Using drawing, model making and metaphorical representations to increase students’ engagement with reflections

Within the current higher education discourse regarding student-staff partnerships key elements reported on are the empowerment of students, the roles and responsibility of the partners in the co-construction of knowledge, and the student engagement and motivation through such partnerships. However, what is often not really considered is the nature and depth of students’ engagement. This article seeks to redress this gap by providing an example from a teacher education programme. At first, we provide a brief overview of the background and context of the teacher education programme, which forms the basis for this article. In the subsequent sections, we outline discourses around student engagement, whereby we will then focus on engagement in relation to reflective practices within teacher education. Subsequently, we provide insight into the use of creative activities to improve students’ conceptual understanding and application of reflective work. This will lead into an evaluative section where creative activities and student engagement will be discussed in a form that incorporates the points of view of two students (Aly Jafferani and Vanessa Pattharwala) and one member of staff (Nicole Brown). Our concluding thoughts will detail recommendations, next steps and the relevance of our experience for future work within the context of teacher education and higher education more generally.