The use of critical incidents to foster reflection and learning in HRD

Abstract In my role as a human resource development (HRD) faculty member, I often feel that students perceive my teaching of instructional systems design and program evaluation much like a play within a play. In other words, as 1 teach about teaching others, my students silently critique and sometimes assimilate what I do. For this reason, I have become keenly sensitive to the importance of modeling effective teaching and learning practices in the classroom. In a continuous effort to find ways to enhance my teaching and my students' critical reflection and learning, I decided to undertake a research study to examine the ways in which critical incidents affect learning experiences (Brookfield, 1995). The critical incident method asks students to respond to a set of evaluative questions each week of the course. The instructor then reads and summarizes the responses and returns the summaries to the students during the following class period. At that time they are discussed and possible changes in the course are negotiated.