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Supervision: Reflection loop

Brief description

The reflection loop facilitates a supervision approach where an academic supervisor and an academic environment support students in giving and receiving feedback and reduces the number and extent of challenges during a supervision process. The use of a reflection loop is particularly aimed at collective or group-based supervision in which you as a supervisor take on a more facilitative role, which increases the experience and knowledge sharing among the students.

Motivation for the exercise and required outcome

In collective supervision you collaborate with the students on creating an academic and social community which reduces the challenges of isolation, lacking feedback and exchange of ideas that might be experienced by students during their studies. Collective supervision improves the students’ ability to give and receive feedback and develops collaboration competences that may train them to form networks to be used both during their studies and after graduation. The reflection loop provides a structure for the supervision situation, ensuring that all students present their project or task and receive useful feedback from their fellow students and their supervisor. It enables the students to learn from each other’s experience, they can support one another academically and methodologically and develop empathetic understanding and support in connection with practical and personal difficulties during the course.

Performing the exercise

  • As a teacher you must meet the group you will supervise in the coming semester. The ideal group size is four to six students.

  • As a supervisor you must facilitate a so-called “Reflection loop”:

    • One student starts by presenting their work.

    • Then you discuss the presentation in the group. This discussion may take place in smaller groups, followed by a full group discussion where you share the most important points from the small groups.

    • As a supervisor, you may finally give your feedback to the student.

  • This procedure is repeated for each participating student.

  • In this exercise, your role as a supervisor will be more facilitative as compared to a one-on-one supervisor situation, and you must therefore make sure that:

    • all students have an equal amount of space for their project or task in the supervision process

    • everyone gets a chance to speak in each supervision meeting.

  • In this way, all projects or presentations will be discussed in detail, and in your role as facilitator or moderator you can seek to make use of the advantages of collective supervision.


Worth considering:

  • How do we avoid ‘group thinking’, in which the students may become rigid in their understanding in case they have agreed on a certain way of viewing a specific aspect?

  • How do we align expectations so as to make sure that the students understand where the boundary is between supervision and a social community?

View Søren Smedegaard Bengtsen speak about collective supervision, including “Reflection loop”. (In danish)