Abstract
In my research project I am focusing on the concept of reflection within the context of nursing and social work education. Research and literature addressing reflective practice in nursing and social work suggest that workers, who are capable to reflect effectively, are more proficient in developing strategies promoting a flexible, individualized, and holistic approach to clients.
Such professionals are also better equipped to resolve problems through thoughtful reasoning, and more inclined to monitor and enhance their professional competence (Brain, 2009; Rees, 2013 in Parrish and Crooks, 2013). Many experts believe that the best time to adopt the reflective thinking is during the professional training (Asselin et al., 2015; Tutticci et al., 2016).
Nursing, as well as social work education abroad, has since long embraced the concept of reflection as an invaluable tool to help students learn from practice and prepare them for entering the dynamic character of the work environments (Jootun and McGarry, 2014). Despite of the listed benefits, on the grounds of Czech Republic, researchers point out that reflection is not practiced to its full benefit here.
This seems to apply on both, professionals and educational institutions (Svojanovsky, 2017; Kolar, 2012; Machackova, 2012). There are no comparisons that would test any differences in practicing reflection between the nursing and the social work students, however some studies suggest that the latter have developed better dispositions to reflection (Havrdova et al., 2010).
As part of my dissertation thesis, I intend to explore the extend that reflection is currently used in the selected Czech nursing and social work educational institutions. In attempt to choose suitable instruments that would measure the differences in levels of reflection at the beginning and during the education, I decided to use the SRIS (Grant et al., 2002) and PHLMS (Cardaciotto et al. 2008) scales.
Both scales have repeatedly demonstrated good psychometric parameters and validity in their original versions and are currently being validated by our Faculty research team for their specific project. For the purpose of this pilot study I have been granted permission to use the yet unpublished data from the Faculty's validation sample of a 1 000 randomly selected representative for the Czech general population.
I will look for any differences between the two groups of nursing and social work students, and, compare the scores of both scales to the Czech general population. For this Pilot study, I have formulated the following hypotheses: 1) The population of the nursing and social work students will score higher in reflection compared to the general population. 2) The social work students will score higher in both scales compared to the nursing students.
The hypotheses will be tested on 108 nursing and social work undergraduate and graduate students at various stages of their education who completed the SRIS and PHLMS self-report questionnaires. The scores will be compared to the validation sample available through the Faculty Project.