Towards wholeness in engineering education: The role of reflective writing

Reflective writing has been in common use for decades as an educational process in professional education programmes, especially in teacher education, healthcare, and social care. In such programs, students typically reflect on selected professional interpersonal encounters that occur in the context of work placements to inform their future practice. Reflective writing is rare in engineering education. This study examines  an implementation of pre-placement reflective writing in an undergraduate problem and project-based learning (Pj-PBL) civil engineering curriculum. The research is conducted in Action Research (AR) mode. The combination of topic (reflective writing), timing  (on-campus pre-placement), pedagogical context (a Pj-PBL engineering curriculum)  and research approach (AR) constitute a novel contribution to engineering educational thought and practice. The study raises issues that span ontology, epistemology, methodology and ethics. It is suggested that the thought of Bernard Lonergan casts  useful light on the issues raised by the study and may also help to clarify and unify the disparate field of reflective practice in education while the work of John Cowan informs  the specific implementation of reflective practice developed in the study. The Pj-PBL curriculum context is described. The rationale for implementing reflective writing in engineering education is examined and, in AR mode, pedagogical practices for integrating reflective writing into a Pj-PBL civil engineering curriculum are developed. The collaborative dialogical processes that facilitated the development of practice are outlined and the associated pressures and tensions that beset the AR practitioner and hisstudents are discussed. The students’ varied responses to the pedagogical practices developed are examined in detail. Dilemmas and tensions relating to student agency, confidentiality and assessment are discussed and approaches to navigating such tensions  are presented. Several benefits of implementing reflective writing in Pj-PBL engineering curricula are claimed.