The art of reflection: reflective practice in publishing education

One of the aims for the MA Publishing at Nottingham Trent University is to ‘develop students into reflective practitioners ...’ Associated with this aim are several assessed learning outcomes. From student feedback throughout the course, it became evident that the various prescribed methods of reflection were not having the expected outcome: that of enabling students to take a deep approach to learning. This paper examines the reasons for this by exploring the students’ perceptions of their experiences and comparing them to a small sample of other postgraduate students’ experiences of reflection. This is achieved using both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods. The focus is on the journal as this was the method that students concentrated upon in their responses. It was found that those on the non-practice-based MA Publishing experienced difficulties, both in their usefulness and assessment; in contrast those on practice-based programmes considered the journal useful, but timeconsuming. It was concluded, that in addition to the journal, other methods to encourage reflection should be investigated for those students on non-practicebased programmes; and that they should be embedded into the curriculum.