The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program
The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program uses reflection to support its Scholars’ development.
Summary
The MasterCard Foundation (MCF) Scholars Program at the University of Edinburgh offers full scholarships to students from Sub-Saharan Africa, with the intention to provide support and developmental opportunities within leadership and academia.
Reflection is an essential part of the support and is implemented throughout the programme in coaching sessions, group discussions about social issues, and group sessions solving personal challenges.
Scholars are extremely passionate about the programme and all report benefits from reflection. Students experience a change of mindset throughout the programme as they get into the rhythm of reflection, and as it becomes natural to look for successes and areas for improvement.
Each scholar is introduced to reflection in the same way, however they all find their own personal approach throughout the programme.
Takeaways may include:
- When reflection is done well and frequently, it can develop a mindset in students to automatically and critically engage with their experiences.
- Reflection can be facilitated by simple questions, for example here three questions are used around successes, challenges, and action plans.
- Creating a designated space and time for reflection can ensure that it will happen.
- Creating a network around reflection were students can support each other can be extremely valuable for their engagement.
- If possible, having coaches to guide students through reflections can significantly increase the quality of the reflections as well as supporting students to get comfortable with the process.
| Location of practice: |
The MasterCard Foundation (MCF) Scholars Program offers scholarships to suitable candidates from both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in all degrees besides Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. Reflection is used throughout to support students’ development. |
| Reflectors: |
Successful applicants to the MCF Scholars Program. |
| Facilitators: |
The MCF Scholars Program team, reflection coaches, experts on social issues, associate chaplain. |
| Context: |
Reflection is used extensively through the MCF Scholar Program, including students reflecting on their personal development, successes and challenges in 1-to-1 sessions, as well as reflecting on their position on social issues in group sessions. |
| Time commitment: |
Reflection coaches have one 1-hour session a month with each of their scholars guiding them through reflections. |
Context overview
The MCF Scholars Program at the University of Edinburgh is a scholarship for students from Sub-Saharan Africa who show strong academic capabilities and a passion for leadership.
It is a holistic program supporting the scholars to make positive changes in their local and global communities. It helps develop the scholars’ skills, mindsets, and attitudes of transformative leadership through a range of activities. These include volunteer opportunities, summer schools, work-based placements, masterclasses, and leadership retreats.
Introducing and implementing reflection in the context
There are multiple ways in which the scholars reflect throughout their time at the University to help them develop into transformative leaders.
All of the activities the Scholars Program hosts are co-curricular and seek to understand, practice, and embody transformative leadership. Throughout the scholars’ degrees, the programme introduces new aspects of transformative leadership, each of which include reflection.
Each scholar is matched with a personal reflection coach, with whom they meet for an hour each month. The coach supports them to reflect on topics relevant to the scholar at that time. The reflection sessions are semi-structured as all coaches are sent a coaching manual and have a set of questions available to support them.
In the sessions scholars discuss questions and record their answers on post-it notes. Questions include:
- A light check-in question, such as what animal do you feel like today and why? (This reflective prompt forces students to think about how they are feeling, why that might be, and match that to an animal – it is about self-examination to gain self-awareness)
- What are three challenges that you have faced this month?
- What are three successes?
- What is your action plan for the next month?
- Finally, a check-out question similar to the check-in.
The check-in/out questions become a tradition and are asked at most MCF Scholar Program events. A lot of the reflections happen verbally, while others are written using post-it notes. Some of the most frequently asked questions in the students’ reflective practice are ‘why’ and ‘how’.
Scholars also meet in gender-specific groups led by an academic or an MCF Scholar Program team member to discuss issues around feminism, equality, identity etc. They discuss papers relevant to the topic and the theory in relation to their own lives. They discuss questions about how it applies to themselves and their roles as leaders. Moreover, scholars reflect on their thoughts and feelings around these issues and how they want to act in the future. In this way the reflective practice critically places the individual within the context they are operating.
In sessions led by associate chaplain Reverent Geoffrey Baines, scholars take turns raising an issue or a challenge they are struggling with. In collaboration they work towards a solution using reflection to examine the problem and plan further actions.
In their later years, scholars have the opportunity to become reflection coaches themselves.
The programme team have identified that building trust, confidentiality and support are essential to the success of sharing reflections. Therefore, they are implementing an intermediate position between coaches and the MCF team.
Coaches can share scholar’s challenges to the intermediate who then can relay the gist of this information to the programme team while maintaining anonymity of the particular scholars. This ensures that the team is best able to support all scholars, while not breaking the trust of the reflective coaching relationship.
Response to reflection:
Some scholars are initially hesitant to engage with the reflection coaches due to trust and confidentiality concerns. However, this concern has always been managed and all scholars seem to engage well with reflection and enjoy it.
Scholars talk about how reflection is difficult but amazing to do. They also report that they look forward to the reflection sessions and that reflection changes from being a practical tool to a mindset. All scholars find benefits from reflection.
One of the likely reasons that the reflection aspect of the initiative is so strongly effective is that scholars are guided by coaches and engage with reflection with the other scholars. This support helps to ensure that reflections are both critical and meaningful.
Assessing reflection
The MCF Scholars Program does not assess reflection. The team want the reflections to be a successful learning tool without the added pressure of achieving a grade, especially as all reflective activities are co-curricular. Students should be relaxed to enable authentic reflections.
However, the scholars’ reflections should still be critical and ‘good’ to the extent that reflections will engage critically with the scholar’s own perspective and assumptions.
Moreover, a lot of the reflections have an element of planning for future actions. This is to engage with challenges that scholars have identified as holding them back.
Conclusion
The MCF Program includes a large range of reflective activities to support its scholars’ development as leaders and their wellbeing. The reflective initiative is extremely successful and scholars report looking forward to their reflection sessions. The levels of support that scholars receive throughout the programme, from coaches and from other students, help to surface and enhance critical reflections which enable their personal development.
Further information
MCF Scholars Program website (University of Edinburgh site)
Key contacts
Johanna Holtan (Programme Manager)
Dr Pete Kingsley (Student Development Coordinator)