Utilizing Visual Pathways to Reflection in Faculty Development

The literature presents reflection as a lasting and transformative component of learning. Faculty development efforts must intentionally address reflection as a content area to ensure effectiveness and continued improvement of teaching. Reflection engages professionals in learning from experience and addressing complex and novel problems through deep analysis. Although inclusion of reflections in health professions education has increased, there has been little attention to its utilization in faculty development. This 90-minute workshop focused on using visual prompts for reflection and was presented in 3 settings: an internal faculty development program and 2 professional meetings.

Participants included health professions educators at multiple career stages and clinician and faculty development educators from medical schools. The workshop introduced participants to 2 techniques using visual paths to reflection: (1) reflective reaction to images and (2) drawing a journey map depicting their professional development. Individual, pair, small-group, and general discussions promoted reflection and debriefing.

Twenty-three out of 25 evaluations from participants and ratings and comments from 2 observers provided evaluation data. Participants expressed appreciation for the workshops directly to presenters. Twenty-two of 23 respondents (96%) answered all evaluation questions positively.

This workshop extended reflective practice beyond written essays. Participants were engaged and quite positive about their experience. Generalizability may be limited, as all participants chose to attend and evaluations varied across settings. Future work should examine long-term impacts and possible adaptation to an online format.