Leela Cejnar and Jenny Lloyd from the University of Warwick and Melanie Aley from the University of Sydney reflect on their session at the Teaching and Learning Conference 2025 on looking back to move forward in partnership with students to create a growth mindset.
Different approaches to reflective practice
As three academics from different institutional and disciplinary backgrounds, we decided to share at Advance HE’s Teaching and Learning Conference 2025 about how we have partnered with our students by adopting and adapting Brookfield’s student-centred “Letters to Successors” reflective approach (2017), to partner improve student development and pedagogical practice in our respective disciplines.
As a law educator teaching law in a business school, Leela Cejnar’s investigation centres on why non-law students choose to study law within a business school (as opposed to law school), the challenges/benefits they encounter learning law as non-law students and how they hope to use their learning.
The findings of this research will provide a future-focused frame through which curricula can be repurposed to support students when working with peers from other disciplines. This skill is becoming increasingly important in the workplace (Hart, 2019; Rowe & Zegwaard, 2017), and this research will also assist educators in understanding how they might prepare students for employability.
As a marketing educator, Jenny Lloyd employs a reflective journal assessment technique to support postgraduate students in the acquisition of a “growth mindset”.
As an investigator, her work explores motivation, drivers of engagement and student perceptions of the relative value of such a reflective practice. The aim of this research is to evaluate the use of journals in this context and to inform best practice both in terms of the use of journaling and approaches to supporting student self-development.
As an educator in oral health, Mel Aley uses a “Letters to Successors” approach to explore how first year students feel about their transition to university.
Extending the use of this reflective tool during the second year, students’ shift their reflective focus away from themselves to their transition from simulated to authentic clinical environments. In the final year, this is through more substantial written reflections linking their practical and theoretical learning. The aim of this approach is to track how students develop as reflective practitioners across their degree.
Reflection IN action vs reflection ON action
Our presentation discussed the use of reflection in action, where reflection occurs during an event, and reflection on action, where reflection occurs after the event (Schon 1983).
We shared different theoretical frameworks pertaining to reflective practice (Brookfield, 2017; Harvey, Coulson & McMaugh 2016), and the benefits of student partnerships in repurposing the curriculum and improving teaching practice (Nichol et al, 2023; Bovill, Cook-Sather & Felten, 2011).
Using reflective practice to “hear” students’ voices and create a growth mindset
We also shared how using reflective practice to draw on students’ lived experiences can help us to “hear” students’ voices, which can turn into a partnership between us, as teachers, and our students for the benefit of both teacher (pedagogical development) and student (development of a growth mindset). Our methodology (thematic analysis – Saldana, 2021; Braun & Clarke, 2006) offered a straightforward approach to how using “Letters to Successors” can be adapted and implemented by teachers from any disciplinary background/institution, to easily engage with scholarship of learning and teaching.
You can view our presentation here.
Using reflective practice to promote lifelong learning
United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) underpins our work, as we undertook our research to ensure our teaching practices promote lifelong learning that is inclusive and equitable, by “listening” to the voices in our students’ narratives.
Our work also reflects Goal 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions), as we are striving to build effective, accountable and inclusive global learning institutions through interdisciplinary and international scholarship.
Sharing “best practice” and comparing outcomes
We have each discovered from our respective studies that reflective practice is grounded in the concepts of authenticity (through the students’ personal narratives) and the growth mindset, as students engage in an ongoing process of critical reflection, whether by way of using a letter writing approach or via weekly entries in a reflective learning journal.
This seemed particularly evident in relation to the shared narratives from students’ letters to successors, which highlighted how students from non-law backgrounds respond to problem solving and critical analysis when studying law. In particular, these students shared that where in maths or finance or science, they were used to outcomes and answers being “black or white”, they found themselves having to work with the “discomfort” of there being a “multitude of approaches” to an issue, depending on the circumstances of a case and how the law is applied to those circumstances. Although some reflected that they developed the ability to think critically, assess different perspectives and provide well-reasoned arguments, the students’ voices via their reflections also identified this disciplinary difference as a learning challenge.
Similarly, in our own reflections (as teachers) upon the process and the value of the reflective journal as an assessment component, we recognised that students who actively engaged with the reflective journalling exercise not only improved both their academic performance and their transferrable skills, but were also better able to articulate their learning gains and were positive of the process. However, the novelty of reflection as an assessment strategy left some students feeling uncertain, requiring additional explanation, support and assessment scaffolding.
Our next steps ….
On a broader level, our collaboration uncovered that while we work in different institutions (and in different countries!), reflective practice is in fact central to the teaching philosophy that underpins each of our respective modules and, more widely, our respective programme frameworks.
We also discovered our shared view that despite the challenges some students have about using reflective practice, there is still much scope for us, as teachers, to improve our curriculum and to provide additional support, including by focusing on diversity, inclusion and resilience, to help students to develop criticality and a growth mindset.
Call for papers for the Assessment and Feedback Symposium is now open
This online symposium will focus on progressive, inclusive, and forward-thinking practices in assessment and feedback in higher education. We invite submissions that highlight new trends, innovative methodologies, and impactful practices that contribute to more effective and engaging assessment and feedback. The deadline to submit is 2 September 2025. Find out more.
