How Reflective Practice Informs Blended and Online Language Instruction

This chapter discusses how reflection is essential to informing instruction. The authors reflect on the community-building strategies implemented through an onboarding process prior to the start of the semester that ensures connection and engagement among students who are physically separated. This process opens a line of communication between students and instructors providing essential feedback to identify and address needs as well as build a trusting and open relationship for student-instructor engagement. The authors discuss how throughout the course, student reflection on their learning enabled them to recognize achievements, identify issues, and shape instructional practices. These reflections are an integral part of the interweaving of asynchronous and synchronous sessions based on four different learning models. All learning models included clear scaffolding for maximum benefit regardless of learning environments. The ongoing adjustments based on reflection proved worthy as student communication skills remained equal to those of pre-pandemic learning.

Possibilities of integrating mathematics and arts in distance education

In the context of the world health crisis, distance learning which before that was rarely used in Lithuania became practically universal, causing a number of challenges. Trying to respond to some of them, we started exploring possible advantages of between-subject integration in more effectively using on-line time and increasing interest and motivation of students. The article deals with integrating mathematics and arts in distance learning in basic school. Integrated lesson was created for grade 9, and its results and student reflection showed possibilities presented by such type of education.

ViewpointExploring leadership through literature - an audacious experiment

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to address the following question: What can novels reveal about what leadership nonfiction sources miss or obscure?Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviews the benefits that are derived from the use of literature in the examination of leadership, compares and contrasts three novel experiments in the examination of literature and leadership, and examines the impact of one approach as reflected in student assignments and exit interviews.FindingsStudent reflection papers morphed from descriptive reviews to reflections expressed through poetry, artwork and personal experiences. Students also deepened their views on what leadership is and means. Exit interviews revealed student significant reflection on personal views in a number of areas. The longitudinal follow up of students expanded their flexibility and ability to listen and understand how and why people approach leadership in different ways. They also felt it increased their openness to new or different approaches and encouraged them to think more independently.Practical implicationsOne implication of the approach of this class is how the authors embraced questions to guide the students and faculty. Instead of listing topics and assigning categorical meaning, the approach of the class was organized around questions, such as, “is leadership real or imagined? Am I ready to take responsibility?Social implicationsThe power of storytelling is unmistakable. The value of storytelling is that it allows the reader to escape from the day-to-day challenges we face to find how others are facing challenges sometimes very similar to our own.Originality/valueThe article compares and contracts three experiments in the examination of literature and leadership. The paper then examines one approach to literature and leadership in terms of the impact on students (papers, exit interview and longitudinal follow-up). Findings are assessed with the works of Gardner, Bennis and Hartley stressing the possibilities of storytelling as a unique approach to studying and practicing leadership.

Eportfolios as Reflective Assessment of Social Justice

This article explores the potential for eportfolios to contribute to the development of student critical awareness of social justice, including the role of the university as a social justice actor, through module assessment. It will critically address how eportfolios were introduced in 2019-20 to assess student reflection on social justice in a first year law module ‘Critical Approaches to Law’ at DCU. To date, there has been a slow adoption of eportfolios in Irish higher education (Farrell 2018). Although there is some evidence of reflective assessment in comparative legal education, especially in schools with an emphasis on socio-legal approaches to law, and in clinical legal education, there is limited analysis of eportfolio assessment in classroom-based or blended legal education, (Waye and Faulkner 2012) and none in the Irish context. The article will discuss the motivation to use eportfolios; the benefits, challenges and lessons learned in the design of the assessment, and the first time experience for the educator of marking and student experience of eportfolios. It assesses eportfolios as a mechanism for prompting student reflection and the development of critical thinking, (Farrell 2019) with a particular reflective focus on social justice and university education as a social justice experience. (Connell 2019). It queries the extent to which eportfolios enable students to incorporate prior learning experiences to their reflection, (Chen and Black 2010) and for students self-determine the parameters of their personal interaction with social justice questions raised by the experience in the module and their lived experience. (Brooman and Stirk 2020)

Student view on the prospects of philosophical education in Ukraine

The article analyzes the results of a questionnaire of students of philosophical specialties at leading Ukrainian universities about the prospects of philosophical education in Ukraine. Students answered five questions: «What should be changed in the content of philosophical education in Ukraine?», «What should be changed in the format of philosophical education in Ukraine?», «What do you consider an attribute of academic philosophical education?», «What projects of public philosophy in Ukraine do you know or perhaps participated in them?» and «What can students do on their own in the near future to make changes for the better in philosophy education tangible?» The study of the answers showed that the desired changes in the content of philosophical education are the actualization of literature and topics, inclusion in the curriculum of works, ideas of recent decades, as well as balancing courses, establishing a productive sequence and interconnection of different disciplines. In the format of philosophical education, students would like to change the number and quality of interactions between all participants in the learning process through the introduction of new ways of interaction. Another proposal is to give preference to creative practices over the practices of passive assimilation and reproduction of information. In addition, respondents drew attention to the need to increase the responsibility of the professor in terms of student assessment. Respondents also stressed the need for students to adhere to academic integrity, as well as the need to increase the organizational and administrative activity of students. In general, these and other answers presented in the paper can be considered as examples of student reflection on current issues of philosophical education in Ukraine.