Building Critically Reflective Practice in Higher Education Students: Employing Auto-ethnography and Educational Connoisseurship in Assessment

This study posed the question: Does using an educational connoisseurship framework applied to auto-ethnography assist in the development of reflective practice in teacher education? The design of authentic assessments that assist students in making meaningful links between theory and practice is a complex process. We created an assessment task that was directly linked to the lived experience of the students and specifically focused on their educational practice. Students were required to write an auto-ethnography that was shaped by educational connoisseurship and criticism. With ethical permission we retained the auto-ethnographic assignments by nineteen students. After independent thematic analysis we built a composite, thematic analysis and compiled tables of the content analysis. Our focus was how our students engaged with the task. We found that using an educational connoisseurship framework applied to auto-ethnographic writing has the potential to assist in the development of reflective practice in teacher education.