Implementation and assessment of an experiment in reflective thinking to enrich higher education students’ learning through mediated narratives

Abstract This article describes an intervention aimed at fostering reflective thinking in order to investigate its impact in the learning process and competences development of two groups of second-year students on the Early Childhood Education Degree at the University of Barcelona. The design of the study was based on experimental parameters which we characterise here as quasi-experimental with a quasi-control group. The apparatuses used were narrative approaches as vehicles for reflection on students’ own activities. A self-administered questionnaire (with closed and open written responses) assessed the effects of the intervention. The resulting data were analysed with triangulated statistical techniques (lexicometry and bivariate statistics). Our findings confirm that reflective thinking through narratives is valuable for the meaningful understanding of knowledge and its reinterpretation from the standpoint of students’ self-regulation of their own learning.