I love the idea of self reflection, however I have noticed that students are prone to 'self reflect' as part of an assignment, however there are students that do not seem to assimilate and make that info part of their daily scholarly world. In my humble opinion, these students have so many requirements to meet, readings and papers to develop that they are just anxious to click off another task en route to the end of their growing task list. Somehow we need to have students make their self reflections 'real' to them. Ideas?

Gayle,

One way to encourage self-reflection and personal / professional growth is to incorporate experiential learning in the classroom. This approach involves bringing the real world into the classroom and asking students to play the role of a stakeholder within the context that you have created. This forces the student to step out of their shoes and into the shoes of another to experience learning from a different vantage point. I often use this approach when teaching ethics to nursing and health sciences students. It creates a bit of discomfort initially, but produces a wealth of learning as the students work through dilemmas they would potential face in their chosen profession.