Reflection in Learning and Professional Development

Theory and Practice

Jennifer A. Moon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136763632
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Reflection is a technique for aiding and reinforcing learning, used in education and professional development. This volume offers practitioners and students guidance that cuts across theoretical approaches, enabling them to understand and use reflection to enhance learning in practice.

Part I The literature of reflection

Chapter 1 Some background to the study of reflection

DOI: 10.4324/9780203822296-1

Introduction

This chapter provides some background to the discussions of reflection in its different contexts. First, the lay or common-sense view of the term is considered because, if there is to be an improvement in reflective processes, it will be most effective if the idea is clearly related to the general understanding of the word. This view of the term is used as a basis for comparison with the more technical views of reflection.

The chapter moves on to lay another foundation for reflection that tends to be neglected. Part of the common understanding of the term is that reflective capacity varies among individuals and develops with age but also within an educationally stimulating environment. The discussion considers several studies that have viewed aspects of reflection as an evolving capacity within individuals.

Common-sense views of reflection

Writing in the literature of teacher training, Morrison (1996) refers to reflection as a ‘conceptual and methodological portmanteau’. As has already been intimated, the literature contains many interpretations of the word and, immersed within this chaotic catalogue of meanings, it can be difficult to recall that there are common-sense meanings of reflection as well. As this book provides practical support to those encouraging reflection, it is necessary to take into account the understandings of the word that people bring to a learning situation and clarify where these understandings differ from theoretical interpretations. for example, there are some theoretical definitions of the term that are narrow, in effect honing off parts of the commonly understood activity by denoting particular purposes or conditions under which reflection occurs. Reflective judgement (described later in this chapter), is one such example (King and Kitchener, 1994) .While this makes it more manageable for research or application purposes, it can have the effect of dissociating it from common-place experience. This contributes to a split between theory, theorizing and practice.

The way in which the word ‘reflection’ is commonly used suggests several understandings. First, that reflection seems to lie somewhere around the process of learning and the representation of that learning. We reflect on something in order to consider it in more detail (‘Let me reflect on what you are saying’) or to re-represent it in oral or written form. Second, to be of significance for study, we have to regard reflection as implying purpose (Dewey, 1933; Hullfish and Smith, 1961). Generally, we reflect for a purpose, although conclusions to complicated issues can just ‘pop up’ without our being conscious of there having been a reflective process. This last situation could imply that reflection has occurred unconsciously and might then overlap with intuition. An alternative to the notion of processing with purpose, therefore, is processing that leads to a useful outcome.

The third understanding of the word is that it involves complicated mental processing of issues for which there is no obvious solution (Dewey, 1933; King and Kitchener, 1994). For example, people do not use the word reflection to describe their processing of simple mental arithmetic or their mental processes en route to a known place. They are more likely to use the words ‘think’ or ‘recall’. Rather, reflection appears to suggest more processing than would occur when simply recalling something.

These considerations indicate that common usage of the word imply a form of mental processing with a purpose and/or an anticipated outcome that is applied to relatively complicated or unstructured ideas for which there is not an obvious solution. This suggests close association with, or involvement in, learning and the representation of learning.

As well as developing tight definitions of the term itself, some writers have elaborated forms, levels and other categorizations of the process. Examples are Van Manen's levels of reflection (Van Manen, 1977) and Schön's reflection in-and on-action (Schön, 1983).While, again, these categorizations may be helpful in trying to ‘capture’ reflection for academic use, they do not seem to be represented in common language. They may, indeed, represent different forms of reflection – or else the forms may appear to differ because they have been initiated or guided differently or used for different purposes. For example, reflection is interpreted as a specialized tool for professional practice and interpreted differently from its involvement in learning from experience. The mental act, however, may be the same in both and perhaps no different than if applied by a child who reflects on what she did when she last played with her favourite toy. Reflection may, therefore, be a much more simple activity than the contents of the portmanteau mentioned above might seem to indicate. The distinctions may be in how it is guided, used or treated theoretically.

In the common-sense meaning of reflection, there can be an overlap between the use of words such as ‘reflection’ and ‘thinking’. These words can refer to the same activity – for example, the notion of the ‘reflective practitioner’ (Schön, 1983), is largely captured in the colloquial phrase ‘thinking on your feet’. Similarly, phrases such as ‘let me think about this one …’ and ‘let me ponder or reflect on this’ appear to have the same meaning.

In another sense, the term is used to pull together a broad range of previous thinking or knowledge in order to make greater sense of it for another purpose that may transcend the previous bounds of personal knowledge or thought. An example is where the sense of it is that of taking an overview or ‘sitting back’ from a situation to review it. The notions of critical thinking or critical reflection come into this usage of the term (Barnett, 1994), and this connotation also relates to the idea of being wise or having wisdom in the sense of ‘being reflective’. ‘Being reflective’ itself has broader connotations as it is more like a long-term characteristic of a person's behaviour, rather than the description of a mental activity. A person who is reflective seems to be someone who comfortably and successfully engages in the mental activity of reflection and would make decisions that are well considered. This accords with the reflective learning style (Honey and Mumford, 1986). In the literature, the term ‘reflective practitioner’ often seems to relate more strongly to the characteristics of the person than to the habitual use of reflection as a mental tool, though, in some cases, both meanings are implied in the term.

From these various considerations, more common views of reflection emerge. It is seen as a means of transcending more usual patterns of thought to enable the taking of a critical stance or an overview. There is also the idea of ‘being reflective’, which says something about the type of person and their manner of behaving and engagement in the mental activity of reflection. The word is applied here with the sense of saying something not so much about what a person does as what they are.

We begin to get a picture of a common idea that has a variety of different connotations.This picture is developed more strongly over subsequent chapters. The question is, do these different ways in which reflection is viewed describe different mental activities or one activity with different interpretations? The different ways of using the word have significance for theoretical writing about reflection as well as practical applications or evaluations of it in education or practice (Newell, 1994; Fitzgerald, 1994).The suggestion that is set up for testing in subsequent chapters is that reflection itself is a mental process with purpose and/or outcome. It is applied in situations where material is ill-structured or uncertain in that it has no obvious solutions, a mental process that seems to be related to thinking and to learning. It is suggested that the apparent differences in reflection are not due to different types of reflection – in other words, to differences in the process itself, but to differences in the way that it is used, applied or guided. The term ‘framework’ is applied to these uses or applications or means of guiding the activity.

If reflection is a relatively simple mental process, another set of concerns in this part of the book is to disentangle the basic activity from the surrounding frameworks.

Developmental stage approaches to reflection

There are some hints of a hierarchical, if not a developmental, approach to reflection in the work of a number of writers. For example, Habermas and Van Manen's work, which is discussed in the next chapter, suggests an organization of knowledge that moves from capacity for interpretation of relatively structured information towards the need to interpret in situations of uncertain ideas.

The individual's progression from dealing with basic ‘certain’ knowledge to working with uncertainty is one of the strands that underlies the developmental stage approaches to reflection and the development of thinking (Belenky, Clinchy Goldberger and Tarule, 1986; King and Kitchener, 1994). The feature of these studies clearly common to them all is that the highest stage of development is characterized again by an awareness of, and the ability to work with, provisional or uncertain knowledge.

The studies of reflective thinking of King and Kitchener

In contrast to much of the literature on reflection, which has applied reflection or its interpretation, King and Kitchener base their construct on a substantial volume of empirical work that focuses on the quality of cognitive activity involved in reflective thinking (King and Kitchener, 1994). ‘Reflective judgement’ is the term that they apply to the most advanced stage of the reflective judgement model, and the model is a description of the development of reflective thinking in their terminology. They are not, therefore, concerned with the whole idea of reflection, but with a derived construct that is defined for experimental purposes.Their findings, however, elaborate our understanding as a whole.

In their model of reflective judgement, seven stages are described, but the first three are seen as ‘pre-reflective thinking’, with the subject viewing knowledge as almost always stable and certain. Only the final two stages are designated as being truly reflective. The ability to make reflective judgements is the most advanced stage. The implication is that the advanced stages are not attained by everyone.

The authors note that reflective judgement is identified as a more advanced form of thinking than the ‘top’ stage identified in Perry's classic study of (male) students' intellectual and ethical development (Perry, 1970).The ability to make reflective judgements, therefore, is characteristically adult and appears to result from a developmental progression. Knowledge and reasoning skills are involved in the lower stages of the model. However, the capacity to make reflective judgements is taken to indicate that individuals have reached an understanding that enables them to cope in situations of uncertain information. In these situations, the subject can acknowledge that there is no ‘right answer’ and can accept that experts may disagree as to the ‘best solution’ of a dilemma. In this respect, King and Kitchener note the similarity between their model and that of moral judgement (Kohlberg, 1963), in that the most advanced stages both rely on a person's ability to cope with uncertain knowledge.

It is also in respect of a person's understanding of the uncertainty of knowledge that King and Kitchener distinguish between reflective thinking and critical thinking. In their view, critical thinking is aligned with problem-solving skills where a set of techniques, which can be learned, will facilitate the process of solution. It is suggested that the ability to reach the higher stages of reflective thinking may require these problem-solving skills, but that a capacity to cope with uncertainty is required in addition.

The King and Kitchener reflective judgement model is supported by substantial experimental work over more than 10 years, with 1700 subjects in 33 studies. Given its experimental basis, it is worth remembering that while the aim might have been to measure ‘epistemological cognition’, there was inevitably influence from variables affecting the ability to express or represent the cognitions, whether orally or in written tasks. The difficulty of distinguishing the processes of learning from the representation of that learning is common to many studies of reflection and learning.

Studies of ‘women's ways of knowing'

The work of Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger and Tarule (1986) demonstrates some findings in common with those of King and Kitchener. They describe their work as research on the problems of learning and knowing and, like King and Kitchener, refer to the work of Perry (1970). However, they distinguish their approach sharply from that of Perry because their subjects were a selected and not socially representative group of women of a mixed age group while Perry worked with male students. Like Perry, but unlike the more experimental approach of King, et al., Belenky, et at, used a loose interview structure as the research tool and organized the observed patterns of thinking and attitudes into a series of stages of development of knowledge.

Underlying the work of Belenky, et al., is the contention that there is gender bias in many studies of thinking, with the bias being perpetuated within the structure of a male-managed educational system. They question the assumption that men function cognitively in the same way as women or that the genders share similar needs when it comes to the support they need for their learning. They make proposals for the types of educational provision that might fit the particular development needs of women.

The interpretation of the interviews of the women in the Belenky study distinguishes seven groups that were characterized by epistemological understanding and the relationship of their views of themselves to their knowing. While the categories are not presented as stages of a developmental process, there is an implication that they do represent progression and the suggestion is made that women who were not challenging themselves educationally or were unable to move from disadvantaged backgrounds would not progress beyond the earlier categories.

While there is a broad similarity between the King, et al., and Belenky, et al., schemes, most striking is the match between the stage of reflective judgement of the former and Belenky's ‘position of constructed knowledge’, which is also the highest category in the latter research. Women in this group understood that knowledge is provisional and that the knower is part of the construction of...