Not only is duration (total number of hours) of professional development important, but also the time span of the professional development experience (number of years across which professional hours are situated) to allow for multiple cycles of presentation and reflection on practices (Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Garet et al., 2001).
Understanding of community practices and beliefs could assist policy makers in shaping CHW programmes, for example, providing training and supervision to equip CHWs with the right facilitation skills to initiate reflection on practices and beliefs that, from a public health perspective, hinder people from changing behaviour or accessing services.
It is possible that encouraging greater reflection on ones practice by creating supportive spaces where poor outcomes can be discussed, or where providers are sensitized to empathise with their patients, could also hold some potential.
The research revealed seven themes: connectedness with like-minded professionals; support; education; reflection on practice; structure and process; technology and the challenges of time, preparation and priority.
Having just retired from teaching after 38 years, I can testify to just how exhausting it is to work 55-60 hours a week, in a highly pressured environment, with little time for reflection on practice or acquisition of new skills and knowledge.
Similarly, some authors argue that beliefs may exist as a product of reflection on practice (Eley 2006).
This knowledge is exhibited in our intrinsic directedness toward the various goods that the natural law enjoins us to pursue, and we can make this implicit awareness explicit and propositional through reflection on practice.
For example, educators in an Australian study were reported to have exercised a collective 'ethic of resistance' to dominant regulatory discourses (Fenech et al. 2010, 96), through sustained critical reflection on practice.
With regard to this, the study also tries to show that course on specialized field has an important position in translation teaching by taking into account both its theoretical dimension and reflection on practice.
The strategies related mainly specific skills development like internationalization and intercultural education, management, curriculum development, quality teaching, teaching innovations, or online teaching; but also covered professional development methods like workshops, problem-based learning, professional networks, action research and reflection on practice (Amundsen & Wilson, 2012).
Reflection on practice guides the on-going planning cycle.
