of caring I chose stories from my practice that were written over a number of years in different locations. I reflected again on these stories to gain deeper insight and asked colleagues to read some of the texts and give me feedback on my practice. Their comments were a valuable part of this layered reflective process. This thesis presents eight stories and a series of reflections on those stories and colleague's comments, which enabled me to explore compassionate listening as it evolved in my practice. This study contributes to an understanding of how the ability to develop refined awareness of meaningful interactions with people can enhance wellbeing for both the patient and nurse.</p>

Chosen Moments: a Reflective Journey Illustrating Terminally Ill Patients Choosing the Moment to Die

<p>In this project the author reveals how she is observing and thinking as she cares for people who are dying. She records her reflections and insights and most profoundly reveals that there is life right up to the moment of death, having observed terminally ill patients choosing the precise moment to die. She describes her observations of these moments by using poetry and stories, and explores the implications for her practice as a result. The author presents her reflections using an individualistic, reflective and exploratory perspective which is informed by the work of nursing scholars; Taylor (2000), Benner (1984) and Johnstone (1999). This paper is framed using the metaphors of a journey and a window to indicate the reflective process that the author used to journal her observations in practice over time. This offers a professional and personal record of the author's insights.</p>

Chosen Moments: a Reflective Journey Illustrating Terminally Ill Patients Choosing the Moment to Die

<p>In this project the author reveals how she is observing and thinking as she cares for people who are dying. She records her reflections and insights and most profoundly reveals that there is life right up to the moment of death, having observed terminally ill patients choosing the precise moment to die. She describes her observations of these moments by using poetry and stories, and explores the implications for her practice as a result. The author presents her reflections using an individualistic, reflective and exploratory perspective which is informed by the work of nursing scholars; Taylor (2000), Benner (1984) and Johnstone (1999). This paper is framed using the metaphors of a journey and a window to indicate the reflective process that the author used to journal her observations in practice over time. This offers a professional and personal record of the author's insights.</p>

An Exploration of Language and Nursing Practice to Improve Communication in the Context of Ear Syringing

<p>Action research is a critical reflective process that involves spirals of cycles if of planning, acting, reflecting/evaluating and replanning the next cycle. This action research inquiry explores communication and nursing practice in an effort to improve practice and enhance patient care. Implications of this study indicate that action research is a method that works, and it is a satisfying way of challenging and changing nursing practice. Using ear syringing as a procedure, in the general practice setting and at two separate surgeries, another Practice Nurse and I co-researched this study during working hours. 12 people consented to participate in the research that involved the audiotaping of each ear syringing interaction. Following each transcription of the recording, my co-researcher and I read our own and then each other's transcripts, and listened to the recordings. We then met to discuss and reflect on our findings and to plan the next cycle. Throughout the process, my co researcher and I found a number of areas of practice we could change or enhance. Changes included the use of technical language such as "contraindications" and "auditory meatus", the side effects of syringing, improvements in communicating situations where ear syringing is not recommended and the options available, and post procedure information. These changes became a significant challenge and areas for improvement when both my co-researcher and I forgot the changes, thus repeating previous errors and omissions. This factor highlighted the need to practise any changes prior to interactions, and to have a cue card on hand to facilitate recollection and to cement improvements into practice. Although time constraints limited this inquiry to three cycles, at the final meeting we agreed to continue the reflective process we had begun to explore our practice.</p>