ABSTRACT
This chapter has two main sections; the first is addressed to the assessment of reflective practice and the second to the supervisor’s role in relation to supervisees’ coursework assignments.
Tell me how you will measure me and I will tell you how I behave. (Goldratt 1997: 109)
I hope that this book so far has shown that critical reflection can be a powerful means for enabling practitioners, irrespective of their level of experience, to learn and develop their knowledge and skills through a reflective process capable of revealing implicit values, beliefs and cultural assumptions that may otherwise go unseen and unchallenged, and that supervisors can have a significant role to play in this process. However, can the skill of reflecting on practice be an intended and assessed learning outcome of formal education, while allowing learners the freedom to engage in a genuine and authentic reflective process? David Boud (2001) argues that the usual conventions of assessment demand that people display their best work. He advocates the separation of writing for learning and writing for assessment because purpose constrains form. The imperative to do well academically may discourage students from engaging in honest and open reflection (J. Hargreaves 2004; Snadden et al. 1996). There is an argument that reflection has no place in assessed written work (Rai 2006).
