Improving Professionalism in Research Management and Administration Support Services Using Reflective Practice
Innovative research aims to solve societal, economic, national, and global problems thereby making the world a better place. The increasing competitiveness and scarcity of research funds have increased the need for more professionals who can support research excellence.
As research management and administration professionals, we provide research support services to researchers by reducing research administration burden (due to bureaucracy, staff quality, staff shortage/limited knowledge of the field, availability, and making errors and risks).
Improving our professional support services is, therefore, important by reflecting on the services that we offer to researchers. Reflection is a cognitive strategy aimed to assist the development of clinical reasoning to help healthcare practitioners to provide better services to their clients or patients. While Reflection and Reflective Practice is mostly used by healthcare professionals and those in-training, such as nursing students, it can be applied to research administration support.
There are several frameworks for reflection such as the Driscoll model and Gibb's model, among others. I prefer the Driscoll model due to its simplicity. The Driscoll model of reflection involves three steps.
- What? - Describe the experience, purposefully reflect on the experience.
- So What? - Analysis of the experience to identify areas of learning.
- Now What? - Proposed actions, actioning the new learning based on the reflection.
Although Reflection is used mostly by and among healthcare professionals, as a research management and administration professional, and over the years as a research support specialist, I have found and used Reflection to improve my services. It is important to choose the model that is easy to use and that can be easily adapted to provide excellent research support services.
Authored by Dr. Olumide Odeyemi, ARMS(F), Research Administration Officer
University of Tasmania
#February2023
#ProfessionalDevelopment
#Catalyst