I have to admit that this week's blog questions gave me pause. Initially, I wanted to answer with an emphatic "Yes!" However, after taking sometime to reflect (my goal for this DIS is at least 10 cheesy reflection puns), I saw both progress and regression; in the end, it seems as if much work still needs to be done.
As far as progress is concerned, I think most in the field would admit that reflection in the writing classroom is definitely a beneficial practice. We have seen positive results in its ability to promote metacognition in students, the benefits it has brought to portfolio assessment, the potential it has to promote agency for students, etc. And, especially in A Rhetoric of Reflection, I definitely get the sense that, as a field, we are beginning to ask more complicated questions about our practices, which should lead to some substantial improvements in the aforementioned practices.
Yet, I also see that the practice can be co-opted in inappropriate ways as well as a tendency to adopt the practice as a universal, "one-size fits all" solution. In regard to the former, I think Ed White's "The Scoring of Writing Portfolios: Phase 2" (I realize this was not for this week's reading; however, I read it with Dr. Neal's piece in ROR to get a firmer understanding of the argument) is indicative of this. I was actually utterly shocked that reflective practices, somehow, fell victim to the "worship of efficiency." Even a practice that, in my estimation, is meant to slow us down and give us time to contemplate is being utilized for efficiency purposes! While I do not want to go on a rant against this process, I do believe it is important to point out something that came up in last week's discussion. At no point does White seem to address the fact that if you are looking for evidence of outcomes, savvy students will most likely begin to write to the outcomes. Hence, the reflections will not be evidence of the students having met the outcomes, just evidence that they are aware of the outcomes and know how to contend that they have met them.
As far as the latter is concerned, I think this connects to an argument in Dr. Neal's book. In Writing Assessment and the Revolution in Digital Texts and Technologies, he alludes to instructors combing conferences for the "perfect" assessment tool. I actually believe this metaphor extends to a lot of aspects of instruction. Once a pedagogical technique catches on, it can be embraced as a universal. Thus, everyone adopts the practice without accounting for context.
If you will, please indulge my use of a sports metaphor. When I think of this tendency, I immediately think of a hitting coach in baseball. If you watch any professional team, you will never see an entire line-up of the same batting stance and/or swing. Each player tends to have his or her own stance; thus, the job of the hitting coach is not to merely teach the same approach to everyone. Instead, he/she works with the players on modifying their particular approach to obtain the best results.
However, this is not to say that certain approaches are not inherently problematic. Years of baseball knowledge have shown us that specific tendencies in a swing (i.e. a hitch or lunging forward too far, for example) are inherently problematic. So, essentially, a hitting coach needs to adapt to the context of the team and/or individual player, but he/she probably is aware of specific practices that tend to be, on the whole, either beneficial or a hindrance.
This is where I believe RAD research comes in. Although RAD research might seem like an attempt to discover universals, I also feel that it helps us account for context. When our research designs are more oriented to the empirical, and we replicate them, we can begin to see how differences in context might be influencing certain practices, how to modify certain practices contingent on context, and--quite possibly--discover some universals that apply across most contexts.
An apt example of this would be the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research. One of the biggest reasons I am such an advocate for portfolios is the wealth of research in that area as well as the collaborative nature of such research. Not only do we have a multitude of studies on portfolios, but--in addition--portfolio researchers have done a phenomenal job of sharing their research findings, discussing them extensively, and replicating (not always exactly) certain studies to see how they play out in differing contexts. The results: some empirically supported best practices as well as a multitude of knowledge about the influence of context on the use of portfolios and how they can be best adopted to serve differing needs.
As a part of portfolio research, reflection has received this kind of attention. However, I haven't seen this kind of collaboration, replication, and empiricism in all of the reflection scholarship we have read. Thus, I think the scholarship is much stronger theoretically than it is empirically. Maybe it is time for a Reflection Coalition, independent of portfolios. I'm not sure if this would work, as I believe reflection is a lot more difficult to study in an empirical fashion. However, worst case, to paraphrase Sid Dobrin, it would be something else for our own Dr. Yancey to be president of!
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