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The purpose of this paper is to identify the main problems in assessing reflective learning and to seek ways of tackling them. Lessons are sought from HE’s long engagement with critical thinking that can be transferred to reflective learning. A solution to the problems is offered that is based on a questioning approach to reflective learning. In so doing, the paper explores the nature of reflective learning and advances the idea that the distinction between “surface” and “deep” learning can be generalised to the domain of reflective learning. It concludes with some implications for the development of reflective learning.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of perplexity in young players’ experiences within an educational videogame and how reflective thinking can help them to get out of perplexing scenarios.

We used a constructivist grounded theory approach and the lenses of Dewey’s conceptualization of perplexity and reflective thinking to examine young players’ in-game experiences.

We find that perplexity in gameplay is an experience that occurs when players encounter uncertainty about where to go or what to do next in the game. Findings reveal that while playing an educational game players engaged in two forms of perplexity – exploration-based and puzzle-based. Additionally, we unpack how players overcome these perplexing scenarios by reflecting on the information provided in the game.

While in a state of perplexity, reflecting on the in-game information aids players to think and make meaning, thus supporting learning. We provide suggestions for how to better utilize perplexity as an in-game design mechanism to encourage young players to reflect on in-game information.

This empirical study is original in its context of studying the phenomenon of perplexity in videogames and young players’ in-game reflection experiences.

The purpose of this research is to understand reflective journalling in a first year Public Health practice unit.

This research uses pure phenomenography to interpret students’ descriptions of reflective journalling. Data were collected from 32 students enrolled in PUB215 Public Health Practice in the School of Public Health, Queensland University of Technology. Participants completed a brief open‐ended questionnaire to evaluate the first assessment item in this unit, a reflective journal. Questionnaire responses were analysed through Dahlgren and Fallsberg's seven phases of data analysis.

The reflective journal required students to reflect on lecture content from five of seven guest speakers. Participants’ responses were categorised into four conceptions: engagement in learning, depth of knowledge, understanding the process and doing the task. Participants describe reflective journalling as a conduit to think critically about the content of the guest speakers’ presentations. Other participants think journalling is a vehicle to think deeply about their potential career pathways. Some define journalling as a pragmatic operation where practical issues are difficult to navigate. The reflective journal successfully: engaged students’ learning, increased students’ depth of knowledge and deepened students’ understanding of the journalling process.

This research gives an insight into how first year public health students understand reflective journalling, supports educators in reflective journalling assessments and confirms a reflective journal assessment can move student reflection towards higher order thinking about practice.

This paper aims to argue that substantive changes are required in both curricula and pedagogical practice in higher education institutions to challenge dominant epistemologies and discourses and to unsettle current ways of thinking about, and acting in relation to, the environment. Central to such a shift, it is argued, is the need for higher education curricula to be interdisciplinary and for pedagogical practices to work to build capacities in students for critical and reflective thinking.

In this paper, a case study of our reflections is offered on a subject designed to promote capacities in students for critical and reflective thinking via an interdisciplinary approach. The paper uses data from student reflective essays and student course evaluations to make an argument for the success of this approach.

Genuine transformative learning can occur within a constructivist informed pedagogical approach to teaching for sustainability.

Research implications are that genuine transformation can occur in students’ thinking processes (which the paper argues is critical for effective education in sustainability) with appropriately designed courses in higher education.

More effective environmental actors and thinkers, who can critically engage with the complexity of environmental problems.

Social implications include a more effective and socially just higher education for sustainability

The authors know of no other narrative that addresses attempts to educate for sustainability using this approach.

The purpose of this study is to verify the effect of smart pedagogy to facilitate the high order thinking skills of students and to provide the design suggestion of curriculum and intelligent tutoring systems in smart education.

A smart pedagogy framework was designed. The quasi-experiment was conducted in a junior high school. The experimental class used the smart pedagogy and smart learning environment. The control class adopted conventional teaching strategies. The math test scores of these two classes were compared to verify the effectiveness of smart pedagogy.

The smart pedagogy framework contains three sections including the situated learning (S), mastery learning (M), adaptive learning (A), reflective learning (R) and thinking tools (T) (SMART) key elements model, the curriculum design method and detailed teaching strategy. The SMART key elements model integrates the situated learning, mastery learning, adaptive learning, reflective learning and thinking tools to facilitate the high order thinking. The curriculum design method of smart pedagogy combines the first five principles of instruction and the SMART key elements model to design the curriculum. The detailed teaching strategies of smart pedagogy contain kinds of innovative learning methods. The results of the quasi-experiment proved that the learning outcome was significantly promoted by using smart pedagogy.

This research investigates a general framework that can be used to cultivate the high order thinking skills in different subjects and grades was one of the first to introduce high order thinking skills into smart education. The framework of smart pedagogy was innovative and effect in practice.

This Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research is a part of the larger study grant to analyze written reflections through learning log among the third and final year students undertaking BPME 3073 Entrepreneurship module in University Utara Malaysia (UUM). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The data collection techniques are researcher-directed textual data through reflective learning log, taken from 140 students from three classes. A thematic approach was utilized to present the reflections of the students and all data were recorded in a verbatim format.

The findings show that most students have never written a reflective log or essay in the formative assessment. As a consequence, they had difficulty in writing the reflection when being requested to do so. A total 75 (approximately 55 percent) of the reflective logs were identified as level 1 (from 1 to 5 percent) in which reflections were simply written in a descriptive manner, resulted in a balance of 61 learning logs being utilized for further analysis. The students’ reflections on their entrepreneurship’s experience systematically categorize into four different themes comprised of: the nature of entrepreneurship module, entrepreneurial characteristics, opportunity recognition, and creativity and innovation.

As for the limitation of the study, it is important to not to underestimate the challenges of introducing a grade assessment that most of them are not familiar with in their university academic journey. Students need guidance, assurance and confidence writing something that require personal opinion, own thinking, sensitive and personal nature of narration. For most students as found out in this study, self-confessional writing is hard to come by (they dare not attempt it in the first place), only a handful appreciating the writing start with “I,” “me” as first person. More research in this study should be conducted across the university to gauge the response from the students to see if the result of this study is only applicable to this group of students or to this discipline of studies. The researchers would also like to recommend for future studies which take the form of a longitudinal study of similar kind to examine the problems and challenges with regards to promoting learning reflection at the undergraduate level.

Based on the result of the 61 students who had demonstrated an ability in reflective writing, it is suggested that perhaps the university should consider offering coursework that contains a component of reflective writing as part of the assessment. As such, if this is implemented, students of such ability like the one in this sample group would have been benefitted from such assessment which look at reflective ability (Greene, 2014) and which they were allowed to form a broader perspective in relation to the module undertaken. This in turns will foster the growth of reflective ability which is recognized as a learned behavior (Gustafson and Bennett, 1999). In addition, for the future exercise of this reflective learning log, the researcher opined that we should encourage our students to engage with another student (e.g. close friend) in a way that encourages talking with, questioning, or confronting, helped the reflective process by placing the learner in a safe environment in which self-revelation can take place. In addition, students were able to distance themselves from their actions, ideas and beliefs, by holding them up for scrutiny in the company of a peer with whom they are willing to take such risks (Hatton and Smith, 1995).

The results of this research have strongly suggested the need to urgently develop among the students the skills in writing reflectively as they go through the process of higher education which is useful in molding their future professional and entrepreneurial behavior as when they entered the job market which requires a critical reasoning ability.

This paper provides an analysis of the experiences of undergraduate business students undertaking reflective writing as a series of incremental assessments. Using Moon’s map of learning (1999) as an analytical framework, it explores the value of reflective writing to students studying Asian culture in the business context during the first semester of 2017.

With 200 enrolments, the authors taught a core business course, Asian culture in the business context, in the first semester in 2017. The value of the assessments is analysed based on two data sources: written course feedback via a course survey and a combination of semi-structured interviews and focus groups. The written course feedback was collected by the university during the semester. Approximately, one-third of the students (n = 63) participated in the survey. The other data were collected through semi-structured interviews and focus groups for nine students. Ethical approval for the collection of data was obtained from the university ethics committee.

The study confirms that reflective writing enables students to make meaning of their learning and transfer it to the cultural context of business practice. In addition, the assessments help the students develop logical thinking and academic writing skills. To increase the use of reflective assignments in business programmes, further research and teaching practice is required.

A limitation of this research was the relatively small sample size. Even though written survey feedback (n = 63) was used to complement the number of interviewees (n = 9), the findings of the data analysis may not represent the experiences of all students in the course. However, the data are valuable to bridge a gap between the existing research and teaching practice on the use of reflective writing in other disciplines and business education.

Although the transfer of academic knowledge to business practice is a core capability of the business programmes, business students may not obtain this during their study in the programme. Several students mentioned a lack of opportunity to apply reflective writing skills to other courses in their business degree, except one core course using a reflective essay as an assessment. This implies that the majority of the students in the degree are not exposed to situations that require them to critically evaluate, consolidate and consider what has been taught in relation to future practice.

Further research and practice will increase the popularity of reflective writing assessments in business programmes. As Hedberg suggests, reflective practice should be integrated into all classrooms in business education. Together with analysis and action, reflection should be a core capability for managers (Hedberg 2009). In addition, the business faculty needs to work in a reflective manner that encourages students to be familiar with the reflective practice.

This paper analyses the pedagogical aspects of reflection based on the experience of undergraduate business students undertaking reflective writing assessments.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the implications for leadership development of a proposed new psychological model based on the integration of two distinct fields of research in cognitive science and neuroscience, namely, judgement and decision-making in the heuristics and biases tradition, and in particular the dual-process theory of cognition and its development into a tri-partite model; and the differences between the distinct modes of attention supported by left and right cerebral hemispheres.

The distinct fields of research are critically reviewed, the proposed new integrated conceptual framework is presented and compared with other relevant theory, and finally the implications for practice and the connection with contemporary leadership development theory are explored.

It is suggested that decision-makers’ performance in volatile or complex environments could be enhanced through the appropriate engagement of each among the expanded set of cognitive faculties identified in the proposed model, and that a decision-making methodology incorporating prompts to engage each of these aspects of cognition could be adopted by individuals or embedded in organisational processes.

Potential connections for future research are suggested between the proposed new conceptual framework and existing theories concerning shared leadership in teams and reframing processes in a relational leadership context, and more comprehensive psychological theories of leadership incorporating relevant personality traits. Testable claims for future research are proposed, as the model is yet to be validated empirically.

This paper proposes a novel, integrated psychological model with potential relevance both as a conceptual framework for future research in contemporary leadership theory and as the basis for a decision-making methodology with practical application in leadership development.

The purpose of this article is to uncover the importance and relevance of John Dewey's philosophy for the key processes, purpose and practices of global learning.

This study used a qualitative historical methodology to analyze John Dewey's education philosophy and its relevance to the theory, practice and purpose of global learning. The study accomplished this analysis through an in-depth examination of the Deweyan concepts of a quality educative experience and reflective thinking, and their applications to global learning in K-16 education.

Through a careful analysis of Dewey's definition, explanation and examples of a quality educative experience and reflective thinking, the authors find that Deweyan education philosophy offers a comprehensive conceptual framework that ties together the concepts and definitions of global learning and provide a solid foundation for its essential processes, practices and purpose.

Implications of this research include the awareness of Dewey's influence in teaching and learning for an increasingly interconnected world and the use of Deweyan philosophy as a basis for global learning innovations throughout the K-16 curriculum and co-curriculum.

In this article, the authors uncover the work of John Dewey's education philosophy and vision of learning to highlight its relevance to global learning. Through a careful analysis of Dewey's definition, explanations and examples of a quality educative experience and reflective thinking, the authors find that Deweyan education philosophy offers a comprehensive conceptual framework that ties together the concepts and definitions of global learning and provides a solid foundation for its essential processes, practices and purpose.

The purpose of this study was to assess particular student outcomes when design thinking was integrated into an environmental engineering course. The literature is increasingly promoting design thinking for addressing societal and environmental sustainability engineering challenges. Design thinking is a human-centered approach that identifies needs upfront.

In an undergraduate engineering course, Design for the Environment, students have begun to obtain hands-on experience in applying design thinking to sustainability challenges. This case study investigates the association between the use of design thinking and student creativity with sustainability design solutions. Student perspectives on their own creativity and future sustainable design practices as a result of the course were also investigated.

The findings were favorable for design thinking, being associated with a significant difference and medium-to-large effect with regards to solution novelty. A qualitative analysis showed a positive association between design thinking and students’ perceptions of their creativity and future anticipated sustainability practices. Using a content analysis of reflective writings, students’ application of design thinking was assessed for comprehensiveness and correctness. A two-week introductory design-thinking module and significant use of in-class active learning were the course elements that most notably impacted students’ use of design thinking.

This case study preliminarily demonstrates that application of design thinking within an environmental engineering course may be associated with beneficial outcomes related to creativity and sustainability.

A review of the literature did not uncover studies of the use of design thinking for undergraduate socio-environmental challenges to promote creativity and sustainable-practices outcomes, although the literature has been calling for the marrying of these two areas.