Guided reflection to enable persistence

Skills like reflection, organization, and collaboration are important both for practicing physicists as well as physics students at all levels. In addition, unforeseen obstacles are a normal part of doing physics, and perceiving such setbacks as challenges to overcome (rather than failures that justify giving up) is a normal part of being a physicist. Students can best develop a resilient mindset in learning environments where they feel groomed for success rather than weeded out. Based on these principles and working within the framework of design-based research, we have developed a tool---the Guided Reflection Form---that facilitates student-instructor dialogue about organization, collaboration, and resilience through cycles of student reflection and instructor feedback. In this presentation, we describe the GRF and present data from two studies that analyze the content and structure of students' reflections and instructors' personalized responses.