Hi, I'm Robert Averies from the Leeds Institute for Teaching Excellence.
You're about to listen to the first episode of our new Methods mini-series.
This is a series of group discussions with people from across the University of Leeds,
including Light Fellows, wider staff and students who have used innovative methods of researching teaching, learning and student experience.
Over the next three episodes, which will be released weekly, you'll get to know reflective journals and logs, story circles and listening rooms.
This will be followed by a question and answer edition with members of the Light team.
To submit your own questions, please see the link in the show notes.
Thanks for listening and here comes the first episode, Reflective Journals and Reflective Logs.
Okay, welcome to our first episode and I guess a good place to start would be to briefly go over why we're doing this series.
So we decided to start this series up because we've noticed an increasingly diverse set of methods
which are being used to explore a whole range of aspects of student education at the University.
And part of the reason then is to showcase what's been happening and the projects to which these methods are associated.
More broadly though, we want to start a conversation beyond today, although us having a conversation today is integral to that,
about the ways in which we work alongside students to better understand, contextualise and develop different aspects of student education
through innovative and co-creative research and scholarship.
Starting today with the method of reflective journals and logs.
Without further ado, let's kick things off with some introductions.
And as this is the methods mini-series, I've asked each of the three participants today to share their favourite method for making coffee.
Thank you. Hi, I'm Sarah Joyce. I'm a learning designer in the Digital Education Service and a Light Fellow where I used learning journals.
And I have a very particular method for making coffee in the morning, a routine which I find actually quite reflective.
So last year for Christmas, Secret Santa got me a very fancy coffee machine and I set that up the night before.
I grind the beans and have a favourite mug that I make the coffee in.
And that's part of I like to have some quiet time in the morning and do a reflective diary.
So I use that first cup of coffee to do that. And yeah, nobody can disturb that.
You're living and breathing reflective diaries and journals 24 7. Yeah, from very early in the morning.
Fantastic. Great way to start. Hi, my name is Sadat Abraham.
And I'm a master's student in international law and global governance.
And I'm also Rachel O'Connor's research assistant in her project, which explores the impact of reverse mentoring within the legal field.
My favourite method of making coffee is using a coffee machine.
Unfortunately, I don't have a fancy coffee machine like Sarah does, but I like to add vanilla syrup and condensed milk to my coffee.
Very nice. Hello, my name is Rachel O'Connor.
I'm an associate professor in School of Law and the university lead for academic personal tutoring.
And I am a very recently graduated light fellow.
In terms of coffee, my favourite method of having coffee is in a tiramisu because I don't actually drink coffee.
I am more of a matcha latte person, but I actually have still yet to master making a matcha latte myself.
Every time I've tried, it's like a mug of mushy peas.
So I enjoy a matcha latte when it's been made by a lovely person in a nice cafe.
Who knows what they're doing with it?
And I have actually also recently, linking to what Sarah was saying, bought myself, I think it's called a gratitude and growth journal.
But it's basically for reflection and it's got like a sharp morning and evening reflection.
And I'm really enjoying doing alongside my matcha latte.
Point of interest, does anyone not wanting to change the subject away from what we're actually talking about today, but does anyone know how tiramisu is translated in it?
Nope. It translates as pick me up.
Oh, that would make sense.
Odd because I feel like I want to get a sleep after tiramisu.
My mother-in-law was Italian and it was definitely made as a pick me up.
I think it's fine, not just coffee.
We'll have a recipe for tiramisu in show notes and we're very happy to be sponsored by tiramisu going forward.
Love that. Shame we haven't got any.
Who makes tiramisu?
Okay, without wanting to get sidetracked and that was my fault.
Let's start talking about firstly what your reflective journals and logs insisted on and then we can move on to how they were used.
Rachel, would you like to tell us a bit about how you used reflective logs in your light fellowship?
Yeah, sure.
So I used reflective kind of logs or diaries for participants who in my light fellowship were engaging in reverse mentoring.
So that involved for the purposes of the fellowship staff who are in leadership roles relating to academic personal tutoring across the university.
And they were paired with a current student who identified as underrepresented within the university.
And that student was placed in the role of mentor, recognising their lived experiences as an underrepresented student, as expertise.
And they then mentored these members of staff with leadership responsibilities for personal tutoring and the kind of project focused around
using these reverse mentoring conversations to come up with proposals to the university about how we could make personal tutoring more equitable,
make it more centred around underrepresented voices and experiences.
So what is really key to developing ideas off the back of conversations is reflecting on them, you know,
to kind of instigate that change agent mentality in people, both in the staff and the students.
I asked throughout this year long project, after each conversation that mentors and mentees had,
they were asked to complete a reflective log or a reflective diary.
And we used Pebble Pad for that.
So it was an online diary and they were given a kind of series of prompts each kind of fortnight after they'd had a meeting
that was based on a kind of reflective cycle to think about, you know, what they'd experienced, how it made them feel,
challenges they've encountered, what they wanted to do next, that kind of thing.
And then there was also free space within the reflective log to just kind of write or record a video or kind of record
vocally how they felt about the experience and how it was going. Sounds really fantastic.
And I guess we'd be keen to hear why you chose that method.
Well, the Light Fellowship project, I co-designed with a student consultation team.
So there were 15 students from across about 11 or 12 different disciplines.
Again, all students who self-identified as feeling underrepresented for lots of different reasons in the university.
And reflection was something that we talked about together right from the outset.
So we did a kind of initial group co-design meeting.
And in that meeting together, we talked about reflection, like, how do you do it?
What does it mean when somebody asks you to reflect?
And we kind of carried that through the co-design process.
And then when it came to deciding which methods we wanted to use to capture insights
from the reverse mentoring participants in the project that we were co-designing,
the students and me were really keen to make sure that there was a constant opportunity to reflect.
And we particularly wanted that to be the case for the staff involved in the project
with that kind of idea that if you don't reflect on conversations you've had and things that you've learned,
you're less likely to do something about them.
And the sort of the purpose of reverse mentoring is not to be in and of itself a solution to anything.
The idea is that it's kind of a catalyst.
The conversations kind of plant seeds that then go on to grow and develop through further actions
beyond the reverse mentoring.
So I think that's why the reflection was really important.
The student co-design team also wanted to use PebblePad because not all of them,
but most of them had already had exposure to PebblePad through,
whether it's through academic personal tutoring or through it being used by staff on their modules.
So they felt that it was a system, I guess, to house the reflective logs that was fairly accessible to students.
And they liked as well that we had the option to either type in a reflection
or to record like a kind of desktop video of yourself reflecting,
although interestingly nobody used that option.
And as well as the Light Fellowship, I've used this kind of reflective log in the reverse mentoring schemes.
I'm thinking particularly about the project that Sadeq and I worked on together
with another wonderful student research assistant, Prower,
who has since graduated and left us behind for London.
But yeah, I wondered Sadeq, like, what did you think as we use these reflective logs in that project, didn't we?
So what did you think about the choice of like reflective diary as a method?
I think it was really great.
And that's because we had a lot of rich data from all of the participants.
So using the reflective log and then later on using thematic analysis to identify key teams helped us narrow it down to SOIA.
And I think, I mean, you dealt with so much data there because we had the project that Sadeq and I worked on was reverse mentoring
that involved aspiring lawyers, law students.
We had junior lawyers, didn't we, and senior lawyers.
So you had like, yeah, those three kind of categories of people and then multiple reflective logs.
So, yeah, it was, yeah, I agree. I think it was a really effective way to kind of capture people's perceptions.
And like you were saying, sort of see the themes across those different groups.
Yeah, personally, like, I really enjoyed reading through like the reflective logs because to me,
it felt like reading a story because these are people like lived experiences and it was just easy and perfect for like collecting data on.
So it allows us to get like a better understanding of how people felt about the program and what they learned.
And I think for the participants themselves as well, they really enjoyed it.
Like that is one of the feedback that we got because they got to dive into like these stories with senior people in their field that otherwise they wouldn't have the chance to.
So, yeah, I'd be interested to hear why people this is kind of a couple of times already.
Reflective logs as a method of kind of listening to people's experiences with the idea of narrative and story.
What is it about reflective logs that lends itself so well to that?
Is it the fact that, for example, people can add over a period of time?
I think so. Yeah, I don't know what you think, Sadek, but I sort of saw it in the project we worked on together.
But also I like fellowship. You see people or you feel through what people are saying in their logs that they're becoming more confident with like doing the reflection and they're enjoying it more like I often find.
And again, this isn't everyone, but sometimes people will only write a few sentences in their first log and then maybe for the first while.
But when you're working with people, as we often are on reverse mentoring over six months to a year, they might do quite a lot of reflecting and they open up to it more as time goes on.
Like kind of as Sarah was saying about, you know, morning coffee routine, it's a and and, you know, reflecting or journaling. It is a very mindful thing that some people will naturally be open to and others will be a bit like, why are you asking me these questions?
Why do you want to know this? But yeah, I generally find people, people do get into it and people enjoy it more as they kind of embrace the reflective process.
I definitely agree. I think in like some weird way it became like a therapy session for them. Like they start opening up a lot more and as you like go on reading the reflective logs, they start writing a lot more reflection.
So yeah.
At this point, I'd love to bring you in, Sarah, because you've also recently completed a light fellowship on staff embodied experiences of curriculum redefined leads universities educational change programme.
Could you tell us a little bit about how you use reflective journals in your research?
Sure. Yeah. So it's really interesting hearing what you're saying about thinking about that richness and lived experience because that was what drew me to.
So I use learning journals on Minerva so I created a Minerva organisation for the project. I do have a background in digital education so I was thinking about how you might conduct things kind of online and the idea that it could be like an asynchronous
interview almost kind of because with the learning journals you can have that conversation. I almost like one to one conversation with the participant so that was some of the things that drew me to it and also my background in research is also in visual methods and how
I can use representations of things that aren't necessarily kind of, you know, the words that people are typing into these journals so it gave the opportunity for, or also for me to introduce the questions I wanted them to reflect the questions I wanted
to I could introduce that as videos of me to try and make me more human. And it meant that they could then kind of put images in or little videos to varying degrees like you say, I think there's something we can talk about later in terms of people's
confidence in doing things that are slightly more creative but yeah it was it was that opportunity that that people could respond in more creative ways and also because it leading to kind of the output that I wanted to make which was the idea of combining
everyone's experiences into a story, you know an infographic and telling a story of what people experienced it kind of meant itself that as well, really. Yeah.
Did you find as well that the more people engaged with the method, the more confident and comfortable they became sharing those at times quite maybe sensitive or interpersonal.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. Yeah, the richness of the data because some of it I found quite difficult, some of it I found difficult to read, but I think the difference I think between how we use methods was it wasn't over, necessarily over a period of time and I think,
I think you're right. Also for my role as a learning designer we were thinking about putting reflective reflection into the courses we design is that I do think you need that time become quite proficient in in reflection it's not something, you know, not to assume that
people naturally reflect and not everyone naturally reflects so the idea of it being something that you over time, get more comfortable with.
Everybody wakes up and goes in a journal every morning. Well I do, but that's because I've been doing it for years. And I hadn't been doing it for years and it wasn't a routine.
You wouldn't do it. I don't know. So it's that kind of setting it up so that people have the time to, yeah, develop their skills.
I think there's definitely something in what you're saying about the impact of reading like reflective journals. I'm thinking about, you know, the project we worked on SEDEC there were, there were things in there around people in their reflections talking about things like
homophobia, racism, like sexism, other things, you know, some really negative experiences that they'd had in the legal profession and I think sometimes you can be, sometimes you're expecting it because it depends what it is that you've been asking them to reflect on but sometimes it sort of blindsides you a bit and you're like, oh, I wasn't expecting this and it's like, quite, it can be quite upsetting or distressing like I don't know if you find that at all SEDEC.
Yeah, like you said, it's quite expected because at the end of the day, law firms to some extent are a reflection of society. But then when you get to talk with the participants and you hear their stories and you're like, oh my God, no way.
Like, how can this happen? Yeah, some of the participant stories were quite emotional, especially ones who like came from abroad to work for them and they talked about like the racism they face within the law firm.
I suppose that's the thing about the logs is like when you're writing the log, it's kind of, it feels like it's just you and the medium in which you're writing, isn't it? So you can be, you can be quite, can forget that somebody else might read it and kind of it can get very personal.
I guess the thing that I found was just that the analysis took me a lot longer than I expected because I would, and it really surprised me. So it was kind of, I would read just one participant's response to a question. I think actually I've got to stop now and do something else and come back to it.
And I couldn't just think, oh, I've got a, you know, this is my light fellowship day. I've got to get through it all today. And I think it actually, I can't actually do that. And I needed to kind of step back from that.
It's just because it's so, I mean, this is what I hoped for. Is it kind of people really showing you your lived experience, but also that.
I guess this is an open question. How did you feel when you were looking at these sensitive responses and actively involving yourself in the production of knowledge as researchers? Because obviously we all bring our own identities and our own experiences to the table.
And yet we're also being exposed to these different. I think it's, it's a bit of a double-edged sword really because on one hand, so say, as well as the legal professions projects Sadeq and I worked on, also my light fellowship, as I said, that was all about centering underrepresented voices and experiences.
And on the one hand, sometimes I can read these things about what it's like to be an underrepresented student at the university. And none of it surprises me because I, for example, from a working class background, first generation student, I, in a Russell Group university, I came to Leeds.
So in some ways I've lived that myself and everything I do in my job is around, you know, empowering underrepresented identities. So there's sometimes a bit of, well, it doesn't surprise me. And equally, you know, before I was an academic, I was a lawyer.
I know what the corporate legal profession is like. I've experienced it, but you kind of think you become desensitized to it, but also you really don't. Like I can think of several examples.
I could almost remember them word for word from people's reflective logs that like really hit me in the gut. And I think it's important because it reminds you actually so many things are still not fixed in any way in the university, in the legal profession, whatever it is that you're looking at as kind of your site for your research.
There's always work to keep doing. And I think the depth, like we say, the richness of the data, the fact that people can sometimes view these reflections as like therapy. And I think there's really something in that of, I often get a sense or have some people that I've worked with that in these reflective logs or journals.
It's the first time they're really thinking about the impact of something on themselves. They've kind of they've floated along, you know, being the only black person in the office or being the only commuter student in the classroom.
And they've never they've never really come to terms with the impact it's had on them and the ability to actually just sit down and and have time carved out to think about that I think does bring out a lot of emotions. Yeah, it's I would say as a researcher is really challenging, but it also gives you
put some lights a bit of a fire and do you again to be like, okay, now I this reminds me why I'm doing this and why it's important. I think I have a similar motivation to Rachel about underrepresented voices and so I think I chose to collect very rich data because of that idea of surfacing things that sometimes maybe remain unspoken.
So, although it was hard, it did make me think, actually, this is the right method, because these things are coming out of what people are saying. And although this didn't work as well as I hoped with the learning journals, the idea was that actually, and there were a few people that I was able to do with this with is actually when someone had shared an image or a video or written something I could, I could reply to them.
So that's interesting. Could you tell me more about whatever and I think that that helped because there is something, I think when you're analyzing and as a researcher there is something that's a little bit challenging if you know whether your interpretation is what they intended and things so when being
able to kind of do that check you know actually I've read about your experience could you just tell me a bit more about this part or that part, which, guess in an interview is a bit more immediate isn't it but they may not be sharing such personal information if they're talking to you in interviews so it's kind of, I guess there's strengths and challenges.
I really like that idea actually because we did interviews didn't we Sadeq, and my light fellowship as well kind of rounded it off with closing interviews and you conducted quite a lot of the interviews didn't you Sadeq on the Legal Profession Project but I like that idea of being able to respond to people's logs as well.
What did you think about the interview process at the end like how that worked with the reflective logs.
I really liked the interview part because it's more like personal you get to see the other people you get to see the other people's like you're reading their reflection you've never seen them before and then boom they're like right in front of you.
And you get to talk to them more about their thoughts, and like I said if we didn't understand something specific on their reflection we can get more of different insight on what they meant.
It was like for some participants also they didn't have the time to do the reflective logs just because working as lawyers like very time-dependent. So it was very good that we got their reflection on an interview format as well because they give, again, very like rich feedback.
And a lot of people like a lot of the participants really really enjoyed the project which made me really happy because if I wasn't part of this project I wouldn't get to talk to like seniors or like lawyers about what they think of like under a presentation.
And you when you interviewed people did you find that they were reflecting on their reflective logs so there's like oh actually I wrote six, nine months ago I wrote this but actually since then, you know I've changed my ideas about their experience or whether you know
because the process I was just thinking when you know when people write diaries and you look back and think oh that's interesting that last year I thought that but now I've kind of moved on or did you find that?
Yeah, 100%. Like some of the participants at the beginning of the project they didn't think that there would be much of a change within their law firm after they'd done the project.
However, after the project kind of like came to an end and we did like the interviews and I was interviewing them. One of the firms had like some major changes and they listened to the participants feedback and they implemented like supervisors for trainee lawyers.
So yeah, it was very beneficial.
It's really good for people to hear about how reflective logs can be complemented by a second form of interaction with participants whether that's on the logs themselves or in follow up things like interviews.
And just touching more on the benefits of reflective logs and with your specific visual method and the chance for people to send in pictures. I'd be really interested to hear more about why that was such a beneficial option in terms of how that contributed to your research outputs as part of your fellowship.
Yes, so yeah I do have a particular interest in visual methods, generally so. And I wanted to think about how you had actually seen someone else do an infocomic about, it was actually about four academics experiences of working academia in COVID and I've seen this
in infocomic and it was just really interesting because it gave the richness of the experience about identifying people, and it just brought it alive to life even though it wasn't a lot of words and I didn't want to have you know people to have to like a reader, six page journal article on
paper, it's not, you know, it doesn't give the same immediacy I suppose of kind of this is people's real experience so that was in the back of my mind but the interesting thing about giving people the opportunity to do things visually which I hadn't expected I suppose was that there's a lot of people
who are kind of using like metaphors or kind of using, there was a story from someone described their experience a bit like a story out of a book but and use those images, is it just how to describe things that were a bit difficult to put into words, it's
similar to this kind of experience or this visual metaphor, you know, explains it kind of, and I was like, oh yeah I get what you mean, but it wasn't kind of specifically what the actual experience was, if that makes sense and then that was very helpful for thinking about how you translate
that into something visual storytelling. And for those of us that, which I guess is quite a lot of us, are not familiar with infocomics because could you give us a sense of what the output will look like?
Yeah, so it's currently in production, but yeah so I'm kind of setting it in the campus, so it's, I've got some characters that are going to be doing things around the university, but it's going to, I'm hoping to make it into a like a digital flipbook so you can read it online as well so it's just it's kind of a story of them having
finished it yet. It's a story of kind of like, like things I suppose as a member of staff kind of places in the campus and experiences you might have, but actually they're having this conversation about what they're, what it's like to work at the university, what it's like to be involved in
curriculum redefined and trying to make that as real as possible so that when people read it they go oh yeah that's, I can see myself in that.
You should say, you have sent me a sample of it and it really whet my appetite. When's it going to be done? It takes time.
It took time, but the thing is it's that kind of, you know the analysis of what people have said and then trying to think about how you translate that into a new story, a story that I've created but it keeps all their stories alive as well.
Okay, so we've touched upon some of the reasons why people ought to be considering using reflective journals and logs as part of their research.
What would you say are some of the challenges of using this method?
Many.
The first one I would say is accessibility. Using, on my light fellowship as I said I use PebblePad and that for the most part was fine, but there were some accessibility issues for students and people who were using like screen readers and other technology
that I did have to pick up with colleagues who work with PebblePad at the university but those issues were addressed. It's just being aware if you're using any sort of platform like that to make sure that it's fully accessible.
But also just giving people an alternative. So I did have only a small number of people who were for one reason or another just didn't have the time to figure out properly how to use PebblePad and were finding that that was kind of adding to just a bit of overwhelm I guess with loads of other stuff going on in their lives and work.
So for them, I every week just sent them like emailed them a word document, the reflective log and they filled it out that way. So just making sure you've got those like alternatives because you you know you want, you don't want to be adding layers of stress and work
onto your participants like you want to make it as easy as possible for them to reflect.
So yeah, just being aware of that. And then the other big thing I would say is being aware of kind of how what we've already touched on really but just how much data can be generated from reflective logs or diaries depending on how many participants you've got.
I don't know Sadek if you've got any thoughts on that because you were on the legal professions project really in the depth of all of that. No, 100% I agree. I think one of the challenges was that narrowing all the data down.
So there was so much feedback and it was easy to get overwhelmed I would say. But after we narrowed it down, it got so much easier to see the teams and read people's reflections.
And I think another challenge was that ensuring there was like a right balance because there were three groups there was like the law student trainees and partners, and me and Brawa we didn't want one group to dominate the feedback.
So that's why we split them into groups.
I think another like the last challenge was that a few of the participants mentioned that and their feedback was that it was because it was online, they felt like they didn't have that personal connection, or they weren't able to go into like deeper conversations.
So that's another like good example of like accessibility in a way isn't it like, not every, although we although we might think as researchers you know, you're going to enjoy this this is good for you this is like you know, that opportunity to reflect like some people are just
looking at their computer screen and be like, why am I typing this like into the void. And that's where I think yeah having something like Sarah where you're responding to people and like oh there is somebody behind this, or doing an interview at the end I think.
Just before I respond I was going to ask a question around to the people on your projects. Had you met them in person beforehand.
I hadn't on our project address it so we were working with people in law firms like across the country so nobody was necessarily geographically close on my light fellowship I met everybody in person but the reflection was done online.
But yeah actually the, the co design team for my light projects that was in a year when we were, we were not quite fully in lockdown but we kind of mostly where so actually.
Now I think on it I've met them all several times since but I didn't meet them at all for that first year, and they were kind of doing reflection throughout.
But yeah I do think there is something in it even if you're not necessarily meeting in person having spoken to someone like virtually and they've seen who you are and kind of understand who's behind the project I do think it helps.
Yeah, because that's one thing I say that didn't work as well as I thought about my, my project was around. I put a lot of thought into the research participant relationships I think that's really important and I think if I was doing it again,
it's good to meet people, or just have a have some established relationship with them by put a lot of work into for the each journal, according to a video of myself introducing the question and making trying to make myself.
Yeah, as someone you know it like it was a real research interview and in fact that kind of worked in one of the participants did bump into me on campus and say, I feel like I know you, because of your videos, but I think that established relationship makes makes it easier for the
other. Otherwise I think I thought it would be good for people to do it in their own time, and it's asynchronous and so you could just kind of dip in, but it does, it does need that interaction for people to feel motivated because I think you're like you're saying
about you know it does, it can, it could feel like you're typing into a void, if you don't have a regular contact with the people that you're going to respond to what you're, what you're creating, and I guess what's slightly different about mine and I had
to wait for a change in how Minerva works was, which it was, it was really good for me but everybody was on the same Minerva organization but I had to wait for the option of making sure that none of the other participants could see was who was in the
organization so only I knew all the people that are in there, which I think slightly different on Pebble Pad is that they wouldn't necessarily know who else was taking part so making sure it, it's, it's just feels like the participant and you and that nobody else is going to see this,
and it's very private things as sharing so you need to make sure that that's really, yeah, I was thinking about doing the learning journals was, I was thinking about coming here today was that actually I was trying to make a safe space needs to be like a safe space for people to share, honestly
what they think about things.
This discussion is making me think your work and your findings Rachel around staff, student partnerships and especially that first phase of setting off on the right foot.
Yeah, definitely I think, yeah, just listening to what Sarah was saying like I completely agree I think it's so important that research participants have got someone that they are like invested in.
I know there's so much around you know research impartiality and all that kind of stuff and you know being objective and that kind of comes into pedagogy and other research from like hard sciences but I just really don't buy into it I think it's so important
that you are, you are, you team that you're working with are like the base of the research because that's what that at the end of the day is what's going to motivate people to contribute towards, you know, a reflection or what Sarah is saying is obviously really important that nobody
else can see people's reflections but one thing I think was really effective on my light fellowship. And we did it actually a bit as well on the legal professions project but was having opportunities to bring people together to reflect.
So, for example in my light fellowship like part way through, and I got people together in a room so there were, I did one for staff and one for the students and we did this reflective exercise where sort of on the spot, I gave them reflective questions
and wrote on little postcards and then at the end put them in an envelope and kind of gave them to me so I could then go away and kind of reflect on what they looked at but doing that together had that benefit of they weren't only buying into me as the person
leading the research or you know, me and Sadek and Prowar and our colleagues at LawCare on the legal profession project but they were also buying into each other and this sense of being part of a community.
And this is something that we're doing as a group and it's got a higher purpose of improving inclusion in the legal profession or improving personal tutoring at the university.
When I first think about my assumptions with the word reflection, I guess immediately consider it as a personal act but it's also saying it's an interpersonal, it's a social.
So I was going to say I'm hoping when the Infocomics finished, is that it starts that process of like, it's a bit more widely shared and therefore people can sort of have that kind of community response.
I think there's something really powerful about this when you've had people who've been doing that independent reflection to be able to come together and yeah, same reflect as a community but also hear from other people, you know, yeah, I feel the way you do.
I've experienced that. Also maybe hear from other people actually my experience was really different and it triggers those kind of different thought processes that can lead to people acting differently, because there's something in reverse mentoring
in particular about it often being a one to one conversation, but there's so much to learn from kind of the wider.
Actually one of the things that we did was that three-way mentoring. So we bared lost students, trainees and partners.
And one of the most common feedback we got from the students in the three-way mentoring was that they felt heard and they felt seen, because the trainee would usually have the same experience as they did.
I think listeners are keen to hear your views on how this method can be developed going forwards.
Is mutual reflection a possible avenue for this?
So that was important. It's important that people feeling heard. So actually not just doing your reflective diary, but these other things that happen because of it mean and things being brought together, kind of in a communal way.
It's like actually, you know, I've shared this thing and it's made this change and it's kind of my voice has been heard and so that I think yeah I think you're right that's probably a way we can think about moving the method on as well.
I really like that idea of sort of mutual reflection. It's really what reverse mentoring is all about, to be honest.
There's like reciprocal reflections and conversations about, you know, what is it like to be me here now and how does that impact your practice?
I mean, if you think about reverse mentoring between a university leader and a student, for example, but I know you said you've got another podcast on listening rooms.
Another thing that I used reflective activity with the student co-design team on my light fellowship was at the end of their co-design experience.
They were invited to opt into listening rooms inspired exercise. I've written this up actually so we can share the link if people want to read more about it.
But the so I had 15 students and they were paired together and they were given a series of reflective questions and they kind of like it was inspired by listening rooms because they sort of co-interviewed each other.
And I left the room and then I just got to listen to the recording afterwards. But there was something really nice, I think, about being together and reflecting on their experiences at the end rather than that being an individual thing.
You know, it's kind of like like you were saying, Sadeq, about meeting the person at the end and interviewing them.
It's that like more personal connection. And it's a nice I think it's a really nice way to sort of round up the experience of a project to sit with someone else who's done it with you.
Think about how it's impacted you both and what you've learned from it. So I think more of that would be really good.
It's really interesting to compare and contrast what we've said today with what people say in the listening rooms episode as you touch upon. I'm thinking in particular of one participant who recently finished a light fellowship, and they actually unexpectedly ended up combining both shared social spaces as is common in listening rooms but also private and personal spaces.
And the interplay between those two things, I think is really interesting in reflective journals and logs.
I think there's something in there as well isn't there about having had in order to do mutual reflection. There's something about, you know, you mentioned Sarah like safe spaces, you need to have had the time to have built that safety and trust with someone.
So I think that I think there is a lot of benefit to using individual and group or, you know, paired reflection, but maybe leaving the group and the paired reflections for further down the line when there has been the opportunity to build some connection and trust and that reciprocity of sort of experience
because, you know, understandably, you might worry about, you know, someone judging you for what you say when you don't really know them or you might feel more apprehensive about saying what you really feel whereas if you are just in, especially in this beginning stages you are typing it into a log or writing it in a log that is private to you, albeit, you're going to share it with the researcher, you know, nobody else is going to see it.
I think it's also an element of training yourself in reflection doing the doing it individually, but also you kind of like you saying you can get everything out. And then when you're reflecting with other people then you can choose, you know what you feel comfortable sharing.
I think one of the things that I would say is, if you are listening and you are maybe thinking about using reflective logs or kind of similar in your own research is to have a good reflection yourself about how you are framing the reflection like what questions are you asking people,
there are loads of brilliant reflective cycles and reflective sort of series of questions and things out there.
I used Barbara Bassett reflective journal that's got loads of different ways of reflecting in it and I kind of use that as my initial read through to see what sort of reflections I wanted participants to use and the idea really for me primarily my light fellowship was to move people
towards action and so reflective cycle that finished with, and what are you going to do next is a really important thing. But feedback I got from the students and my light fellowship was, so I think I, you know, I'd maybe ask them to reflect on eight occasions
across the year, and I asked them the same questions every time in the pebble pad workbook. But they were reflecting on different meeting and a different experience and they said, actually, some of them would have liked some more specific questions about, you know, this in
in this reverse mentoring conversation this week we've been talking specifically about the impact of under representation on student opportunities and futures and careers, I would have liked some reflective prompts that asked me a bit more specifically about that.
So then on the legal professions reverse mentoring project that Sadeq and I worked on. We incorporated that so there were for example you know, things like you know this week you were talking about privilege in the legal profession.
What sort of things came up, how did those things make you feel.
So Sadeq I don't know if you thought that enhanced the logs or made them more challenging. Yeah, definitely did. A lot of the feedback we got from the participant was that the questions got them, got the conversation started.
And there was like a clear set of guidelines so they weren't going off topic, and they know what they had to talk about.
Something isn't there about, it's a really fine balance between specific questions and free flowing reflection because some people will love the free flowing reflection and run with it and be like yeah and say all the great juicy things where you're like oh these are these are the insights I wanted.
Other people will think what on earth am I to say like I would really like some more guided questions. So yeah, just something to bear in mind if you're thinking about using the method.
I think that's one of the key things isn't it about the questions it's interesting what you're saying about, you wanted yours to create action so I was thinking I wasn't, with the questions that I use I wasn't trying, I wasn't asking the participants to action
I was thinking actually I'm asking questions, because I want institutional action action from this so how that probably informed the questions but thinking about writing questions that are open enough you haven't built in any bias or you're not kind of they're not going to
make people respond in a particular way, or you're kind of almost anticipating what they're going to say so perhaps also piloting your questions or so for my learning journals, I did share them with people in in light and kind of go through and they're like yes that kind
of, you know, think about you know if you ask it in that way, you know, responses might be like this whatever and so it's making sure you've kind of tested your questions in advance.
And then what's, yeah, that's an interesting thing that I'm going to take away think about what the questions that you asked what, what's the action that might come from those and who's whose action is it is quite interesting idea.
I think, yeah, I really agree with like testing out your questions on other people I think that's something I have often not done.
I think is really important but also test them out yourself. I think is really important like the, again, a pre and underpinning premise of reverse mentoring is about putting yourself in the other person's shoes and I think the more we do that as researchers,
the more it helps us to see actually this question is a bit difficult or this question is really similar to that other question I'll get rid of that one and make it a bit more streamlined.
I think some of those, you know, there are kind of reflective cycles out, you know, that exist and things isn't it writing reflective questions are probably just as hard as doing reflections.
So you've never done it before so it's actually, here's some examples. And maybe like this is why that works and then perhaps you think about making things that are more tailored to what you actually want to understand or the knowledge you want to create.
And then you touching upon some, I think really interesting philosophical themes about what it means to be a researcher and to evaluate our own role in the research process.
And that leads to another reason of why we decided to do this series. It's not just about discovering new methods and innovating it's also about taking a step back and considering the role that we play, as you say Sarah in creating knowledge.
And that's a way that we have to finish fairly soon because this is a conversation that I would love to have, you know, for much longer. And speaking of research output so that I think before we wrap up we'd like to mention a resource is on its way.
All the data from our research is being turned into a toolkit for law firms to use and the toolkit would give them a practical steps to implement their own reverse mentoring in their own law firms, and it's complete with like best practices potential
challenges and real life examples of what worked for us. And it's really exciting because the toolkit could potentially help improve the culture within these law firm and start up in conversations about this topic.
And the reflections are a huge part of that as well like the, it is people reflecting on their experiences of reverse mentoring that has, yeah, supported us to then be able to share that with other people and think you know, it's not necessarily
us saying we did everything perfect on that project here's how you should do it. It's also a bit of these are the things that some people found difficult and so maybe if you're going to do this you should think about doing it a different way.
Well, thank you all very much for joining me to reflect on.
We practice what we preach reflect on your reflective methods, and it's been a real pleasure. I hope you enjoyed listening to it wherever you are.
Please join us next week for the second episode, which is on story circles, and keep an eye out for a link to submit your questions to our question and answers edition, in which my colleagues at light will be responding to your questions about
innovative teaching and scholarship research methods.
Thanks again for listening and see you all next time.