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This article was downloaded by: [University of Stellenbosch] On: 05 October 2014, At: 23:44 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crep20 Coteaching in higher education: reflective conversation on shared experience as continued professional development for lecturers and health and social care students Jayne Crow a & Lesley Smith a a Anglia Polytechnic University , Essex Published online: 21 Aug 2006. To cite this article: Jayne Crow & Lesley Smith (2005) Coteaching in higher education: reflective conversation on shared experience as continued professional development for lecturers and health and social care students, Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 6:4, 491-506, DOI: 10.1080/14623940500300582 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623940500300582 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Stellenbosch]On: 05 October 2014, At: 23:44Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Reflective Practice: International andMultidisciplinary PerspectivesPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crep20

Co‐teaching in higher education:reflective conversation on sharedexperience as continued professionaldevelopment for lecturers and healthand social care studentsJayne Crow a & Lesley Smith aa Anglia Polytechnic University , EssexPublished online: 21 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Jayne Crow & Lesley Smith (2005) Co‐teaching in higher education: reflectiveconversation on shared experience as continued professional development for lecturers and healthand social care students, Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 6:4,491-506, DOI: 10.1080/14623940500300582

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623940500300582

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &

Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

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Reflective PracticeVol. 6, No. 4, November 2005, pp. 491–506

ISSN 1462-3943 (print)/ISSN 1470-1103 (online)/05/040491–16© 2005 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14623940500300582

Co-teaching in higher education: reflective conversation on shared experience as continued professional development for lecturers and health and social care studentsJayne Crow* and Lesley SmithAnglia Polytechnic University, EssexTaylor and Francis LtdCREP_A_130041.sgm10.1080/14623940500300582Reflective Practice1462-3943 (print)/1470-1103 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis64000000November 2005JayneCrowSchool of Community Health and Social StudiesAnglia Polytechnic UniversityBishop Hall LaneChelmsford, EssexCM1 1SQUK01245 [email protected]

There are a variety of mechanisms used for the continued professional development (CPD) ofhigher education (HE) lecturers, some of which are more useful than others in promoting reflectionon practice. Reflective conversations between peers involving collegial probing are suggested asimportant catalysts to reflexivity and we propose here that the process of co-teaching can provide apowerful vehicle for this activity. The reflective conversations that co-teaching encourages are basedupon joint reflections on shared experiences and as such add another dimension to the reflection.This provides the opportunity for the deconstruction of those experiences and the reconstruction ofa shared meaning in a way that transforms understandings and changes practice. In this article wedescribe an inquiry into our co-teaching of an undergraduate health and social studies module. Wepresent fragments of our data and analysis in the hope that some of the conversations and sharedreflections resonate with readers and will encourage them to embark on co-teaching if they have notalready done so. Through our examination of the data we found that the reflective conversations onour shared experiences that were engendered by our co-teaching experience had identified a rangeof interesting questions/issues and that these issues mirrored closely those faced by our students asexperienced health and social care practitioners. We go on to suggest ways in which reflectiveconversations between peers on shared experience could also be utilized to facilitate reflectivepractice in our health and social studies students.

Introduction

The benefits to professionals of becoming ‘reflective practitioners’ are now well estab-lished and documented (Schön, 1983; Clegg et al., 2002). Indeed reflection has

*Corresponding author. School of Community Health and Social Studies, Anglia PolytechnicUniversity, Bishop Hall Lane, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 1SQ, UK. Email: [email protected]

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become a prerequisite for many professions including all qualified nursing,midwifery, health visiting and social work where it is required by the governing bodiesas part of continued professional development (CPD) (Williams & Lowe, 2001). Thishas led to an emphasis in health and social care education on developing reflectivepractitioners (Jarvis, 1992, and Reid, 1993, as cited by Williams & Lowe, 2001).However, whilst the promotion of reflection and the development of self-awarenessare very much part of our role as lecturers in Health and Social Studies, in ourexperience the promotion of such reflective practice in higher education (HE) lectur-ers themselves has not been accorded such a significant role. Thus we argue that acloser examination of the mechanisms available for engendering reflective practiceamong HE lecturers is needed. We go on to suggest that co-teaching with peers is apromising way forward in this respect and in this article document our own inquiryinto a co-taught module to explore how the process of co-teaching began to transformour own practice through reflective conversations.

Reflective mechanisms available to HE lecturers

When we looked at our own formal mechanisms for CPD we found it primarilyfocused on curriculum development, the mechanics of teaching and the promotion ofsubject expertise with the development of our reflective skills being somewhatneglected. We would therefore argue that the values and assumptions within theteaching process often remain hidden or unexplored amongst HE lecturers. Yet asHunt (1998, p. 25) suggests tutors who wish to facilitate reflective practice in theirstudents ‘need also to engage in it themselves and to be very open about the natureof their own practice’. We agree with Hunt and our own experience tells us thatalthough HE lecturers do use a variety of mechanisms to reflect on their practice theseare not always part of a formalized process and thus may not necessarily be carriedout in an orderly way. Table 1 shows some of the mechanisms for promoting reflectionthat are available to HE lecturers.

Like many other observers (Ghaye & Ghaye, 1998) we believe the reflectiveconversation is key to the reflective process and that, within the context of teaching,at the very heart of such conversations is the consideration of values. They suggestthat through such conversations ‘future teaching possibilities are potentially openedup to us, biases and blindspots can be detected and addressed and the whole value-ladenness of the practice of teaching examined’ (Ghaye & Ghaye, 1998, p. 22). Inaddition to this emphasis on educational values they describe the attributes of a

Table 1. Reflective mechanisms available to HE lecturers

1. Individual self-reflection (often recorded in diaries and learning logs)2. Reflection on student evaluations3. Peer observation of teaching4. Reflective conversations with a mentor5. Reflective conversations with a ‘critical colleague’6. Joint reflective conversations on shared teaching experience

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reflective conversation as including moving reflections from the private to the publicdomain together with an empathetic interrogation of teachers’ experiences andanticipatory actions. It is interesting therefore to consider how effective the mecha-nisms shown in Table 1 are in promoting such reflective conversations between HElecturers.

Individual reflection

Our own experience suggests that the most commonly used reflective technique inHE is informal individual reflection and this has many benefits. However one of itsdifficulties, as Ward and Darling (1996, p. 90) note, is that teaching all too easilybecomes ‘a solitary activity where isolated reflection on practice may become ‘ritual-ized and stale’. More particularly this mechanism suffers from the lack of challengeprovided by a ‘critical other’, who as Ghaye and Ghaye (1998) observe is likely to bemost useful in moving reflection from the private to the public domain. Indeed theprocess of engaging in a critical dialogue about one’s practice is important not only inopening up one’s reflections to public scrutiny but also, we would argue, in providingan ideal forum for collaborative learning.

This is not to suggest that individual reflection takes place in a social vacuum orwithout careful consideration of different perspectives. Where, for example,reflections are formalized by keeping reflective diaries or indeed made public whenpublished as part of a research process, there is often a very useful articulation ofthe development process making clear the different meanings that were consideredand the new understandings emerging. Even in these cases, in their exclusion ofthe dialectic process, they miss an ideal opportunity for collaborative and sociallearning and are thereby reinforcing the perception of teaching as a solitaryactivity.

Reflection on student evaluations

The addition of a different perspective on our teaching is routinely achieved by elic-iting and reflecting on student evaluations. Teachers have always relied on students’reactions to inform their practice and their reactions in the classroom are critical inguiding what Schön (1983) refers to as ‘reflection-in-action’. The increasing use andformalization of student evaluations purports to provide HE lecturers with a morestructured mechanism whereby they can critically reflect on their practice. However,in our experience, these evaluations are most usually in written form and the teacher’sreflection on them is, again, usually solitary. Even where there is a group discussionwith students about their teaching/learning experience there is unlikely to be anopportunity for reflective conversations as the power differential between the teacherand students is likely to be influential in the interaction. Thus whilst consideration ofstudents’ perspectives must lay at the heart of any reflective process, the way they arecurrently elicited is unlikely to lead to a sense that a reflective conversation has takenplace.

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Peer observation of teaching

In order to provide an ‘outsider’ perspective on our teaching and an opportunity forformalized reflection peer observation often forms an integral part of the formal CPDof HE lecturers (Brown & Ward-Griffin, 1994). Within our own university peerobservation involves the observation and evaluation of one’s teaching by a colleagueor manager. Where the promotion of reflective practice is the prime aim of such peerobservations its success or otherwise depends on factors such as the motivation ofboth parties, the degree of trust and the power relationship between them and notleast, the skill of the observer in facilitating constructive dialogue and reflection in thedebriefing.

In order to maximize the usefulness of peer observation as a reflective tool thedebriefing needs, we would argue, to be in the form of a reflective conversation. Moreespecially it must consider aspects of teaching such as the espoused theories andvalues underpinning the observed teaching. However, we would suggest that the verynature of peer observation often militates against its use in this way for a variety ofreasons. For example, peer observation does not usually include a continuing rela-tionship between the parties and the relationship between observed and observer maybe transient. The immediate nature of the debriefing may also leave many emergentissues unexplored particularly as peer observations only give a snapshot of a person’steaching. There is little chance for the observer to see the development involved inmany learning and teaching relationships including the development of rapport witha group over time or the development of teaching strategies to meet particular groupneeds as they become apparent.

From our own experience we have found that feedback from a critical colleaguewho has observed us teaching can be useful, particularly in providing analternative perspective. However observers are rarely trained in the skills requiredto facilitate reflective conversations and thus discussion tends to remain at thelevel of descriptive reflection and consideration of the mechanical aspects ofteaching.

Reflective conversations with a mentor

Reflective conversations with a mentor may overcome the transient nature of thepeer observation but in our experience mentoring is usually only provided for newand less experienced teaching staff as a part of their induction into HE. Thus whereis does occur there is likely to be a notable power differential between mentor andmentee. This is not to say that equal status relationships are an essential character-istic of the reflective conversation or indeed that mentorship can not provide trans-formatory insights into teaching for both parties. However, the reflectiveconversation in this context is not about shared experience and nor is reciprocitynecessarily a feature of the relationship. We would argue that for these reasonsmentorship may not be the most effective way of attaining significant insights intoone’s practice.

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In summary our argument is that the main advantage that student evaluations, peerobservation and reflection with a mentor have as catalysts for CPD in HE lecturers isthat they provide an additional perspective to intra reflection. However, the kind ofreflective conversations they engender often lack the characteristics identified byGhaye and Ghaye (1998) and importantly are not always focused on educationaltheories and values. Yet, as we know, it is only when we systematically reflect on ourvalues that we begin to unravel discrepancies between our espoused theories andthose we are using (often unconsciously) in our everyday practice.

Reflective conversations with a critical colleague

One possible way forward is the more systematic use in HE of a critical colleaguewith whom reflective conversations can take place. Thus private reflections aremade more public and allow the teacher to recognize and understand the discrepan-cies that may be present between espoused theories and theories in use. In ourexperience the formal use of critical colleagues for CPD in experienced HE lecturersis not widespread. Rather, what we have found more frequently takes place areinformal discussions in the form of telling stories about our teaching to colleaguesand is akin to the level of reflection that Hall (1994, cited in Philips & Hall, 2002,p. 247) identifies as ‘everyday reflection’. This involves practitioners in reflecting ontheir work in a random and/or one off basis. Such everyday reflection only movesinto what Hall calls ‘deliberate’ or ‘programmatic’ reflection where a criticalcolleague can be used formally for regular, ongoing, reflection and evaluation ofpractice with a view to improving practice. Reflection used in this way is clearly illu-minating (Winter & Munn-Giddings, 2001). However, what we wish to explore inthis article is how the advantages of using a critical colleague can be furtherenhanced by the use of co-teaching where the reflective conversation is based uponjoint reflections on shared experiences and where reciprocity in the relationship is ofparamount importance.

Reflective conversations with a co-teacher

At this point it is important to clarify what we mean by co-teaching which in the liter-ature is a term that is often used interchangeably with terms such as team-teaching,collaborative-teaching, shared-teaching and co-operative teaching.

Brody (1994) states that co-teaching involves two or more teachers planning,teaching and assessing the same students in the interest of creating a learning commu-nity and maintaining a commitment to collaboration with students and each other.This concurs with our own use of the term. We would wish, however, to emphasizethat in our opinion the essence of co-teaching is the interaction of teachers in thewhole process including co-planning, classroom interaction and evaluation.

Co-teaching has been utilized and discussed in teacher training often in thecontext of trainee or newly qualified teachers learning whilst teaching alongsideexperienced or ‘expert’ teachers. More recently though Smith (2004) has challenged

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whether this customary method does in fact provide the best learning situation forstudent teachers. He describes how the development of paired teaching placementsprovided students with an ideal opportunity for co-teaching. What was particularlyinteresting about Smith’s action research project was the way students felt theylearnt more from reflecting about their teaching with their peers than they had withexperienced teachers. The reason for this, the students suggested, was because theycould relate more easily to the practice of their peers and thus engage in moremeaningful conversations about what they observed was taking place in the class-room. We return to these findings later suggesting that they may have importantimplications in the development of reflective skills amongst our own health andsocial care students.

Where co-teaching has been practised between experienced teachers this has usuallyinvolved teachers from different disciplines for the purpose of bringing together, forthe students, two different bodies of knowledge and expertise (Anderson & Speck,1998). Other variations of co-teaching involve practitioners and academics co-teachingin order to bring together theory and practice (Hohenbrink et al., 1997) or morerecently in health and social care service-users co-teaching with academic staff toincrease awareness of the service-user perspective. Whatever form of co-teaching isdiscussed in the literature its benefits to staff and students have been noted (Anderson& Speck, 1998).

Our experience of co-teaching

Our own use of co-teaching involved the bringing together of staff from differentdisciplines and professional backgrounds in order to enhance the delivery of a moduleentitled ‘Ideology and Collaboration in Health and Social Care’. The module is deliv-ered as a part of a health and social studies undergraduate degree programme and isdesigned to promote the effectiveness of interprofessional collaborative working.Lesley has worked in social services and the youth service and has a primary interestin sociology. Jayne has a nursing background with additional expertise and a primaryinterest in psychology, particularly health psychology. We anticipated that ourcombined subject expertise would improve the delivery of the module. Like Andersonand Speck (1998) we also found that students described their experience of being co-taught as useful and enjoyable. Students valued many aspects of our co-teachingincluding the opportunity to have tutors from different disciplines and perspectivesdelivering contested material in a non-judgemental and respectful atmosphere (Crow& Smith, 2003). They found that this encouraged their own participation in debateand promoted the identification and consideration of the multiple perspectivespresent in the classroom.

We also found the student’s evaluations of this module useful in the fine tuningof our teaching and occasionally relayed accounts of our reflective conversations tothem in order to provide examples of the importance of reflective practice incollaborative working. This was found to enhance their learning and is discussedelsewhere (Crow & Smith, 2003). However, what we wish to describe here is

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how these conversations became a powerful vehicle for our own professionaldevelopment.

Reflective conversations arising from our co-teaching experience

We were initially surprised to find how the learning from the reflective conversationsarising from our co-teaching greatly exceeded in both depth and scope that derivedfrom the other reflective mechanisms that we have discussed (see Table 1). In ourarticle on co-teaching we identified a number of characteristics that we found madeco-teaching a useful vehicle for student learning and we propose that very similarcharacteristics need to be present if co-teaching is to facilitate the development ofreflective conversations that would incorporate the characteristics identified byGhaye and Ghaye (1998).

We found the core features identified in Table 2 facilitated the development ofour joint reflections and more particularly provided opportunities for reflexivitybased on reciprocal probing of each other’s observations of our shared practice.Winter and Munn-Giddings (2001, p. 53) describe reflexivity as ‘self-questioning,taking ones own interpretations as data to be subjected to examination’. Taylor andWhite (2000, p. 205) draw attention to the way that the terms reflective practiceand reflexivity are often used interchangeably. They go on to suggest that ‘the bend-ing back of reflexivity is not simply the individualized practice of separate practitio-ners in the manner suggested by reflective practice rather it is the collective action ofan academic discipline or occupational group’. Collective action is important herebecause it suggests the need for some sort of collegial probing and collaborativelearning in order to publicly scrutinize one’s own values, discourse and espousedtheories. The notion of this collegial probing (a term used by Ward & Darling,1996) as useful in developing reflexivity is also one that is key to our argument thatco-teaching can provide a powerful vehicle for this activity in the form of the reflec-tive conversations it inevitably entails. Moreover an additional dimension isprovided by this activity as the joint reflection and probing is focused on a ‘shared’teaching experience. Ghaye and Ghaye (1998) in their discussion of reflectiveconversations emphasize the different roles of the ‘teller’ and the ‘facilitator’ inreflective conversations. However, in co-teaching the reflective roles of the teachers

Table 2. Core features of co-teaching that facilitate the development of reflective conversations on shared experiences

• Equal power between co-teachers• Empathetic relationship• Equal sharing of responsibility and accountability• Equal ownership of the teaching• Reciprocity in sharing critical reflections on each other’s practice• Ongoing relationship in order to establish trust and empathy• Involvement in the whole teaching process (including planning, delivery, evaluation)• Time for reflective conversation

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are the same and reciprocal that we believe is a potentially enhancing feature of thereflective process.

Our enquiry into our co-teaching of a health and social studies module

To explore the co-teaching experience further in the next delivery of the ‘Collabora-tion in Health and Social Care’ module described earlier, we taped and transcribedevery planning session as well as our reflective conversations after each taughtsession. In this way we captured as much of the co-teaching process as possible. Thetranscripts from our planning and debriefing conversations were analysed usingthematic analysis that focused on identifiable themes and patterns in the data(Aronson & Calsmith, 1990). Having identified common themes in our conversa-tions we subjected our dialogues to further critical probing in order to identify keyissues arising from the data.

Discussion of results

What we share with the reader here are fragments of our data and analysis. It isimpossible for the snapshots of conversations to capture effectively what werelengthy, joint reflections leading to greater self-awareness of the discrepanciesbetween our espoused theories and our actual practice. However, the sharing ofthe process is, in our view, important, because it furthers the process of publiclyscrutinizing the new understandings deriving from our reflections. It is also ourhope that some of the conversations and shared reflections resonate with readersand will encourage them to embark on co-teaching if they have not already doneso.

Taking responsibility for student learning

Our first theme comes from our co-reflection on one particular teaching session.We had pre-recorded an interview with a disability movement leader to illuminatethe social construction of disability and other concepts discussed in the module.We set students key questions on which to make notes whilst watching the video inorder to engender discussion of the issues raised. Our debriefing after the sessionhighlighted the anxiety provoked by a few students’ apparent disengagement withthe process.

JC: While they were watching the video I was watching them.They started scribbling away and quite a lot of them continued to scribble away.But there were a couple of people on this table at the front here who didn’t take asingle note.

LS: I noticed that.JC: There were a couple who were giving distinctly negative non-verbals.LS: Yes, I noticed that and remember thinking ‘Why am I so concerned?’ You know

this is their (the students’) responsibility. We have set up the situation. A lot ofwork has gone into that and the video demonstrates the module’s concepts

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perfectly and if some of them don’t do the work to get anything out of it, it’s notour responsibility.

JC: You know I am beginning to think like that but I don’t know whether it is right, youknow I don’t know whether that will mean I lose my empathy for them [thestudents].

LS: Well I think that you could see it as a personal slight on your teaching—that youhaven’t succeeded in capturing their interest enough for them to take notes. That isone interpretation, or you could say ‘well, no, we have done our level best and you[the student] do take some personal responsibility’.

Although the positive student evaluations of the session did not support our assump-tions about some students’ negative reactions to the video the anxiety provoked inboth of us at the time by these supposedly ‘disengaged’ students led us to reflect onour ambivalence about the issue of ‘responsibility’ for students learning. We identi-fied a tension between two of our espoused theories; that of students being responsi-ble for their own learning and teachers needing to remain empathetic with students’learning needs. We pondered on the way the very use of the word ‘responsibility’ maylead to the apportioning of blame for the situation and indeed this is what we foundwe were beginning to do in our conversation.

The conversation transcribed above also shows how we had embarked upon thesession with certain assumptions and when a few students appeared not to share ourengagement and enthusiasm we were wrong-footed. It became apparent that it iseasier to indulge in attributing general causes to learners’ behaviour rather than tryingto understand the uniqueness of their experiences and to maintaining empathy withthem as individuals. Collegial probing led in turn to further consideration of multipleperspectives and how mindful teachers need to be of the ways in which the content oftheir teaching may be perceived by individual students. This issue was raised severaltimes in our discussions and is echoed again in the data below concerning a stereo-typing exercise.

We found it useful to make explicit and explore the extent of the influence of theseespoused theories on our decision making and whether such responses were useful orneeded to be challenged. This reflection and others like it prompted discussion on theway in which our espoused theories and their resultant language led us into makingassumptions about our students rather than confront the discrepancies between ourtheories in use and our proclaimed values.

Had we not been co-teaching and one of us had simply been observing the teachingof the other we could have noticed and discussed that a few students were seeminglydisengaged. What would have been missing is the shared experience of noticing thiswhilst we were both in the process of the actual teaching. The reciprocity engenderedby this situation is key to the process and we believe the insights from such sharingare qualitatively different because emotional reactions to the same experience can beexplored. We were also interested in the fact that we focused on the few students whowere not taking notes or were giving negative non-verbal cues rather than the majoritywho appeared engaged. This proved to be a recurring theme in our conversations andas we continued to reflect on this phenomenon we began to see a pattern of ‘peoplepleasing’.

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People pleasing

LS: I was quite put out when X asked that first question. It was a reasonable questionbut I thought she sounded rather hostile towards the module and me. I think I mayhave overreacted by directing a lot of my explanation and conversation towards herduring the rest of the session.

JC: Yes you did. It was seeing you do that that made me think ‘I do that’ and ‘I knowwhy you’re doing that’. You’re so anxious that the student is displeased that youfocus all your energy into winning them over again. I wondered then whether if Ihad been teaching alone I would have been doing the same thing. I probablywould.

LS: It’s a form of ‘people pleasing’ isn’t it? It is a feature that you know about yourselfat one level but it’s only when you observe and talk about it that you realize how itguides so much of what you do in the classroom.

In our intra-personal reflections we were both aware of being ‘people pleasers’.However our reflective conversation on a shared experience allowed us to considermore fully how this feature of ourselves impacted on our practice. For example, wediscussed how it was influential in determining our response to certain situationswhere we routinely reacted in a ‘people pleasing’ way. Other ways of thinking orresponding to the situation were not considered until we began to critically probe ourown and each other’s responses. Our difficulty in responding in other ways was partlydue to our emotional involvement in situations which we both found anxiety provok-ing and slightly threatening. The influence of our emotional involvement became crit-ical to our understanding of much of the dynamics that were taking place in theclassroom.

The continuing nature of the reflective conversations that took place over thetime-span of the module allowed us to revisit issues such as this in the planning andevaluation of our co-teaching. The trusting and empathetic relationship we haddeveloped meant that we could share our intra-reflections and through the processof reflective conversation move from understanding to attempting change inpractice.

Honesty, agendas and emotion in teaching

In our planning of one particular co-teaching session we discussed the teaching weproposed to undertake on the issue of stereotyping. The following dialogue showswhere our anticipatory reflections on this led:

LS: Last time I did this I used that example about students, you know, being stereotypedinto ‘bright’ and ‘not so bright’ within the academic discourse.

JC: Yes.LS: I remember now you didn’t like me using that example did you?JC: No, no I didn’t. It’s not something that I would want to know because my immedi-

ate reaction if I was a student would be ‘Which one do they think I am?’LS: But you are critiquing the stereotype and distancing yourself from it while acknowl-

edging that it does happen—which it does.JC: It does happen yes, but I would feel it might be hurtful to people to think of

themselves in that way.

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This conversation and the discussion that followed made explicit some of theissues surrounding the underpinning value of ‘honesty’ and empathy in our rela-tionship with students and the barriers to and parameters of, that honesty. It isinteresting that in the dialogue below we used the emotive term ‘honest’ instead ofthe more neutral term ‘open’ thus implying the possibility of our being ‘dishonest’in our teaching. This led us on to a discussion about how our ‘espoused theory’ ofthe importance of honesty with our students contrasted with our paternalistic‘theory in use’ particularly with regard to our perceptions of students’ abilities andachievements.

LS: I don’t think I was so honest in the discussion work. At one point I thought a studenttotally missed the point during class discussion and I found myself saying ‘that’sinteresting’ and moving on to see if the next student would make a point that wouldfurther the discussion.

JC: Well I think that is because you had a particular agenda in mind when you askedthe question. It depends on what your agenda is as to how honest you will be. Ifyou were trying to bring that particular student’s thinking on or to build theirconfidence or increase their participation, you would have asked them why theythought that and gone in that direction but you needed to guide a class to discuss aparticular, but different, issue so you guided the discussion accordingly—that’swhat you did.

LC: So your degree of honesty with the student depends on your agenda at the time?JC: Yes I think, to a point, it does.

The conversation that followed the above dialogue also focused our attention onthe way in which our own implicit agendas in teaching situations conflicted withour ‘espoused theory’ of the importance of developing autonomous learners. Weobserved in one another, and in ourselves, as we taught together, that the strongerwe felt about the content of the session the more we took control of the session tobring our own construction to fruition. For example, we felt we took a moredidactic approach to our teaching when our emotions were strongly engaged withthe subject matter. Discussion of the way in which this influenced our co-teachingled to a realization that it was a factor that influenced our teaching in othersituations.

JC: I do the same when I teach about ‘pain’ and ‘pain relief’. I feel so strongly about itthat I feel that I am preaching sometimes.

LS: Exactly. I feel that it is something that we do bring to teaching—the emotional side.So that if you really are committed you don’t necessarily preach but you will beteaching things differently according to how you feel about them.

JC: Where we feel strongly we want students to share our beliefs and sort of coach themmore.

LS: It’s difficult isn’t it? You’ve got to get the balance right between being controllingand giving students space to develop their own thoughts on the subject.

We went on to discuss the way in which enthusiasm and passion for a subject couldbe used in a more fruitful way to give people particular information and set out forthem relevant scenarios that would make them interested enough to think more onthe subject without the need to impose our own construction onto the students’

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learning. Much in the way David Attenborough, in his television programmes, maypromote conservation by showing people the wonder of the natural world withoutexplicitly preaching conservation.

Our co-teaching led us to a greater understanding of the influence of our emotionalresponse and to recognize the impossibility of emotional neutrality in classroom inter-actions. Emotions, values and intellect are integrated in teaching as in any othersphere of human activity. Our reflective conversations enabled us, over a period oftime, to deconstruct the complexity of that relationship and to better understand theteaching and learning process. Whilst the dilemmas surrounding honesty andemotion were not resolved we were able to deconstruct aspects of our teaching thatwould normally have remained as tacit knowledge.

Using reflective conversations on shared experience for CPD in both HE lecturers and health and social care students

Sharing the action of co-teaching enables a shared reflection that arises from bothparties having been involved intellectually and emotionally in the actual planning andteaching process. A joint analysis of this shared experience, including collegial prob-ing, facilitates reflexivity in the participants. This then enables the deconstruction ofthat experience and the reconstruction of a shared meaning in a way that transformsunderstandings, develops and changes practice.

We stated earlier that at the heart of this reflective process is the reflective conver-sation. Our enquiry has led us to the view that of all the mechanisms available to HElecturers (as summarized in Table 1) co-teaching provides possibly the most rich andoften neglected vehicle for facilitating these reflective conversations.

Through our examination of the data we found that the reflective conversationson shared experiences engendered by our co-teaching experience had identified arange of interesting questions/issues. Some of these are summarized in column oneof Table 3. Of course many of these issues are familiar to all teachers and could havebeen identified through any of the listed mechanisms. However, as we havediscussed, the joint reflection precipitated by co-teaching brought them sharply intofocus, forced us to make them explicit and importantly, encouraged us to debatethem and together implement changes to our practice.

As one would expect, we did not find solutions to these questions, only a height-ened awareness of their consequences for us as teachers. This alongside a clearerunderstanding of the values, assumptions and feelings that influence our practice has,we believe, developed us as teachers. We have found that we are now more inclinedto check out our own (and other’s) responses to these issues in other teaching situa-tions. We feel we have identified these as an explicit set of benchmarks against whichto question /judge our own performance as teachers. Of course more issues are likelyto materialize over time.

It also became apparent that our questions mirrored closely those issues faced byour students as health and social care practitioners (see the second column ofTable 3). We should not be surprised at this as the table simply identifies common

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discrepancies between the ‘espoused theories’ and ‘theories in use’ that in our expe-rience are likely to occur within all caring professions.

We initially considered giving our students Table 3 as a framework for reflectionbut quickly realized that this would have denied them the opportunity to experiencethe more important process of the reflective conversations that we had undergone inarriving at it. Thus we concluded that the reflective conversation should be givenmore prominence in their curriculum and this led us to examine more closely mech-anisms that are currently used to promote reflection in our health and social carestudents.

Since Schön’s (1983) work there has been a plethora of literature documenting theusing of reflective practice with health and social care students (Johns & Freshwater,1998; Winter et al., 1999; Kember et al., 2001; Morton-Cooper & Palmer, 2000). Oncloser examination we found that the mechanisms most frequently used (see Table 4)

Table 3. The issues raised by our collegial probing within the co-teaching experience alongside the mirrored equivalents in health and social care practice

The issues identified in our teaching Issues for health and social care practitioners

How far do you take responsibility for students’ learning?How far do you encourage the learner to be autonomous?Do you feel guilty if students fail?

How far are you responsible for the client’s situation?How far do you encourage the client to take responsibility?Do you feel guilty if client outcome is poor?

How far do you ‘people please’ and how far do you challenge learners even if it makes them feel uncomfortable?

How far is your decision making about clients influenced by your desire to be liked?Do you challenge clients’ views even if it makes them feel uncomfortable?

How far are you truthful with students about your perception of their abilities and achievements?

How far are you truthful with clients about their condition? How far do you protect them from the truth?

How far do you expose your own feelings and emotions with learners and how far do you hide behind a professional facade?

How far do you expose your own feelings and emotions with clients and how far do you hide behind a professional facade?

To what extent do you relinquish power and control in your relationship with learners and colleagues?

To what extent do you relinquish power and control in your relationship with clients and colleagues?

How and where do you draw boundaries as to your commitment and availability as a professional teacher?

How and where do you draw boundaries as to your commitment and availability as a professional health and social care worker?

How far are you totally honest with students about the organization in which you work (warts and all) or how far do you limit information to maintain confidence in that organization?

How far are you totally honest with clients about the organization in which you work (warts and all) or how far do you limit information to maintain confidence in that organization?

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mirrored those available to HE lecturers (see Table 1). As in HE lecturing, the mech-anism of reflective conversations between peers on a shared professional experienceare the most neglected. To fill this gap we are now considering ways of building intoour educational programmes the opportunity for students to engage in reflectiveconversations with their peers on a shared professional experience. One obvious wayis to develop the paired placements referred to earlier in the context of teacher training(Smith, 2004). The sharing of placements could take place either within an individualprofessional training programme or in an interprofessional context with, for example,health visiting and social work students sharing and jointly reflecting on elements ofthe same placement experience. Such shared placements would need to be designedto incorporate reflective conversations that differ from those discussed in much of theliterature in that there would be no distinction between the roles of the participants(in terms of ‘facilitator’ or ‘teller’) and where the relationship would be reciprocal.These would be in addition to more traditional conversations between students andmentors/supervisors.

Conclusion

As teachers on professional courses who advocate and encourage reflective practicein our students we need to be practising reflection ourselves. However critics may saythat the H.E. sector cannot afford the luxury of co-teaching let alone the more timeconsuming process of reflective conversations on the shared experience as part oftheir CPD. The literature is unequivocal about the benefits of co-teaching forstudents and we would argue that when used with co-reflection the benefits to expe-rienced HE lecturers are also considerable. One of the key factors that made it sucha fruitful mechanism for CPD was the reciprocity that enabled empathetic andconstructive dialogue about our shared professional experience. This reciprocitybetween peers, we believe, should be fostered in both HE lecturers and in our healthand social care students. We also need to be innovative in building into our coursesthe opportunity for our students to have reflective conversations with their peers onshared experiences.

Notes on contributors

Lesley Smith is Senior Lecturer at Anglia Polytechnic University (APU) Her researchinterest was initially in the area of female crime but since joining APU in 1998

Table 4. Reflective mechanisms available to health and social care practitioners

1. Individual self-reflection (often recorded in diaries and learning logs)2. Client/patient evaluation3. Observed/supervised practice4. Clinical Supervision (reflective conversations with a mentor/manager)5. Reflective conversations with a critical colleague6. Reflective conversations between peers on shared professional experience

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she has developed her interest in curriculum development, reflective practice andaction research with health and social care professionals. She has also been work-ing recently with Thomasina Borkman (US), Carol Munn-Giddings (UK) andMagnus Karlsson (Sweden) on a cross-national study examining the significanceof experiential knowledge in mental health self-help groups.

Jayne Crow is Senior Lecturer at Anglia Polytechnic University (APU). Moving froma psychology background into nursing she gained many years experience as anurse before moving back into HE and health psychology. Her main researchinterest is in the post-qualification education of health and social care profession-als and particularly in the facilitation of interprofessional collaboration andaction research in education and health and social care environments. She iscurrently involved in a collaborative action research project with staff from a localHospital NHS Trust, to promote the fostering of dignity and respect in theirworkplace.

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Brown, B. & Ward-Griffin, C. (1994) The use of peer evaluation in promoting nursing facultyteaching effectiveness: a review of the literature, Nurse Education Today, 14, 299–305.

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