Reflective Practice in STEM Degrees to Support Adaptability and Lifelong Learning

Abstract

The benefits and importance of reflective learning is widely recognized for the development of STEM students. However, the implementation of reflective practices in the curriculum remains a significant challenge for educators. The main purpose of this paper is to help educators overcome this challenge: to better support students to develop their approaches to reflective learning, to better develop ownership of their own learning processes and to foster skills to support lifelong learning. First, we describe the results of a recent survey among engineering academics to look at the issue of reflective learning and the extent to which it is deployed in practice. This was then followed up with a linked workshop designed for STEM educators to exchange experiences on their reflective learning practices at SEFI 2023 conference at TU Dublin in September 2023. The outcomes of both survey and workshop showed a genuine positivity and consciousness of the need and benefits towards the implementation of student reflective practice with a range of approaches used to guide to the students in this. Despite the numerous identified hurdles of implementation, we propose interesting practices to make the implementation easier.