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‘You just knew what you had to write’: reflective learning and e-portfolio in the social sciences Serena Bufton Faculty of Development and Society Collegiate Crescent Campus (Southbourne) Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield S1 1WB UK
Tel 0114 225 2417 Email S.A.Bufton@shu.ac.uk
Ian Woolsey Faculty of Development and Society Collegiate Crescent Campus (Southbourne) Sheffield Hallam University Sheffield S1 1WB UK
Tel 0114 225 6070 Email I.Woolsey@shu.ac.uk
Biographies
Dr Serena Bufton is a principal lecturer in sociology and a faculty teaching fellow at Sheffield Hallam University. She is a member of Cohort III of the Inter/National Coalition of E-Portfolio Research (INCEPR) and, as part of this coalition, has conducted research into the use of e-portfolios for reflective learning. Serena has also published work in the areas of personal development planning and working-class, mature students’ experiences of higher education. ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
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Ian Woolsey is a lecturer in sociology and a faculty research fellow at Sheffield Hallam University. He has published work in the areas of autism and pedagogy, and has a forthcoming publication which discusses football supporter identities.
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‘You just knew what you had to write’: reflective learning and e-portfolio in the social sciences Abstract This paper presents the findings of research into student views and uses of an electronic portfolio, which was introduced on a large undergraduate social science degree programme to promote reflective learning and personal development planning. The findings indicate that, while a majority of students evaluated the e-portfolio positively, they were more equivocal about the benefits of externally imposed reflective learning activities. The authors conclude by problematising the concept of reflective learning and the use of electronic tools as substitutes for face-to-face dialogue and personal relationships with tutors.
Key words: electronic portfolios, reflective learning, personal development planning, social science
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‘You just knew what you had to write’: reflective learning and e-portfolio in the social sciences Introduction: the reflective learner The Dearing Report (1997) advised universities to give all students the opportunity to engage in personal development planning (PDP), defined as ‘a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development’ (Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), 2009: 2). This definition foregrounds reflection as the foundation upon which learning – personal, academic and professional – can inform ‘lifelong and life-wide activity’ (ibid: 4). Race (2006) defines reflective learning in the following way:
The act of reflecting is one which causes us to make sense of what we've learned, why we learned it, and how that particular increment of learning took place. Moreover reflection is about linking one increment of learning to the wider perspectives of learning – heading towards the seeing of the bigger picture. The concept of ‘integrative learning’ (Huber and Hutchings, 2005) captures this sense of ‘seeing the bigger picture’ through reflection, which lies at the heart of PDP and implies a more intentional approach by the learner (ibid), who develops a greater sense of direction and purpose in their learning. Yancey (1998: 6) describes this kind of intentional learning when she defines reflection as:
the dialectical process by which we learn to develop and achieve, first, specific goals for learning; second, strategies for reaching those goals; and third, means of determining whether or not we have met those goals or other goals.
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5 It is argued that the process of reflecting, of making sense and creating links, not only improves the quantitative aspects of learning but also changes the nature of the learning by promoting ‘deep’ and ‘transformative’ learning through the encouragement of ‘metacognition’: ‘the awareness of one’s own cognitive functioning’ (Moon, 2001: 6, 7), which ‘entails knowing what one knows and does not know, predicting outcomes, planning ahead, efficiently apportioning time and cognitive resources, and monitoring one’s efforts to solve a problem or learn’ (Huber and Hutchings, 2005: 9).
Reflection can be seen as an inherently social process, as Yancey indicates when she writes: ‘we learn to understand ourselves through explaining ourselves to others’ (Yancey, 1998: 11). Clegg, Hudson and Mitchell (2005: 5) also note ‘the essentially dialogic nature of reflection’, emphasising that the greater individualisation which characterises our society today actually increases the need for interdependence because dialogue with others may result in a reframing or revaluation of experience and may impact on the sense of self and development: ‘in conditions where personal reflection is paramount, dialogue becomes even more, not less, important’ (ibid: 6).
Attempts have been made to locate the learner on a continuum of reflective development. Hatton and Smith (1995: 40), for example, distinguish between ‘descriptive writing, descriptive reflection, dialogic reflection and critical reflection’. Similarly, Davis (2006: 282) distinguishes between: ‘unproductive reflection’, which is descriptive rather than analytical, with poor connectivity of ideas and use of evidence and a judgmental rather than evaluative approach, and ‘productive reflection’, which is characterised by analysis and a connectivity of ideas which result in ‘integrated knowledge’ (ibid: 207). A useful typology of reflective learning has been developed by the Alverno College Faculty (2000) and elaborated by Rickards, Diez et al (2006). This typology distinguishes between three levels of reflection and learning: ‘beginning’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ (Rickards, Diez et al, 2006: 15). At a beginning level, students exhibit the ‘unproductive’ reflection identified by Davis, with descriptive, uncritical reporting of feedback on performance and little perception of connectivity in learning. At the intermediate level, there is a ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
6 growing sophistication in the use of evidence to make judgments on learning, more connectivity in learning and a developing sense of self as learner. Students at the advanced level demonstrate these abilities to the full, emerging as accomplished, flexible learners in different contexts, able to draw upon multiple frameworks and to situate their learning within a wider narrative of personal development (Rickards, Diez et al, 2006: 15).
The problem with reflective learning The concept of reflective learning is not unproblematic, however. For example, the relationship between ‘reflection’ and ‘learning’ cannot be assumed: these are distinct, if related, activities. Reflection may be superficial and have no conscious purpose (Moon, 2001: 1); conversely, and more contentiously, learning may occur without systematic reflection. Drawing on the literature in this area, Clegg and Bradley (2006: 470–471) argue: ‘Learning is not accomplished entirely at the level of the cognitively accessible … ‘knowing how’ may be entirely tacit and … people may not be able to describe what they are doing’. Being able to consciously think about and articulate learning may only be possible after repeated practice has itself produced an improvement in performance (ibid: 471).
Further difficulties emerge when we attempt to promote reflective learning in our students. How can it be incorporated within the curriculum? Should it be addressed explicitly or implicitly? What kind of pedagogy is implied? What, if any, tools can be used to support it? Should we assess it, and, if so, how? And, crucially, how do we know that our interventions have helped to create the ‘deep’ and ‘transformative’ learning that we are told is associated with it? Evidence of the effectiveness of reflection on student learning was sought in a systematic review by the Evidence for Policy and Practice (EPPI) Centre (Gough et al, 2003). Drawing on all empirical evidence available at the time, the authors ‘confirm the central policy claim that PDP supports the improvement of students’ academic learning and achievement’ (ibid: 6), adding, however, a caveat that the diversity of policy and practice being
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7 researched in the studies they reviewed ‘limit[s] the extent that clear conclusions can be drawn about the usefulness of PDP in enabling learning’ (ibid: 5). In addition, the authors note that there was insufficient evidence to make a judgment about the impact of PDP on personal factors such as identity or about the type of approach to PDP that is most effective in promoting student learning.
Supporting students to become reflective learners Universities have responded to the task of supporting the development of students as reflective learners in a variety of ways, including the development and use of e-portfolios ‘to structure and support learning’ (QAA, 2009: 4). A recent survey of practice in the UK indicates that higher education institutions are increasingly using an e-portfolio tool to support PDP (Strivens, 2007). Although e-portfolio is not an unproblematic concept (Becta, 2007), given its many potential uses, in the present context it can be seen as a web-based electronic tool which enables students to build a digital repository of learning artefacts, both formal and informal, for multiple purposes – for example, to record and reflect upon progress and plan future learning and career development. It has been argued that e-portfolio encourages a pedagogy which ‘shifts from a course-driven focus to a student-centred approach, placing emphasis for learning firmly on the student’ (Tosh and Werdmuller, 2004: 3). In addition, a good e-portfolio can provide a tool for ‘linking together people, ideas and resources’ (Tosh, Werdmuller et al 2004: 6), providing a vehicle for bringing together learning from across modules and levels of study and also for linking curricular and extra-curricular learning experiences. As such, e-portfolio can be seen as potentially useful for supporting personal, academic and professional development (see, for example, JISC, 2006).
The research project This paper has emerged from a longitudinal research project (2006–2009) into the use of reflective e-portfolio tools by undergraduate students on a large, ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
8 social science degree programme. The project was undertaken as part of our membership of Cohort III of the Inter/National Coalition of Electronic Portfolio Research (http://ncepr.org/cohort3.html), a research group based in the USA, and involved the introduction of a web 2.0 e-portfolio tool (PebblePad). The introduction of this tool was a response to an earlier project which had uncovered serious problems in the way in which first-year students had responded to the introduction of a paper-based PDP activity and to their sense of dislocation from, and disenchantment with, the learning process over the course as a whole (Pates and Bradley, 2004; Clegg and Bufton, 2008). Our findings at the time echoed Moir’s observation that students may see PDP in an instrumental way, a ‘process of managing information’ rather than one of ‘discovery, insight and growth’ (Moir, 2009: 7). It was hoped that the eportfolio tool would support the PDP process, improve the reflective learning that students engaged in throughout their course and provide a tool through which their learning could be both captured and integrated. It was also hoped that the tool would promote increased dialogue – tutor–student and student– student – which would further support the learning process (Bufton and Diamond, 2007).
PebblePad was embedded initially during 2006–2007 within a core, first-year social science skills and support module with an emphasis on the development of undergraduate academic skills, and was used by students to reflect upon and improve their learning throughout the year. This reflective eportfolio work was assessed at the end of the year. In 2007–2008, PebblePad was embedded in a core, second-year, work-related learning module in which students were required to make connections between their academic skills and knowledge and the world of work. Again, their reflective accounts were assessed at the end of the year. Finally, in 2008–2009, PebblePad was integrated within an optional module where it was used to assess coursework which had a reflective component. An analysis of the students’ reflective e-portfolio work at the end of their first year indicated that reflections were largely at the ‘beginning’ level, as outlined by Rickards, Diez et al (2006), that students often accepted tutor feedback on ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
9 their work uncritically and that many had difficulty in understanding, integrating and acting on this feedback to progress (Bufton and Ehiyazaryan, 2008). Bernstein (2000: 162–163) argues that students new to sociology may have difficulties understanding the nature of its language, its conventions and rules of argument. This, he claims, is because sociology has a ‘horizontal knowledge structure’ with a ‘weak grammar’ and employs competing conceptual frameworks (with associated assumptions and languages) that have only loose relationships with their empirical bases. Bernstein argues that students need to be acculturated to the conventions and languages of the discipline – to the sociological ‘gaze’ (ibid: 164) – through social interaction with their tutors.
As the students shared their work and feedback with us through their eportfolios, tutors gained greater insight into the challenges they faced in the transition to higher education and felt more able to support them to meet these challenges. When the students moved on to their second and third years, tutors were cautiously optimistic about the continued value of the eportfolio tool to: provide an electronic repository, drawing together completed work and feedback to support dialogue and reflective learning; to create an additional channel for tutor–student communication and formative feedback; and to provide an additional electronic space for collaborative working between students. This paper reports some of the findings of research into student views of the benefits of the e-portfolio tool for their learning as they reached the end of their final year of study.
Method In March 2009 an online census was distributed to the 86 final-year social science students whose courses had required them to use PebblePad for at least two years. Students were asked about their use of PebblePad and their attitudes towards the tool. As an incentive, all participants completing the questionnaire were automatically entered into a prize draw to win an Apple IPod touch phone. Of the 86 students who were eligible to complete the
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10 questionnaire, 54 replied. This gave a response rate of 63 per cent. The vast majority of the respondents were female (87%, n=47). The questionnaire consisted of closed and open-ended questions. Open-ended data were analysed thematically. SPSS 16.0 was used during the analysis. All percentages reported have been rounded up to whole numbers.
Following this, a purposive sample was drawn up of ten students who had indicated on the questionnaire that they would be willing to participate in a semi-structured interview. Participants were selected for interview on the basis of their questionnaire responses about the PebblePad tool. The authors sought to ensure that students who expressed a range of views were included in the final sample. Interviews explored students' attitudes towards this elearning tool, and their engagement in reflective practice, in greater depth. The interviews lasted between 31 and 49 minutes. All interviews were recorded digitally and transcribed fully by an external professional. Transcripts were analysed and coded thematically. Nvivo 8 software was used during the analysis.
Findings We wanted to find out how useful our students had found the e-portfolio tool for supporting what we regard as the constituent elements of reflective learning: the gathering together of work and feedback to allow review across modules and years; the recording of skills and achievements; collaborative learning and dialogue; forward planning. We specifically asked students if they had found the tool useful for reflecting upon and analysing their progress in a cumulative way.
e-Portfolio as a support for learning
Students were asked to rate on a 5-point Likert scale how helpful they found PebblePad for performing specific tasks (see table 1). In order to gain a more general understanding of students' attitudes towards the tool, responses in the
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11 ‘very helpful’ and ‘helpful’ categories were merged into one category, as were responses in the ‘very unhelpful’ or ‘unhelpful’ categories. Significantly, four of the six tasks which ranked most highly were associated with the ‘repository’ function of PebblePad as a site for storing completed assignments, feedback and evidence of skills, including those skills necessary for future study or employment. However, students also indicated that they had found the tool useful for a variety of reflective tasks.
Table 1 below summarises some of the data from the survey and gives an indication of student views of the helpfulness of the e-portfolio tool for specific activities. The table indicates that approximately half of the respondents assessed PebblePad as helpful or very helpful for reflective learning: reflecting upon and analysing progress in specific modules (50%, n=27) and across the course (50%, n=27); identifying general aspects of academic learning that need to be improved (48%, n=26). Approaching a third were neutral on these issues, and sizeable minorities – around a fifth of respondents – felt that PebblePad was unhelpful or very unhelpful for these reflective activities. In terms of planning strategies for further academic learning, PebblePad was seen as less helpful, with 41 per cent (n=22) of respondents saying it was either helpful or very helpful.
PLEASE INSERT TABLE 1 HERE
These survey findings were interesting but did not really uncover the complexities of student views about reflective learning, which are shaped as much by their learning techniques and the pedagogic approaches of their tutors as they are by the presence of an e-portfolio tool to support this learning. These issues were discussed more fully during semi-structured interviews.
In order to explore the success of integrating the PebblePad tool into course modules, interviewees were asked whether they had: reflected on their learning as they progressed throughout their courses; analysed their performance across modules and years; thought about their skills; and made ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
12 changes to become better learners. Six of the ten students responded that they had. Of these, five indicated that PebblePad had supported their reflective practice, two suggesting that the tool had done so, at least in part, by allowing them to gather together work, feedback and reflections in the same place:
Certainly when you got to the end of the second year and you had to reflect on what you’d done the year before and the year you were in you could see the sort of similarities – the same things that you were still trying to overcome or some of the things that you had overcome. So I think in that sense it did help because you could see it all in one place. (Participant 3)
However, for one of the students who had engaged in the specified activities, PebblePad was simply seen as the tool that they had been required to use to document their reflections: I wouldn’t say Pebble Pad itself helped me. It’s more that I had to use PebblePad to do that reflection exercise on. (Participant 9)
There is an indication in one interview that PebblePad might be useful as a means of scaffolding reflective practice in the transition to higher education by providing a structured environment to support the development of higher-level cognitive skills. However, this interviewee felt that it had a limited use later on when more sophisticated cognitive skills had been developed and there was less need to write reflections down: I just sort of looked at it and used my own judgment and didn’t feel the need to write things down – like to put it in written words, to be able to think where I needed to do more work – whereas in the first year I think you’re quite unsure about the learning process of university ... and it’s a
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13 bit more helpful because it gives you some sort of direction. (Participant 7)
Insightful comments were also made by the four students who stated that they hadn’t engaged in the specified reflective activities. One of these, conflating the tool (e-portfolio) with the practice (reflection), said that they had not reflected on their learning because they had not ‘used PebblePad to the full advantage’, adding that, with increased integration into their course, the tool could be ‘really useful’. This comment is supported by the survey data, which showed that students who had been required to use PebblePad in their third year of study had more positive attitudes towards it overall than those for whom its use had been confined to the first two years of study.
These findings suggest a complex relationship between reflection, use of an e-portfolio and student learning. While some students clearly benefit when reflection is scaffolded through the use of an e-portfolio, others may see such scaffolding as helpful only in the early stages of learning at university, as just one of a number of supports for learning, or even as an irrelevance.
More broadly, the data indicated that reflective practice constitutes only one of the ways in which students feel that they learn. A lack of engagement in reflective exercises and alternative ways of learning reported by some of the students suggest scepticism about the value of ‘reflection’ for their learning, which is discussed in the following sections.
The value of reflection
Findings from this study indicate mixed levels of engagement among students with reflective learning activities, even though these were embedded in at least one module at each level of study and assessed. To a variable extent, students had been able to: identify weaknesses and reoccurring trends; evaluate previous reflective work; monitor progress; and develop strategies for improvement:
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14 I do remember … going through the marks I got for my modules and targeting the one that I was weakest at in, thinking, ‘Right, well I need to work on this’, and then in semester two I did considerably better. (Participant 7)
However, as noted earlier, not all students had engaged in reflective exercises with the same degree of conviction. Describing the mandatory reflective exercises that they had been asked to complete in their first and second years, one student, who indicated that they had engaged with the reflective activities specified in the previous subsection, commented: ‘Most people who I've known off my course, the reflection exercise is done an hour before it’s due to be handed in’ (Participant 9). Another was equally forthright: Everyone hates them. Everyone thinks they’re pointless. You do them in the last day in an hour and you usually get a first for it. The only good thing is you usually got a first for it because it was you just sat and wrote bullshit really. Most of it was like ‘I think I’ve improved because of this’, and it wouldn’t actually be true. You just knew what you had to write. (Participant 8)
There was a feeling that reflective work is not real academic work and that it takes up valuable time that should be spent on ‘actual studies’. This use of the term ‘actual studies’ by one interviewee is indicative of a hierarchical positioning and de-prioritising of specific learning activities, ‘actual’ studies being conceptualised as the legitimate outward focus on academic knowledge as distinct from the inner focus on personal development. One student, for example, argued that reflective work should not be assessed because ‘your reflection is your own reflection’ (Participant 9) – it is a personal and introspective process which does not sit easily with the impartial academic stance that, as social scientists, students are urged to adopt.
The data also raise some interesting questions about the role of structured, externally imposed reflective learning. Might it be that knowledge acquisition ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
15 owes more to tacit practice than to scaffolded reflective tasks and skills targeting? Two students provided useful insights into this. The first suggested that, throughout the degree, they had just ‘learned by practice really’, although they did concede that they had been able to identify errors in their academic performance from some of the feedback they had received. However, when asked whether the 'practice' which informed their learning was consciously recognised, the student answered: You’re not really aware of the fact that you are improving. It’s just a natural process as you learn more about uni. You’re not really aware physically of what you’ve done wrong in an essay, if you know what I mean – like exactly like structural-wise. You just kind of get a general feel about it when you get feedback, so the next time you do an essay you’re sort of sub-consciously aware of it in your mind and I think it just comes through. (Participant 7)
The interplay of tacit and conscious learning was acknowledged by another student who, when asked about the point at which tacit learning becomes consciously recognised, replied: Let’s say for example throughout uni each year we’ve had to do this reflection exercise. Now I’ve never gone … say in the first year I did my reflection exercise; in the second year I never looked back and read over that reflection exercise to help me, but I’ve remembered a lot of what I did that maybe I needed to improve on, do you know? So I kind of used more … I kind of … Oh, it’s hard! (Participant 9)
The data suggest, therefore, that while some students may feel they gain very little from reflective exercises, this does not mean that they do not think about, and work to develop, their learning – they clearly do, but not necessarily during externally imposed timescales and tasks.
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16 Dialogue and tutor support
Following our assumption that dialogue is an important part of reflective learning, we asked students about their collaborative working practices. A minority of students had used the e-portfolio for collaborative learning. For example, 33 per cent (n=18) had used it for giving feedback to other students. However, many more of them had used other electronic tools for working together, 71 per cent (n=38) saying that they had used Facebook. This finding supports the claim made by Tosh, Werdmuller et al (2004) that what is needed to support learning is not an e-portfolio but an integrated electronic ‘learning landscape’ comprising a range of tools. However, in the current dash to find electronic ‘fixes’ for a decreasing teaching resource in higher education, the centrality of face-to-face dialogue must not be overlooked, and the students in our research underlined the importance of this kind of dialogue – both with each other and with tutors – in their learning process. One, for example, commented: PebblePad’s helped me with my reflection and with me sharing stuff with other students but mainly me and my friends just sit and chat. Like we’ll just say, ‘Well, I’ve done this and I’ve done this’ because it’s a lot easier rather than, say, emailing stuff to each other all the time ... So normally, just like in between lectures, we’d just meet up in a cafe and just talk it out that way. (Participant 2)
Dialogue with tutors was also seen as an important support for learning and some students argued that written feedback from tutors was only the first step in helping them to gain a greater understanding of how they might improve as learners. Six students recounted how they had held discussions with their tutors as a means of clarifying their feedback: Sometimes the feedback forms … you sort of look at them and think, ‘Well no, I did that. I did that. I did that’, but when you go and talk to someone about it, it’s like, ‘Oh, I actually didn’t do that, and I didn’t do ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
17 that and I didn’t do that.’ So I don’t think feedback forms sometimes are enough’. (Participant 6)
The student added that it was not always possible to see a tutor's point of view until they had received an opportunity to discuss this with them. In a similar vein, another student underlined the importance of dialogue in supporting reflective learning:
I think, you know, maybe reflection would be better to do speaking with someone like your tutor because then you can talk it through and hear someone else’s opinion on how you’ve done as well. (Participant 9)
The value of face-to-face dialogue with tutors was made explicit by all of the students interviewed during this study. Interaction had helped some of these students to improve their work and others to increase their confidence as they worked towards the assessment. Interaction with tutors was also seen as important for developing personal relationships, which were thought to be important in the learning process: You know, that’s where a lot of my learning’s done or at least they’re a stepping stone towards the learning experience through face-to-face interaction with your tutors because, for one, you’re seen as you, as people, and you’re not sitting at a distance. Lecturers that you see once a week, you know, you can actually develop a relationship, a student–lecturer relationship and, you know, that for me is crucial and very important. (Participant 5)
Emerging from the data therefore is a strong sense that students want tutors to know them and their work and that these personal relationships are important, not only for their learning, but also for their general experience of
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18 higher education. It may well be that the perceived absence of these personal relationships underlies much student dissatisfaction with their courses. There is no evidence from our data that the increasing use of electronic supports for learning is in any way a substitute for the personalised, face-to-face learning contexts that are now becoming very difficult to provide in higher education.
Discussion Our data suggest that e-portfolios can be used effectively to support certain components of reflective learning: the gathering together of work and feedback on which to reflect; the scaffolding of reflective processes (at least in the early stages of study at university); and the cumulative collection of materials and reflections which allows progress to be assessed over time and further learning planned. However, our data have problematised the practice of making ‘reflection’ an explicit part of the curriculum and, more generally, have led us to think more about how our social science students learn and the role of personal, face-to-face relationships with tutors in this process.
From the interviews with students, it is clear that reflection on learning does take place, but it may do so informally rather than formally, may be driven by a self-recognised need rather than an externally imposed timescale, and may occur in conversations with others rather than as a solitary activity. There is a real sense in which the activities devised by tutors to support learning through reflection are perceived, by some students at least, as artificial, a distraction from their ‘actual studies’ and as things to be done mechanically, at the last minute, and for no real purpose. This is not to claim that students do not reflect on their learning – clearly, they do – but that the teaching interventions we put in place to support this kind of learning are not necessarily bringing the benefits we hoped for.
Students may perceive a disjunction between the approaches they are expected to demonstrate in their ‘actual’ studies and those they have to adopt in their reflective writing. For example, some students expressed the view that ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
19 reflection is a personal process and should not be assessed (although they conceded that, without assessment, many students would not engage with it). Perhaps we are giving students a mixed message when we require them to write their personal reflections while at the same time stressing the impersonal and impartial nature of the social science perspective (which students – and some of their tutors – routinely interpret as an injunction on using the personal pronoun ‘I’ in their writing).
At a deeper level, the role of tacit learning is raised in our data and the complex ways in which this articulates with more explicit learning. In all academic disciplines, at least some of what is learned is tacit knowledge about the conventions of that discipline, what counts as knowledge and how this knowledge is acquired (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Very often, such knowledge is tacitly rather than explicitly communicated. As argued earlier, this may be particularly problematic for students in social science subjects such as sociology, where there are competing knowledges, disourses and claims to truth (Bernstein 2000: 162–163). In this situation, students new to sociology may experience great difficulty in working out the ‘ground rules’ of the discipline. Following Bernstein, we contend that these ground rules are learned through interaction with those familiar with them.
As the move to a mass higher education system has reduced tutor–student contact time, the opportunities for face-to-face interaction between tutors and students have diminished and it is unsurprising that attention has turned to electronic tools to support the learning process. Such tools are clearly of huge benefit to students in many ways but, we would argue, cannot replace the learning that takes place through face-to-face dialogue. This is particularly the case when the learning involves a transmission of tacit knowledge, as Falconer suggests when she writes, ‘tacitness is hard to diffuse technologically as it requires face-to-face interaction and exchange of experiences’ (Falconer, 2006: 145). It is through this ‘exchange of experiences’ – between tutors and their students and between students and their peers – that the tacit messages encoded in tutor feedback can be made clear and the tacit learning that students have demonstrated (or not ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
20 demonstrated) can be made explicit and discussed.
Although the students in our study found it difficult to express their ideas about tacit learning, what they said indicates the importance for them of learning ‘by practice’, of ‘getting a general feel’ about what they have done well and not so well, of learning as a ‘natural process’. While we are constructing pedagogical approaches and curricula that explicitly incorporate reflective activities and modules, and introducing ever more elaborate electronic tools to support these, students may be gaining more insight into their learning, and making more progress, as a result of the tacit learning that takes place through casual chats with their peers over coffee or individual discussions with their tutors. So while e-portfolio may provide a useful tool to support reflective thinking, it is just that – a tool. What is important is not the tool but how it is used – the pedagogical approach, the learning activities and, most important, the relationships and dialogue that support the learning process.
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21 References
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22 Davis EA (2006). ‘Characterizing productive reflection among preservice elementary teachers: seeing what matters’. Teaching and Teacher Education, vol 22, no 3, pp 281–301.
Dearing R (1997). Higher education in the learning society: the report of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education. Hayes: NCIHE Publications. Falconer L (2006). ‘Organizational learning, tacit information, and e-learning: a review’, The Learning Organization, vol 13, no 2, pp 140–151. Gough D, Kiwan D, Sutcliffe K, Simpson D and Houghton N (2003). ‘A systematic map and synthesis review of the effectiveness of personal development planning for improving student learning’. Research Evidence in Education Library. London: EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London [online]. Available at: http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/ (accessed 1 April 2010). Hatton N and Smith D (1995). ‘Reflection in teacher education – towards definition and implementation’. Teaching and Teacher Education, vol 11, no 1, pp 33–49. Huber MT and Hutchings P (2005). ‘Integrative learning: mapping the terrain’. The Association of American Colleges and Universities and The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching [online]. Available at: www.carnegiefoundation.org/sites/default/files/publications/elibrary_pdf_636.p df (accessed 6 April 2010). JISC (2006). ‘e-Portfolios: what institutions really need to know’. JISC briefing paper. March.
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ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
23 Moir J (2009). ‘The personal, the platform and the political’. Enhancing Learning in the Social Sciences, vol 2, no 2, pp 1–15. Moon J (2001). ‘Reflection in higher education’. PDP working paper 4. The Generic Centre Learning, Learning and Teaching Support Network, UK. Pates S and Bradley S (2004). ‘Personal development planning evaluation report for the social science skills and methods module within applied social science’. Sheffield Hallam University [unpublished report]. Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) (2009). ‘Personal development planning: a guide for institutional policy and practice in higher education [online]. Available at: www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/progressFiles/guidelines/PDP/PDPgui de.pdf (accessed 1 April 2010). Race P (2006). ‘Evidencing reflection: putting the ‘w’ into reflection. Escalate [online]. Available at: http://escalate.ac.uk/resources/reflection/02.html (accessed 1 April 2010).
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Tosh D, Werdmuller B, Chen H and Haywood J (2004). ‘The learning landscape: a conceptual framework for eportfolios’ [online]. Available at: http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/jhaywood/papers/The%20Learning%20Landscape %20preprint.pdf (accessed 6 April 2010).
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PLEASE INSERT THE FOLLOWING TABLE ON PAGE 10 WHERE INDICATED Table 1: Students' perceptions of PebblePad’s helpfulness for specified tasks
Gathering and storing completed
Helpful or very
Neither helpful
Unhelpful or
helpful
nor unhelpful
very unhelpful
78% (42)
11% (6)
11% (6)
76% (41)
17% (9)
7% (4)
70% (38)
19% (10)
11% (6)
56% (30)
26% (14)
19% (10)
54% (29)
26% (14)
20% (11)
54% (29)
33% (18)
13% (7)
50% (27)
30% (16)
20% (11)
50% (27)
30% (16)
20% (11)
assignments Getting feedback on your work from tutors Gathering and storing feedback on assignments Gathering evidence of future skills for future study or employment Keeping a diary or a blog for ongoing academic work Gather and storing evidence of non-academic achievements and experiences Reflecting upon and analysing your progress across the course Reflecting upon and analysing
ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X
25 your progress in specific modules Identifying general aspects of
48% (26)
31% (17)
20% (11)
48% (26)
19% (10)
33% (18)
46% (25)
26% (14)
28% (15)
Writing a CV
44% (24)
32% (17)
24% (13)
Planning strategies for further
41% (22)
33% (18)
26% (14)
33% (18)
37% (20)
30% (16)
33% (18)
33% (18)
33% (18)
33% (18)
39% (21)
28% (15)
your academic learning that need to be improved Presenting evidence of your skills and experience to potential employers Building a picture of yourself and your learning
academic learning Gathering resources for assignments Getting feedback on your work from other students Working together with others on a joint project
ELiSS, Vol 3 Issue 1 – July 2010 ISSN: 1756-848X