Category: Housing Studies

Building Stronger Communities: Collaborative Approaches to Ending Homelessness with Spires
Reflective
Portfolio Structure
Reflective Portfolio Structure
The module HOUP009/11 Housing reflection aims to
bring master’s level learning and link it into professional practice.  This portfolio is based on four separate sets
of assessments that lead those taking the module to be a fully rounded
reflective practitioner.
The
portfolio is to be made of 4 elements. These include:
Literature
review – This is an in-depth exploration of the literature and the links
to your housing practice and report topic (5,000 words).
Practice
report –
This is a reflective project that will employ your research skills and link them
to working practice (5,000 words).
Reflective
exercise – This report explores reflective theory, and you own learning
journey and experience of writing the essay and the practice report (2,500
words).
Reflective
diary – You will keep a diary of your learning and housing practice
throughout the module (2,500 words).
These should all be in one document with a cover page
introducing each section. each part of the portfolio is a separate piece
of work, but they are connected around your topic and research focus.
Assignments should, where appropriate, include examples from practice and
should demonstrate how practice is informed by knowledge and values.  You may find this over-view video from Vikki
on the reflective portfolio helpful too.
1.   Literature
review
This essay will comprise a 5,000-word critical review
of the literature around your chosen topic.
The
literature review should explore:
·      
Concepts and/or theories
·      
Definitions
·      
Explore examples of housing practice in the
literature
Relevant literature should be identified as soon as
possible. There are lessons to be learned from other work, even if it is not in
the housing field. Students must establish who has worked in that field, what
has been learned, and build off that work to understand their own housing
practice. Relevant literature about the issues and about research methods
should therefore be identified in this essay. 
Later, the literature should be used in more detail to determine fieldwork
instruments for the practice report. This task requires you to engage with the
academic literature e.g. housing journals, books, key policy reports.
Your literature review should have a clear essay-type structure
with an introduction, main body and conclusion that keep a central narrative
around your key topic. This should complement the focus and research question
that you plan to explore in the practice report.
You might find it helpful to consult the general ‘literature
review’ page for further support including videos on searching the library
catalogue and general writing guidance.
2. Research Project
The research report should critically examine an aspect of housing
policy or practice demonstrating research and analytical skills.
If the student is on the internship route, this will
form the internship report that is required for the finalising the
internship.  If the student is not on the
internship route, this is a report that can be directly linked to their work
practices.
The student is encouraged to do this work in the context of
their work environment so that they can reflect (in elements 3 and 4) on the
experience of doing a bit of work for a  housing audience. This exercise is designed as
a smaller-scale dissertation that aims to give you experience and practice with
the research process but centred on practice.
Planning
This section shows the issues that research students should
consider in planning a project. In particular each student must complete a
proposal form (see Canvas) showing their aims, methods, literature they have
consulted etc to their supervisor. You should generate this at the beginning of
the module and discuss this with your supervisor. To generate such a plan,
students need to anticipate the following:
Background
The context for the issue to be researched – history,
legislation, policy background, identifying likely investigation or reports and
indicating the likely sources of literature, published and unpublished, texts
and electronic. Having to summarise the key issues to contextualise a research
project is a valuable exercise in itself and helps to order your thoughts. Your
supervisor might ask you to prepare a review of the literature on your topic at
an early stage to encourage you to be clear about the scope for you to make a
contribution beyond what is already known. 
Students must make full use of the University library and electronic
resources for searching material.
Aims
·      
This section should specify clearly the
principal, overarching aim of the project (This might serve as the basis for
the eventual title.) Such a question needs to be thought about and expressed as
an open question. Alternatively, it can be couched as a hypothesis, to be
tested. The key question should be broken down into secondary objectives each
of which could be made real through the methods used in the research.
·      
Aims need to be achievable when it comes to the
next section on choice of suitable and appropriate methods. In this case the
method section would need to show collection and analysis of trends in
complaints at local offices, with the student having thought about whether
these would be available to them in the timescale required.
Method and design
·      
Students need to decide what type of approach
will to enable the stated objectives to be achieved (for example, a structured
questionnaire survey, depth interviews, or a combination of methods). Projects
may use a mix of desk survey and social survey, structured or unstructured data
collections. Specific research aims determine which data sources are important
and relevant to the project, how they are planned and used. It is important
that students only collect data directly concerned with the problem.
·      
This section should explain the design deemed to
be most appropriate for the project, after due consideration of the options.
The options eventually chosen should be informed by reading about social
science research methods, drawing on recommended reading. For example, the
design should deal with the boundaries of the area to be covered, definition of
terms, the agencies, or individuals to be consulted, assessments to be carried
out, whether or not to conduct a survey of what, why and at what point in the
research. The synopsis should show the range of sources of data in existence
and those to be collected, bearing in mind the available resources. Remember
some approaches to data collection may simply not be achievable within the time
/ resources available through pilot approaches could be useful in themselves in
testing the efficacy of a method or approach.
·      
Students should record their thoughts about
which methods to use and what implications they have as these will be useful
later when writing up the methodological discussion about the research.  You may find it helpful to consult the
general ‘methods’ pages in Canvas.
The report should mirror a report structure, with:
·      
Cover page
·      
Content page
·      
Introduction
·      
Background section – briefly exploring the policy
and practice context
·      
Methods section
·      
Consideration of Ethics
·      
Findings and Discussion
·      
Conclusion
Think back you your experience of doing a consultancy report
in HOUP003, and try to focus the report for a housing audience
3. Reflective exercise.
This report explores reflective theory and your own learning
journey and experience.
The main thing to just remember is your reflective report
outlines the general reflective theory – you are looking at the different
models that we have introduced to you in HOUP001 and in these MSC materials
(see also handout ‘Reflective practice Theory and Reflective Practice
Literature Reading List). You are then to take one (or a few) of those models
and use the process to reflect on your experiences. You can draw on the following:
·      
Your current work environment
·      
Your internship (if appropriate)
·      
The experience of writing the essay and the
practice report.
·      
Your experience of completing the Housing
Studies Diploma
Think about: what happened, what you learned, how it
made you feel, and your impact on others, what you plan to change in the
future. To take this to the next level, you can then discuss and be critical of
the reflective theory – like how they don’t apply or miss something etc that is
good. If you think back to your HOUP003 links exercise that could help you
think about your critical engagement.
4. Reflective diary
You will keep a diary of your learning and housing
practice throughout the module. For your diaries try to pick out key
learning experiences to reflect on in-depth. Using the pro-forma in your MSc
shared space you then describe what have and then reflect on how this made you
feel, your impact on others, and how the experience will change your housing
practice.
For your diary you can pick one of the models that you
explored in your reflective essay and apply it into more in-depth
scenarios/experiences in your diaries. (see the ‘How do you learn’ and ‘who do
you think you are’ handout).
Reflective Diaries
Keeping a diary is a
useful way of recording your work and reflecting on the learning points. The
reflective element in particular can be used in writing the self-reflection
element of the report. The required format for diary pages here.
In completing the diary pages, you should make weekly
entries recording one or two work activities during the week and reflecting on:
·      
training methods
·      
evaluation of your performance
·      
reflection and evaluation of the experience
·      
skills development
Think about:
·      
Personal and interpersonal skills
·      
making effective use of your time
·      
working as a member of a team
·      
taking instructions
·      
working with teams