Making Sense of Experience, ‘moving on’ and ‘doing better’
Reflection was constructed as a positive way to make sense of experience; it required effort but was seen as worthwhile and valuable. Students talked about reflection as “changing” and “improving” their practice, and explained how reflection informed their thinking and actions in a deeper way than before the program. Work on the RLCs contributed to this positive construction. Although writing initial RLCs were seen by some as a struggle, as students wrote more RLCs they appeared to develop confidence and realizations that their reflections were giving them new insights into their practice. Learning from, and making sense of, experience appeared to be linked with students' and teachers' motivations to ‘move on’ and to ‘do better’. Students described wanting to continually grow as individuals in order to improve their practice for the sake of their patients. Intentionally learning from difficult experiences, rather than denying or ignoring them,was also significant to teachers' perspectives on reflection