Professional and Reflective Practice - 0980003

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Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Summer Term 2025-26

Module aims

The aim of the module is to provide students with the tools and framework to:

• Reflect critically on their practice as a health professions educator and especially in relation to learning, teaching and assessment.

• Reflect on professional conduct as a critical part of professional practice and familiarise themselves with behavioural measures of these subjective constructs.

• Make use of learner, peer and self-evaluation feedback to enhance own teaching and education practice.

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module successful students will be able to:

Knowledge and understanding

• Demonstrate evolution in understanding good health professions educational practice

• Understand the principle methods of evaluating the effectiveness of types of learning, teaching and assessment according to purpose and be better able to use evaluation both for programme development and for personal CPD

• Critically reflect upon educational literature and educational practice to evaluate evidence produced within a range of research paradigms and traditions

Cognitive and intellectual

• Provide evidence of critically reflective skills through the learning journal, with reference to the UKPSF, and academic writing appropriate to student’s medical education context

Professional/practice

• Reflect on the importance of lifelong learning in enhancing professional development in the context of undergraduate and postgraduate education and for continued professional development through discussion of and mapping to the UKPSF

• Demonstrate good practice in evaluation (including ‘closing the loop’);

• Identify and address context specific professional development needs related to their own learning and their teaching

• Demonstrate an understanding of professionalism and behavioural measures within professional practice

Key and transferable skills

• Undertake complex literature searches and synthesise results with other information sources

Module content

Weeks 1& 2: Good practice

• Principles of good practice in feedback and evaluation – how to use feedback and evaluation to enhance learning and to make effective use of QA to this end; closing the loop.

Week 3: The UKPSF

• Reflection and evaluation of practice in relation to the UK Professional Standards Framework

Week 4: The educator as a role model

• Principles of role modelling within the health professions curricula – how does an educators behaviour impact on teaching and the learning environment within classroom and clinical settings

Weeks 5 & 6: Professionalism and behavioural measures

• Principles of professionalism and behavioural measures of professional practice

• The hidden curriculum of medical education

Weeks 7 & 8: Professional identity formation

• The role of the educator in developing students’ professional identities

Weeks 8 & 9: Reflective practice

• The use of evidence (results of evaluation, for example) as a tool in reflective practice

• Reflective practice within health professions education and clinical practice

• The value of reflective practice for a learner

Weeks 10-11: Assignment preparation and reading

Group discussions, study days, online tasks, assignments and tutor interactions allow students to build on the content delivered and tailor it for their own health profession. Examples will be drawn upon from across the professions as well as the wider education and workplace psychology literature. Multidisciplinary tutors will help signpost relevance and transferability of principles to students.

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

None

Module feedback

Feedback on on-line tasks via peer and tutor response (some quantitative feedback through ‘tests and quizzes’).

One weekly individual tutorial per module either in person, via skype, on the telephone or as arranged to suit the individual circumstances.

Feedback in writing on the 3000 word essay.

Optional peer observation will provide additional feedback on teaching progression

Indicative reading

.