Reflection perspectives of Tabriz Nursing Student

Introduction: The phenomenon of knowledge explosion has led teachers to feel the necessity of training students so that they become reflective thinkers. This issue is more important for nursing students who are responsible for providing care for patients.This study is a part of another study arming at exploration of Nursing Students’ views on reflection on practice. Methods. 20 senior nursing students of Tabriz Nursing Faculty participated in this study. At first they participated in a 4-day workshop to become familiar with process and principles of reflective thinking. Then they were asked to reflect on their clinical experiences for 10 weeks of their final clinical course. They were also asked to write their reflection in their weekly journals. The journals were studied by a researcher and appropriate feedback was given to their reflective writing. At the end of the clinical course, they were divided into 2 groups to participate in a focus group session and to discuss the issues regarding 9 proposed open-ended questions. The students’ responses were tape-recorded and a transcript was made and analyzed qualitatively. The data were coded and categorized appropriately. Then each category was named to elicit the related constructs. Results. Qualitative data analysis showed that reflection as a learning strategy has impact on 5 different elements of teaching learning process: thinking, learning, caring, motivation and self-regulatory mechanisms. These contracts are very similar to cyclic learning proposed by Kolb (1984) and are capable of being integrated into experiential learning cycle.