Reflective practice as a pathway to professional growth: a journey to SFHEA, Jorge Freire
I received some excellent news last week amidst more challenging updates from the University and sector: my application for Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy had been successful.
I began preparing this application shortly after becoming a Senior Certified Member of the Association for Learning Technology, structuring it around the same three core areas that have shaped work over the last five years: educational leadership, co-design, and innovation in blended learning. I decided to do it this way as I felt, as a learning designer, my professional identity tended to cover both professional services and academic practice, technical aspects and teaching; I have worked with the ALT since I started working in digital learning, so that was a good place to start. As for the time frame, I felt that there are definitely pre- and post-pandemic stages of working in digital learning in Higher Education. I needed to find what I wanted to keep and what I needed to change in those three areas, now that the sector is so different. Sustained reflection, which is a privilege considering the pressures of the job, seemed like the best way to do it.
Reflecting on my practice involved gathering evidence from various projects, combining personal insights, research literature, and feedback (a lot of feedback) from colleagues, students, academic and professional services staff. One distinctive aspect of being a learning designer is seeing tangible outcomes of my work through activities, modules, and programmes directly experienced by students. The job is to co-design learning experiences with and for others, and these experiences go out into the world and are used. This reflective exercise can be challenging but is deeply rewarding and improves practice over time. It is also an ethical necessity, as digital learning professionals have a growing influence in students, teaching and professional services’ practices.
The Queen Mary Academy workshop provided valuable guidance. Writing multiple drafts and receiving kind feedback from eight colleagues helped me synthesise fresh insights. Colleagues’ thoughtful input challenged my initial defensiveness, prompting deeper insights into my professional identity and practice. Some conclusions genuinely surprised me, emerging organically through continuous revision. Among these were the importance of sharing risk to build trust, the power of co-design to empower students and staff, and navigating the complexity of balancing change with institutional needs.
My main advice for colleagues considering this process is to embrace the initial discomfort of writing reflectively about yourself and view drafting as an opportunity to deepen your understanding of your work and your professional identity. Crucially, actively seek feedback and remain genuinely open to it. Discussions around my drafts were instrumental, overcoming my initial defensiveness and enabling richer insights into my practice. I am grateful, most of all, to the eight people who read terrible drafts and shared their time with me discussing them.
In the end, the draft I submitted felt natural—as if it had always had that final “shape”. People familiar with writing will know that that is when it is time to let a piece of writing go and hand it in.
Now, I am happy I don't have to write about myself for a while and I have paused all reflection until the Summer. No more insights for me for a while after this article.
Journey to achieving PFHEA, Chie Adachi
The process of writing my application for Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) has been a deeply reflective and meaningful journey. It required me to critically evaluate my own work, considering not just what I have achieved, but also the impact of my transformative leadership on colleagues, students, and the wider higher education community, over the last 5-7 years. Engaging with the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF) allowed me to systematically assess my leadership and impacts on learning and teaching, ensuring that my practices align with sector-wide standards of educational excellence. This reflection was not just an exercise in documentation but an opportunity to reaffirm my values and commitment to advancing practice.
Through this process, I gained a clearer understanding of how my strategic leadership has shaped institutional policies, innovated pedagogical approaches, and contributed to fostering a culture of excellence in digital education and scholarship. Evaluating my work against the standards encouraged me to consider the broader implications of my values, decisions and initiatives, reinforcing my dedication to evidence-based practice and continuous improvement. It also provided an invaluable moment of (re-)connecting with numerous mentors and colleagues, with whom I’ve had the privilege to learn. And I think this is so important – to remember and appreciate the people and communities that helped us to get to where we are – and use this as an inspiration to try pay forward to help others.
For those ever-increasingly busy academics and practitioners in higher education, there is never really a ‘good time’ to do this type of work for our personal growth and career progression. We therefore need to be strategic and focused – know that it is achievable in small steps/chunks, and the process itself is worth it. I’d be happy to further share my experiences/application and tips if anyone is interested.
The below are the practical steps I took to achieve this, if helpful:
- Attended the workshop by QMA on Principal Fellow HEA accelerator (Sept 2024)
- Reflecting on my entire practice of the last 5-7 years, selected the three key story/lines/cases – what are the key threads in my narrative that I’m going to flesh out to evidence my strategic leadership impacts?
- Took few hours to write each case (about 2500 words for each) – ‘rough first draft’ over 3 separate Fridays (ie. 3 cases in total) – focus jotting down what projects, data and evidence to include, demonstrating against the UKPSF; asked key people to give me a short testimony to evidencing impacts on my various work
- Another few hours to finesse the draft to a readable state – shared it with the two mentors for feedback; also shared it with the 3 nominated ‘referees’ for their advocacy statements
- After I received mentors’ feedback, spent 2 x few-hour sessions to finesse and finalise the application with references – checked all the PSF standards are appropriately covered, and submitted it (Jan 2025)