Over the past couple of weeks, we have been exposed to a number of workshops on reflection, aimed at students, parents and teachers. Reflection has always been an area that I have strived to include within my lesson activities based on the premise that it allows students time and an understanding on how to improve. Consequently, these sessions have brought reflection back to the forefront of my mind, attempting to analyse why it is an important tool in the classroom and how to best teach the skill.

Reading Aaron’s depiction of ‘What is your watch?’ made me feel at home as I myself had a similar experience of wearing the same watch everyday despite the battery being dead for a year long period. Despite it not serving its original purpose of telling the time, wearing the watch had become a habit, part of my daily routine and a piece of jewellery. Is that what the term reflection has become for me? A tool that I use in the classroom which has become so inherent within my scheme of work and content that I have forgotten its original and perhaps range of potential uses? Maybe not as far as this, but what this article highlighted to me is the importance of truly operationalising the use of our teaching tools in the classroom. Not only will this be beneficial for our students, but also ourselves to identify and create different ways to implement these skills.

One  question that I want to address in my own practice is ‘How can we encourage students to reflect in a meaningful and productive way?’. As we strive to implement the skill of reflection as an inherent component in our classroom, it is important to ask ourselves and define the purpose of the activity. Do we want students to consider their experience holistically? Are we encouraging focus on a specific concept? Should students reflect after each lesson, each CAS activity session? One fundamental characteristic of reflection is that it provides a meaningful platform form for students to fully engage within the process of their learning; I wonder if ‘reflection’ is at danger of becoming another arbitrary task which students apply no introspective effort and reflect in a way they think they ought to, if it is over-used or applied as an addition to our daily learning activities.

Secondly, has the difference between ‘self-reflection’ and ‘self-evaluation’ been fully discussed with my students? We want our students to show resilience, yet know that through our own methods of reflection that this can often become a source of self-evaluation and criticism.  Although reflection enables individuals to direct their thoughts based on our aspirations and goals, often our inner voice of reflection can turn into an inner critic. Zimmerman (2000) provides further elaboration to understanding reflection through self-regultory processes by capturing the cyclical relationship it demands with our motivation and self-esteem. Rather than a liner perspective where learning is one-directional, learning can be encapsulated at any stage depending on our motivations, self-concept and ability to self-regulate. Such an important conceptual difference lies here, yet is this clear within the classroom? Do we fully encourage reflection on individual feelings, perceptions, and significance, or can sometimes reflection feed straight into an activity that highlights student strengths and weaknesses?  Reflection should empower our students but can it sometimes lead to anxiety due to a focus on areas of development?

Finally, my post would like to provide some suggestions about understanding the concept of reflection and how this can impact on how I use the skill within my classroom:

1. Finding appropriate and sufficient time for effective reflection to take place. Allowing freedom and choice over the time spend (with recommended guidelines) and acknowledging that reflection can take place immediately after an activity but also planning within lessons where it will assist with building on their conceptual understanding of the topic and subject as a whole. Perhaps allowing key reflection points at significant aspects of the course.
2. Acknowledging that reflection is a skill. Not assuming that students are aware of the skill of reflecting, remembering that I can guide them through the process with prompts, different methods and an awareness there will be individual differences in this process.
3. Having open conversations about reflection – use this to maintain positivity and promote a growth mindset rather than an inner critic. This will allow students to maintain motivation, positive self-concept and therefore continue to self-regulate to change their future learning (Pintrich, 2003). Explicitly discussing the differences in reflection and evaluation can aid to prompt a positive approach rather than critical.
4. Modelling my own reflection process. Allowing students to see how I may use the skill of reflection to improve teaching in the classroom
5. Sharing & Collaboration of reflection experiences – not as a form of comparison but to broaden our conceptual understandings of what is happening around us, whether that is within lessons but also our daily experiences and interactions with each other.

I would love to hear your thoughts on reflection and how we can use it effectively within the classroom!

#reflection #motivation #self-reflection

References:

Pintrich, P.R., 2003. A Motivational Science Perspective on the Role of Student Motivation in Learning and Teaching Contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95 (4), pp. 667-686.

Zimmerman, B.J., 2000. Attainment of self-regulation: A social cognitive perspective. In M. Boekaerts, P.R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp. 13-39). San Diego, CA: Academic Press