Self-assessment as a trainer of reflective thinking in postgraduate students

Abstract

Assessment is a key aspect of the teaching and learning process. Teachers at the university face the challenge of identifying the best strategies to carry out this process effectively in remote teaching. In the same way, that students develop reflective thinking is an opportunity for their learning because it allows them to solve problems, hypothesize, propose alternatives and self-regulate their activities to achieve learning goals. The purpose of this study was to apply self-assessment as a strategy to promote reflective thinking and to identify the degree to which postgraduate students exercise this type of thinking by performing a challenging cognitive activity in the collection, selection and analysis of background information for the bibliographical balance of the research project. The research was qualitative in the framework of the interpretive paradigm, with a phenomenological design. The study was developed in a subject of the research area of ​​Master's studies taught at a public university. The information recorded in the rubrics was collected and the level of reflective thinking was analyzed based on Van Manen's approach, cited by Romero (2007), who defines three levels: technical rationality, practical rationality and critical rationality. Among the main findings, it was found that the predominant levels of the student's reflective capacity are located between technical rationality and practical rationality. In the case of the third level (critical rationality), the students did not reach such a degree of reflection, which is why it is an aspect of improvement within the reflective thinking necessary for the Master's degree to which they aspire.