Discussion Reflections on the effectiveness of RW
المؤلف:
Pauline Cho & Catherine Tang
المصدر:
Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Assessment
الجزء والصفحة:
P357-C30
2025-08-05
408
Discussion
Reflections on the effectiveness of RW
The responses to the close-ended and open-ended questions showed the students to be cooperative, responsible and willing to voice their opinions. Eight students (32%) did not return their questionnaires.
There may also be an inadvertent mistake in the questionnaire used in this study which led to a restricted response by the students to one question. In an attempt to make it clear to the students what was meant by 'aspects of RW that can be improved', examples of issue that could be considered were given. Unfortunately, a number of students only addressed these issues only when they responded to this question, and did not raise any other issue.
In this study, all the students reported that overall, via RW they learned more about CLP than if they had not done RW. This group of students had done RW the year before (in a related subject) so, RW was not something new to them. Therefore, they were probably more receptive to the use of RW in CLC assessment. Also, after using RW in the previous year, I had the chance to improve the RW exercise based on my experience with them the previous year, and the comments and suggestions made by them then. Improvements included better and more comprehensive guidelines, assessment criteria, sample examples, and better control over timing of RW submission and feedback sessions. All these collectively, I believed, played an important role in increasing the students' acceptance of RW and in encouraging them to use it.
Only one student did not agree that the RW exercise helped her/him (student's identity unknown) to become more aware of what went on between the student and her/his supervisor during a clinical session. However, s/he agreed with all the other items in the questionnaire, and s/he expressed that what s/he liked best about RW was:
"A way for serious thoughts about contact lens related issue."
Of the aspects of RW that can be improved, the student appeared to be happy with the current format of the RW component in CLC assessment, i.e. carried out in both terms and two pieces of work to be submitted, but s/he suggested increasing the weighting of RW.
Three students (18%) (identity known) disagreed that RW increased communication between the student and the supervisor, though they agreed that the exercise increased communication among peers. Of these three students, one was the top student of the class (S7), one was an average student (S5) and the third was a relatively poorer student (S3). Student S7 also disagreed that from the RW exercise, she learned to critique how theory was handled/applied in practice, and that she learned to identify and discuss good and bad practice. It may be that, as she was the top student, she was intelligent and would have worked hard to achieve a high standard regardless of RW, and hence did not find RW useful in this respect. However, she agreed with the rest of her peers that overall, RW was a useful component in CLC assessment which helped to enhance clinical learning. For this student, the reason why she did not find RW helped her to communicate more frequently between her and the supervisor may perhaps be found in what she wrote about the aspects of RW that she liked best:
"I have an opportunity to express some feeling that not only related to the case, but also some misunderstanding between my supervisor and me, and my patients... During our CL clinic, we are afraid to disagree with our supervisor, but we can express this in RW."
Student S7 also wrote what most students experienced in CLC - the fear of confrontation with their supervisors- though none of the other students raised this issue. This is a recognized limitation of clinical supervision, as in a threatening environment (on-site assessment), students are more likely to just do what they are told to do without question, without motivation to clarify uncertain issues for fear of losing self-esteem and being marked down (Ende, 1983). The other two students (S3 and S5) did not raise this issue in their responses, but it was likely that they had this problem as well as they were both rather shy and lacked self-confidence in their presentation. Students S3 did not disagree in any other questions. Student S5 agreed to all other questions except that she became more aware of how different practitioners would take a different approach to the same practice. She was the only student who disagreed with this issue. This was rather unexpected as like all the other students, she was rotated among a few supervisors during CLC sessions, and one issue about this arrangement was that different supervisors were likely to take different approaches to the same practice in some cases. For many years, there have been difficulties getting students to understand that difference in approaches to the same practice can be acceptable provided that they are adequately backed up by facts and acceptable ethical and professional practice. Students are supposed to learn the 'whys' behind the different approaches but unfortunately, in many cases (as admitted by some students), students considered these differences to be the particular likes or dislikes of different supervisors. They were neither encouraged nor motivated to ask 'why?'. This was in fact one of the objectives of the RW exercise - to encourage students to be aware of the different approaches and to find out the 'why'. One reason why Student S5 disagreed could be that she did not particularly focus on this issue when she did her RW exercise.
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