Reflection, the professional and learning from the project

This is the tenth of ten units, and the last in the sequence: it asks what the team carries away rather than what it leaves behind. A student who ships a working product has demonstrated capability inside the module. The knowledge the project produced does not transfer until somebody can state it, and the conventional home for that statement is the reflective account. The argument of this unit is that the account earns its place only when it states what was learned as a claim that could be tested.

That reflection turns experience into knowledge is not a claim that a longer account is a better one. Dewey (1933) defined reflective thinking as the active, persistent and careful consideration of a belief in the light of the grounds that support it. He set it against routine thought. That definition already contains the standard applied here: an account that asserts a lesson without naming its grounds has not begun to reflect. The evidence behind the practice is thinner than its institutional weight implies, and the account is a genre that favours the fluent academic writer. The founding account is interpretive rather than measured (Schon, 1983). The cycles used to structure the writing are teaching templates rather than tested instruments (Kolb, 1984; Gibbs, 1988). The systematic review of the field finds the evidence largely theoretical (Mann et al., 2007).

Reflection-in-action is an interpretive claim, not a measured one

Schon (1983) examined five professions and argued that competent practitioners know more than they can put into words. They rely on improvisation and reflection in action rather than on formulas learned in training. That is the interpretive foundation of the unit. It explains why an account is needed at all, because there is competence a practitioner cannot state in advance, and it warns that any account will be an incomplete reconstruction. It reports no measurement. Schon (1987) carried the idea into professional education through the practicum, in which a coach demonstrates reflection while the student is still acting. That is the model behind supervised project work, and neither book offers a way to score an account.

The cycles turn an experience into a rule that can be tested

Kolb (1984) set out experiential learning as a cycle of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. Abstract conceptualisation is the stage that matters, because it makes the next attempt different from the last. Without it, experience accumulates without becoming knowledge, and the cycle's later stages are a claim about what to do next that can be tested. Gibbs (1988) gave the same movement a six-stage form: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. Most student accounts, including this module's, are written against that structure. An account that stops at evaluation records an experience without changing practice.

The honest account separates espoused theory from theory-in-use

Argyris and Schon (1974) distinguished espoused theory, what people say they do, from theory-in-use, what their behaviour reveals. They argued that professionals rarely surface the gap between the two. A team that writes that it reviewed progress weekly, when the decision log shows three changes of plan made by one member between meetings, has written espoused theory. Dewey (1933) supplies the same discipline from another direction. A reader should see the evidence a lesson rests on, and be able to disagree with the lesson without disagreeing with the account of events.

What makes an account deep, and what the evidence can measure

Moon (2004) distinguishes surface description from deeper reflection and gives practical guidance on journals and their assessment. That distinction is the source of the module's criteria: describing what happened is not reflecting, and an account should move from events to what they mean and then to what follows. The difficulty is that this standard rests on an interpretive theory with weak measurement. Mann, Gordon and MacLeod (2007) reviewed reflection in the health professions. They found the evidence to support curricular interventions largely theoretical, the literature dispersed across fields, and it unclear which approaches have efficacy or impact. A mark for depth is therefore a judgement against a standard whose reliability is not established, which makes the form contestable rather than worthless. Turns and colleagues (2014) argue for deliberate integration and propose a framework of seven elements: if the outcome depends on the design, the design is where effort goes.

The capstone is a pedagogical genre with its own evidence

Dutson and colleagues (1997) reviewed the literature on teaching engineering design through project-oriented capstone courses, searching over 100 papers. They described the standard practices and the current state of capstone design education. It frames the module as a genre with traditions of its own, and shows how long the assumption that a project teaches what courses cannot has been doing work. Kuh (2008) goes further, listing capstones and collaborative projects among a set of high-impact practices and arguing that they benefit students, with unequal access to them. That is a policy claim, resting on evidence about participation rather than on a comparison of what a graduate can do differently.

What students actually do with an ill-structured brief

Baekkelund and colleagues (2025) interviewed seven student teams in an engineering capstone course, with four reflection notes and two mentor interviews as background. They mapped the teams' process against the parts of problem solving identified in the literature. The teams diverged from the recommendations: they spent little time on problem definition, did not necessarily define the problem early, and iterated mainly when mentors pushed them. That relocates the account: one written afterwards will rationalise the process unless it is written against evidence such as a decision log.

Many teams began by consulting course materials. Teams that met uncertainty or stress in that moment sought a mentor instead, so the person was what moved the work on and the document was the fallback. A course that wants iteration can design for the moment a team is stuck rather than instruct it to iterate. What the case does not show is that iteration helped. The course ran once, the teams were not compared, and the authors report how the work went rather than how good it was.

Employability and the knowledge transmitted invisibly

Trevelyan (2014) drew on more than a decade of research observing engineers at work. Much of the knowledge that makes an expert effective passes invisibly rather than through teaching, so a project is valuable for the tacit capability a student accumulates. No account will capture most of it. Knight and Yorke (2004) argue for a more sophisticated account of employability and for curricula that build it, including in subjects with no obvious vocational route. That is what turns a project account into evidence of capability, and pushes it towards demonstrable claims rather than declarations of growth.

Contested question: is reflection a discipline of inquiry or a genre of writing?

The disagreement runs through the sources. Dewey (1933), Schon (1983, 1987) and Argyris and Schon (1974) treat reflection as a mode of professional knowing that precedes and exceeds words. Practitioners reflect in action, and the written account is a partial record of a competence that is largely tacit. Moon (2004) and the assessment practice that follows her treat the account itself as the object, graded against a taxonomy of depth. Mann, Gordon and MacLeod (2007) make the dispute hard for both, because the field cannot agree on a definition or a measure. A mark for depth may therefore reward the performance rather than the reflection.

Baekkelund and colleagues (2025) add evidence without settling it: an unprompted process diverged from the recommended one, so an account written unaided may record a rationalisation rather than an inquiry. What would settle it is a study that fixes a definition of reflection in advance. It would require an account to state a rule that could be tested, and then measure the writer's behaviour on a later task against that rule rather than grading the prose. No such study exists at student-project scale.

Rate the two cases by kind. The inquiry case rests on interpretive work that reports no measurement (Dewey, 1933; Schon, 1983, 1987; Argyris and Schon, 1974). The genre case rests on assessment practice, two teaching templates and a taxonomy of depth (Kolb, 1984; Gibbs, 1988; Moon, 2004). The strongest single design in the area is a systematic review of the health professions, and it found the evidence largely theoretical (Mann et al., 2007). While the dispute is open, write the account against evidence kept while the project ran, and state each lesson as a rule precise enough to be shown wrong. The strongest objection is that no study shows this changing practice: a rule precise enough to be tested may be graded and forgotten.

Where the argument is heading

The direction of travel is away from assessing the account and towards designing the activity that produces it. Turns and colleagues (2014) argue for deliberate integration and supply a framework an educator can design against. Baekkelund and colleagues (2025) close on course design and mentoring practice, having found that mentors drive iteration. Trevelyan (2014) sets a ceiling, showing how much expertise is acquired outside instruction. For a student team the reading stays modest. Keep the evidence while the project runs, write the account against it rather than against the term's calendar, and state the lesson as a rule precise enough to be shown wrong.

The sources this unit rests on

• Argyris, C. and Schon, D. A. (1974). Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness. Jossey-Bass. https://archive.org/details/theoryinpractice00chri Distinguished espoused theory, what people say they do, from theory-in-use, what their behaviour reveals, and argued that professionals rarely surface the gap. It gives the unit its sharpest test of an honest account.
• Geirsdotter Baekkelund, N., Isdal Haugland, A., Sande, J. and Rogde Mjanes, J. O. (2025). Ill-structured problems in capstone courses: investigating students' approaches and experience. European Journal of Engineering Education, 1-20. doi:10.1080/03043797.2025.2585122 Interviewed seven student teams in an engineering capstone course, with four reflection notes and two mentor interviews as background. Found problem definition given little time and iteration made mainly when mentors pushed the teams, so an unaided account records the process rather than examining it.
• Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process. D. C. Heath. https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.4494 Defined reflective thinking as the active, persistent and careful consideration of a belief in the light of the grounds that support it, against routine thought and impulse. It gives the unit its test, since a lesson asserted without its grounds is not yet reflection.
• Dutson, A. J., Todd, R. H., Magleby, S. P. and Sorensen, C. D. (1997). A review of literature on teaching engineering design through project-oriented capstone courses. Journal of Engineering Education, 86(1), 17-28. doi:10.1002/j.2168-9830.1997.tb00260.x Searched over 100 papers describing the standard practices and the state of capstone design education. It shows an established genre whose outcomes are asserted more confidently than they are measured.
• Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods. Further Education Unit. https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/gibbs-reflective-cycle Proposed a six-stage cycle of description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan that most student accounts are written against. It gives the account its shape while showing the cycle was advanced as a method rather than tested as an instrument.
• Knight, P. and Yorke, M. (2004). Learning, Curriculum and Employability in Higher Education. RoutledgeFalmer. doi:10.4324/9780203465271 Argue for a more sophisticated account of employability and for curricula that build it, including in subjects with no obvious vocational route. It turns a project account into evidence of capability and pushes it towards demonstrable claims rather than declarations of growth.
• Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall. https://archive.org/details/experientiallear0000kolb Set out experiential learning as a cycle of concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation and active experimentation. The abstract-conceptualisation stage is what makes the next attempt different from the last, which is why the unit asks for a testable rule rather than a story.
• Kuh, G. D. (2008). High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter. Association of American Colleges and Universities. https://www.aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/LEAP/HIPs.pdf Identifies capstones and collaborative projects among a set of high-impact practices and argues that they benefit students, with unequal access to them. The claim rests on evidence about participation rather than on graduate capability.
• Mann, K., Gordon, J. and MacLeod, A. (2007). Reflection and reflective practice in health professions education: a systematic review. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 14(4), 595-621. doi:10.1007/s10459-007-9090-2 Reviewed reflection and reflective practice in the health professions. Found the evidence to support curricular interventions largely theoretical, the literature dispersed across fields, and it unclear which approaches work, which makes the unit's thesis arguable.
• Moon, J. A. (2004). A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning: Theory and Practice. RoutledgeFalmer. doi:10.4324/9780203416150 Gives a theoretical framework for reflective and experiential learning with practical guidance on journals and their assessment, distinguishing surface description from deeper reflection. That distinction is the source of the module's criteria.
• Schon, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315237473 Examined five professions and argued that competent practitioners know more than they can put into words, relying on improvisation and reflection in the midst of action. It is the unit's interpretive foundation and reports no measurement.
• Schon, D. A. (1987). Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. Jossey-Bass. https://archive.org/details/educatingreflect0000schn Extended reflection-in-action to professional education through the practicum, in which a coach demonstrates reflection while the student is still acting. It is the teaching half of the argument and the model the module's supervision follows.
• Trevelyan, J. (2014). The Making of an Expert Engineer. CRC Press. doi:10.1201/b17434 Draws on more than a decade of research observing engineers at work to argue that much of the knowledge making an expert effective is transmitted invisibly rather than taught. It caps the ambition of an account, because most of the capability is not capturable in prose.
• Turns, J., Sattler, B., Yasuhara, K., Borgford-Parnell, J. and Atman, C. (2014). Integrating reflection into engineering education. 2014 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings, 24.776.1-24.776.16. doi:10.18260/1-2--20668 Argue that reflection on experience should be integrated into engineering education deliberately, and propose a framework of seven elements. If the outcome depends on design, the design is where effort goes.