Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Tell Me… Finding the Positum Through the Missing and the Reflections

This paper explores the process of reflection and its influence on personality formation. The importance of this issue for people throughout the ages is evidenced by fairy tales, parables, and also their predecessors – myths. The article discusses some of them, in which the symbol of the mirror and reflection makes it possible to know and assign qualities and abilities. Keywords: Positive psychotherapy, positum, reflection, contact, differentiation

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who's the Communicationally Competent One of All? and the Other Side of the Mirror

This chapter focuses on health professional competence and consequent evaluation by patients who establish with them a therapeutic relationship. Based on a literature review and proposals of best practices to implement in health encounters, it is concluded that competent communication has to give attention to verbal and non-verbal dimensions and to the patient's expectations. Results reveal that the competences are empathy, respect, inclusion of the patient in choices and decisions, confirmation of understanding, use of plain language, and positivity. On the patients' side, some common expectations are associated with the humanization of relationships, such as the manifestation of patience by professionals to the patients' queries and the adoption of personalized communication. The communication lapses are more related to poor attitudes of health professionals, and the patients' expectations can vary depending on their sociodemographic attributes. Different communication styles of health professionals generate different evaluations and expectations of patients.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Most Autonomous of Them All?

Learner Autonomy is a key element in the field of education, and the number of academic studies in the field has considerably increased recently. Educators have also attached importance to classroom implementations to raise their learners’ autonomy over time. In this classroom action research study at a university in Turkey, I aimed to present the findings to this question: What is my learners’ level of awareness regarding their own learning and study habits? This article will present the results of this classroom inquiry based on a portfolio task that asked learners to prepare an oral report about their study habits. Data were collected through student notes, my notes on the whiteboard, and observations throughout the task. The thematic analysis method was used to analyze patterns in the data. The results suggest that learners are good at accessing study materials according to their identified needs. Although they have some effective strategies for how to learn, these strategies are outnumbered by source selection strategies in the students’ suggestions list. This article may be useful to those who are interested in promoting learner autonomy through classroom activities.