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!
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Friday, May 30, 2014
Week Three: A (Reflective) Narrative of Progress?
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Reading Across the Readings: Transfer, Narrative, and Synthesis
Before I move into my notes, I'd like to say that I was also reminded of Lacan when reading the Emmons passage Joe cited. I also didn't fully work through any coherent thoughts about what Lacan has to do with reflection, but it's interesting that we both went to that place.
One similarity that I noticed across the texts is the assumption that reflection and transfer are related, which was surprising to me, given that it seems that connection has only recently begun to be explored explicitly. Burke's critical pedagogy seems to operate under the assumption that students will transfer their linguistic reflection: "Linguistic reflection, Burke points out, is the institutionalizing of an attitude; it habituates students into responding to literature and life with careful and critical thought. Reflection, then, does not just prompt and interpret action; reflection is an action. Reflection is a way to act on and approach the world" (291). What students learn through critical reflection pedagogy is not merely a "habit of mind" but also an action on "the world." Similarly, Bowers and Emmons point to the necessity of students' making explicit connections between their reflections on writing and specific discourse community conventions. Emmons writes, "[S]tudents who can reflect on the rhetorical and social practices of the composition classroom (rather than those who simply reflect on their own internal practices) are more likely to be able to transfer these skills to new writing situations." Similarly, Bower contends that students who do not cite specific examples or provide sufficient details about their thinking are not demonstrating that they have learned: "This may mean that most students have not gained control over their thinking but are merely paying lip service to the classroom’s values, a move that does not alter thinking about writing on a long-term basis" (60).
Though I agree with Emmons and Bower that students do need to consider the activity systems within which they are working, including the conventions of those systems, I wonder whether Bower and Emmons' claims are applicable outside of the reflection-in-presentation context. As Yancey makes clear in her discussion of the three types of reflection and reflection in the assessment context, there is a difference between tacit reflection, prompted reflection, and reflection for an other. In other words, I'm wondering whether what Bower and Emmons claim might have more to do with what readers value in students' reflections-in-presentation than with what we hope reflection can do for our students. As Yancey explains, "the constrained version of the comprehensive reflective text is constrained for a reason, to produce something predictable" (77). Though the constraints vary, as Yancey points out in her discussion of reflection and assessment, some situations--such as high-stakes assessments--require more direction than others.
However, prompts and scaffolding do seem important for most classroom instances of reflection. Yancey provides several examples of how we might scaffold students' reflection-in-action and constructive reflection. What I find interesting about this discussion of the types of reflection and how we might prompt reflection is the importance of dialogue--between student and teacher, student and student, and a student and herself--and of narrative. Emmons provides one example of narrative--the narrative of progress--but Yancey provides many more. For instance, Yancey writes, "Through reflection, we tell our stories of learning: in the writing classroom, our stories of writing and of having written and of will write tomorrow; in other classes, other stories, often told through writing, too. This story-making involves our taking a given story, and our lived stories, and making them anew" (53). These stories "construct us, one by one by one" and so, Yancey claims, "it's important to tell lots of stories where we get to construct the many selves for us to attempt, some we continue to inhabit" (53). Here, Yancey implies that narrative is not only unavoidable, but that it has the important function of self-making. But the self that is made is not necessarily unitary or stable: "Any self we see within text, particularly autobiography but reflection-in-presentation as well, is multiple, is shaped, is constructed; is necessarily contingent, transitory and filled with tension" (73). Perhaps the problem with the narrative of progress is that readers are not seeing the kind of selves Yancey describes: the narrative of progress paints an overly simplified picture of the student writer, one that cannot coincide with the reality of that students' experiences. Also, as Yancey explains in her work on postmodernism and palimpsest in portfolios, print portfolios constrain the writing in such a way that students must produce linear narratives, whereas web-sensible portfolios create the conditions for alternative self-construction.
I find myself with several questions after completing the readings:
1. What role does narrative play in reflection-in-presentation, and does that role change or disappear once we start thinking about web-sensible eportfolios?
2. Yancey mentioned synthesis as an important dimension of reflection, and though she doesn't use the word "synthesis" in describing reflection-in-presentation, it seems to be lurking there. It also seems to be an important part of constructive reflection, though as Yancey points out, this type of reflection is usually tacit and private. Constructive reflection seems most clearly related to writing transfer, so I wonder if synthesis is necessary for writing transfer (i.e. theory of writing as synthesis of ideas about writing).
3. On p 30-31, Yancey mentions scales that one might use in discussing reflection with students. I'm curious to hear more about how these scales have factored into reflective pedagogies.
One similarity that I noticed across the texts is the assumption that reflection and transfer are related, which was surprising to me, given that it seems that connection has only recently begun to be explored explicitly. Burke's critical pedagogy seems to operate under the assumption that students will transfer their linguistic reflection: "Linguistic reflection, Burke points out, is the institutionalizing of an attitude; it habituates students into responding to literature and life with careful and critical thought. Reflection, then, does not just prompt and interpret action; reflection is an action. Reflection is a way to act on and approach the world" (291). What students learn through critical reflection pedagogy is not merely a "habit of mind" but also an action on "the world." Similarly, Bowers and Emmons point to the necessity of students' making explicit connections between their reflections on writing and specific discourse community conventions. Emmons writes, "[S]tudents who can reflect on the rhetorical and social practices of the composition classroom (rather than those who simply reflect on their own internal practices) are more likely to be able to transfer these skills to new writing situations." Similarly, Bower contends that students who do not cite specific examples or provide sufficient details about their thinking are not demonstrating that they have learned: "This may mean that most students have not gained control over their thinking but are merely paying lip service to the classroom’s values, a move that does not alter thinking about writing on a long-term basis" (60).
Though I agree with Emmons and Bower that students do need to consider the activity systems within which they are working, including the conventions of those systems, I wonder whether Bower and Emmons' claims are applicable outside of the reflection-in-presentation context. As Yancey makes clear in her discussion of the three types of reflection and reflection in the assessment context, there is a difference between tacit reflection, prompted reflection, and reflection for an other. In other words, I'm wondering whether what Bower and Emmons claim might have more to do with what readers value in students' reflections-in-presentation than with what we hope reflection can do for our students. As Yancey explains, "the constrained version of the comprehensive reflective text is constrained for a reason, to produce something predictable" (77). Though the constraints vary, as Yancey points out in her discussion of reflection and assessment, some situations--such as high-stakes assessments--require more direction than others.
However, prompts and scaffolding do seem important for most classroom instances of reflection. Yancey provides several examples of how we might scaffold students' reflection-in-action and constructive reflection. What I find interesting about this discussion of the types of reflection and how we might prompt reflection is the importance of dialogue--between student and teacher, student and student, and a student and herself--and of narrative. Emmons provides one example of narrative--the narrative of progress--but Yancey provides many more. For instance, Yancey writes, "Through reflection, we tell our stories of learning: in the writing classroom, our stories of writing and of having written and of will write tomorrow; in other classes, other stories, often told through writing, too. This story-making involves our taking a given story, and our lived stories, and making them anew" (53). These stories "construct us, one by one by one" and so, Yancey claims, "it's important to tell lots of stories where we get to construct the many selves for us to attempt, some we continue to inhabit" (53). Here, Yancey implies that narrative is not only unavoidable, but that it has the important function of self-making. But the self that is made is not necessarily unitary or stable: "Any self we see within text, particularly autobiography but reflection-in-presentation as well, is multiple, is shaped, is constructed; is necessarily contingent, transitory and filled with tension" (73). Perhaps the problem with the narrative of progress is that readers are not seeing the kind of selves Yancey describes: the narrative of progress paints an overly simplified picture of the student writer, one that cannot coincide with the reality of that students' experiences. Also, as Yancey explains in her work on postmodernism and palimpsest in portfolios, print portfolios constrain the writing in such a way that students must produce linear narratives, whereas web-sensible portfolios create the conditions for alternative self-construction.
I find myself with several questions after completing the readings:
1. What role does narrative play in reflection-in-presentation, and does that role change or disappear once we start thinking about web-sensible eportfolios?
2. Yancey mentioned synthesis as an important dimension of reflection, and though she doesn't use the word "synthesis" in describing reflection-in-presentation, it seems to be lurking there. It also seems to be an important part of constructive reflection, though as Yancey points out, this type of reflection is usually tacit and private. Constructive reflection seems most clearly related to writing transfer, so I wonder if synthesis is necessary for writing transfer (i.e. theory of writing as synthesis of ideas about writing).
3. On p 30-31, Yancey mentions scales that one might use in discussing reflection with students. I'm curious to hear more about how these scales have factored into reflective pedagogies.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Navigating through multiple social worlds through reflection
After reading this week's texts, I'm drawn to a few other readings that come to mind that have helped me think through this content. In particular, I'm drawn to Cooper's ecological model of writing and, by extension, Wardle and Roozen's ecological model for writing assessment--overall, it's that idea of "ecologies" that I'm really interested in and how reflection interacts with that idea.
Through these readings, I've come to see ecological models of writing/assessment intersecting with reflection in two ways: (1) as a way to situate reflection in post-process (something I'm only starting to understand); and (2) reflection as a mechanism for students to navigate through their multiple social worlds and writing experiences.
This first level, involving post-process, seems most clearly related to Bower's and Emmons' pieces--I really enjoyed both of these. From my (horribly reductive, etc) understanding of post-process, we're supposed to be attended not just to a student's process that leads up to that product, but to attend to how several networks of writing experiences, cultural attitudes, social worlds collide with our student's process and how the products produced in these networks are further functioning within our student's, society's, culture's world (if this isn't what post-process is, then just ignore my use of the term). This, I believe, is why Bower's and Emmons' seem hesitant to accept reflection as readily helpful for learning self-evidently; in particular, Emmons' writes, outright, "while we encourage students to take an active and thoughtful role in assessing their work," through a reflective text, "we paradoxically allow them to remain isolated from the social-interactional nature of that work" (44). Throughout her article, she frequently pushes against ideas from process and expressivist theories of writing which, as she writes, "privilege introspective knowledge over community of practices" (51). Emmons, in other words, is seeing how tacking on reflection to a student is not actually helpful if we as teachers have not expressed to students how they can think beyond the transaction of content for grade and instead reflection (when focusing on communities of practice) allow students a language to talk about--and ultimately understand--how writing operates in contexts beyond the immediate classroom experieinces. Bower offers more specific examples of students using ideographic language to describe their writing (such as using the phrase "critical thinking" liberally without really knowing what it means) or describing growth or learning without contextualizing that growth or learning within their networks of other writing experiences. Bower is recognizing, again, the opportunity that reflection has to allow students to connect to prior experiences to help in future writing activities--she also isn't seeing students doing that or developing a language to talk about it.
So, then, that idea leads me to the second level of how I see ecological models of writing/assessment intersecting with reflection: reflection, it seems, is a mechanism through which our students can give meaning to their new experiences (in writing and otherwise) by bringing awareness to the meanings that their prior experiences can offer, but ultimately reflection allows to bridge new and old experiences to begin to form a state of mind or being (metacognition, maybe?). Jessica Enoch's pieces--which I also really enjoyed--gets to this point using Burke's use of reflection in his pedagogy. Burke used reflection ("linguistic meditation") in his classrooms to prompt his students to recognize the relationship between language and human relations; Enoch writes, "students should spend their time in school learning to 'meditate upon the tangle of symbolism in which all men are by their nature caught'" (280) There is, of course, a lot I want to say here, but I am particularly drawn to his use of "tangle"--the idea that we need to almost comb through something we already have somewhere in our conscious through these kinds of reflective exercises. But further, Burke is theorizing the relationship between language and human relations--he focuses particularly on how student's awareness of this relationship will aid in understanding the relationships in their everyday lives or their ideology, politics, friendships, etc. This seems to be leading to how reflection can aid in bring awareness to ecologies of writing experiences.
I want to mention one last observation very briefly: Bower writes, "we can not know the world directly; instead we compose our knowledge of the world when we compose with language" (49). And connected to this excerpt I go to Emmons: "self-reflection is a simple mirror of the individual, obscuring the social realities of her writing situations"(60). I connect these two excerpts because in both these sections, I was reminded of Jacques Lacan's Mirror Stage: the idea that to form an idea of oneself, we look toward a mirror, but we cannot understand ourself directly, but we have to look toward the "surround" of ourself--the things that build us (Slavoj Zizek talks about this as well). When we don't provide our students a language that reflects their direct self or we don't allow them to opportunity to access that language, then they cannot represent themselves to understand themselves--and by extension we cannot see them for who they are. I think Enoch further shows us that reflection is important for Burke for that reason: the ways in which students access that language, represent themselves through that language, and use that language to enact change is very powerful--for the individual and the collective.
I haven't really thought through reflections connection to Lacan, but I think there's something really interesting there.
I haven't really thought through reflections connection to Lacan, but I think there's something really interesting there.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Reflection: Triumphs and Perils
Reading across the texts for this week's meeting, I was intrigued by the rather candid discussions of the potential pitfalls of reflection. When we first learn of reflection (which for many of us is in our teacher training, as Erin's blog post last week alluded to), we tend to be introduced to its potential benefits and transformational power. Yet, across most of these readings, the authors are quite skeptical about whether this "power" is actually realized in most instances. Bower and Emmons both view reflection as potentially subversive of its own intentions, Enoch appears to view reflection--through Burke's pedagogy--as beneficial only when it counters typical classroom patterns, and even Yancy, quite the advocate of reflection, views it as only being productive when enacted appropriately.
Also, perhaps due to my own terministic screen(s), the word agency kept jumping out at me, whether it was used directly or was alluded to in a less direct fashion. However, more on that to come.
To tackle these issues, I figured I'd tackle them in relation to both my classroom teaching and my scholarship (I realize dividing the two is quite a false exercise, yet it serves a purpose here I think).
As far as the classroom is concerned, especially while reading Bower and Emmons, I found myself nodding in agreement with many of the assertions in the readings for this week. As much as I value portfolios and the reflections my students produce, the tropes these authors point out are, I believe, all too familiar for those who teach using reflection. Intriguingly, this is always quite surprising to me since my assignment prompt for the portfolio in my classes always addresses directly the "narrative of progress" as well as the "schmooze factor." Having been warned about these before I ever started teaching, the assignment prompt directly tries to address this, and I usually go over this with the class quite extensively. And yet, no matter how hard I try, I usually receive at least a couple of reflections that resort to the "I finally saw the light!" narrative and/or the "Let me try to kiss Bruce's rear without it being too blatantly obvious" move. These tropes seem to have been learned early on by many students.
While I have been told, and tend to believe, that I have a pretty strong BS detector, I must admit that I think we can all fall prey to these tropes when they are disguised in a certain manner. As Laurel Bower suggests, "For the most part, however, students seem more concerned with pleasing the teacher and appealing to his/her set of values than analyzing their priorities and thinking" (60). I've started to notice this over my last few semesters; it makes me wonder how sincere these appeals to our values actually are sometimes. Reflecting on my own career as a student, as bull-headed as I am, even I must profess to appealing to an instructors values from time to time even if I wasn't fully on board with them. Do our students sometimes just tell us what they think we want to hear? If so, is any real learning taking place?"
However, these readings did cause me to reflect on (cue Letterman-esque drummer) how I do not always scaffold reflection well in my classroom, and how this might be the underlying reason behind students' reflections appearing, at times, to "parrot" values rather than actually engage with critical thinking. Yet, I do hesitate with the writer's memo at times due to how it can influence my response; it seems strange, but--in a way--I value sometimes responding to students' writing from the perspective of a reader not clued into their intentions. In essence, I want to respond without the benefit of knowing what they are trying to accomplish, to place myself in the frame of a reader who is encountering a text without the writer's intentions known to him/her. This has led me to contemplate using more "talk-back" strategies with my response practices. In this manner, I could respond in that way yet subsequently let the student inform me about their processes after my response to further promote a dialogue. This appears like it might give me the best of both worlds.
And, since I have been discussing response, it seems a natural transition into my scholarship discussion. Reading these texts caused me to question the potential methodologies of my dissertation in a quite profound way. When I initially asked Dr. Yancey to do a DIS on reflection with me, my intention was to find a way to use reflective writing to code for agency. Therefore, in my initial research design, reflection is a requirement for any classroom I will study.
Yancey's Reflection in the Writing Classroom, though, caused me to think long and hard about this. So focused on finding a way to code for agency, I failed to realize I might have frozen an important variable. Without going into too much detail, my dissertation is trying to look at various response styles and see how they influence student agency. My theory is that the effect(s) of various commentary styles are highly predicated upon the classroom context; thus, the effects of directive and facilitative response styles on student agency are less determined by the actual written comments than they are by how they integrate into the classroom context.
Thus, through Yancey and the other articles, I started to question whether reflection might need to play a larger role in my research. Essentially, I realized that reflection might be, quite possibly, the most vital variable. Without droning on ad nausea, basically what I'm trying to say is that reflective writing might have quite an influence on fostering agency in our students. Could a more "directive" response style that incorporates reflection actually be less controlling than a "facilitative" style that
never asks students to reflect (these terms are in quotes since I think the binary is quite questionable)? I would tend to believe so. Hence, having reflection as a given in each classroom I study might be quite problematic.
In the end, I wound up drastically shifting my beliefs about the role reflection plays in developing agency in young writers. Intriguingly, though, I always thought I placed such a heavy value on it until I actually reflected (Have I used up my reflection "pun" quota yet?) on how I integrate it into my teaching and how it is handled in my research design. Once I brought my thought processes to the surface, it became quite apparent that I still have much to learn. While this might seem like cause for concern, isn't making our thought processes and assumptions more readily apparent to ourselves one of the primary goals of reflection?
Also, perhaps due to my own terministic screen(s), the word agency kept jumping out at me, whether it was used directly or was alluded to in a less direct fashion. However, more on that to come.
To tackle these issues, I figured I'd tackle them in relation to both my classroom teaching and my scholarship (I realize dividing the two is quite a false exercise, yet it serves a purpose here I think).
As far as the classroom is concerned, especially while reading Bower and Emmons, I found myself nodding in agreement with many of the assertions in the readings for this week. As much as I value portfolios and the reflections my students produce, the tropes these authors point out are, I believe, all too familiar for those who teach using reflection. Intriguingly, this is always quite surprising to me since my assignment prompt for the portfolio in my classes always addresses directly the "narrative of progress" as well as the "schmooze factor." Having been warned about these before I ever started teaching, the assignment prompt directly tries to address this, and I usually go over this with the class quite extensively. And yet, no matter how hard I try, I usually receive at least a couple of reflections that resort to the "I finally saw the light!" narrative and/or the "Let me try to kiss Bruce's rear without it being too blatantly obvious" move. These tropes seem to have been learned early on by many students.
While I have been told, and tend to believe, that I have a pretty strong BS detector, I must admit that I think we can all fall prey to these tropes when they are disguised in a certain manner. As Laurel Bower suggests, "For the most part, however, students seem more concerned with pleasing the teacher and appealing to his/her set of values than analyzing their priorities and thinking" (60). I've started to notice this over my last few semesters; it makes me wonder how sincere these appeals to our values actually are sometimes. Reflecting on my own career as a student, as bull-headed as I am, even I must profess to appealing to an instructors values from time to time even if I wasn't fully on board with them. Do our students sometimes just tell us what they think we want to hear? If so, is any real learning taking place?"
However, these readings did cause me to reflect on (cue Letterman-esque drummer) how I do not always scaffold reflection well in my classroom, and how this might be the underlying reason behind students' reflections appearing, at times, to "parrot" values rather than actually engage with critical thinking. Yet, I do hesitate with the writer's memo at times due to how it can influence my response; it seems strange, but--in a way--I value sometimes responding to students' writing from the perspective of a reader not clued into their intentions. In essence, I want to respond without the benefit of knowing what they are trying to accomplish, to place myself in the frame of a reader who is encountering a text without the writer's intentions known to him/her. This has led me to contemplate using more "talk-back" strategies with my response practices. In this manner, I could respond in that way yet subsequently let the student inform me about their processes after my response to further promote a dialogue. This appears like it might give me the best of both worlds.
And, since I have been discussing response, it seems a natural transition into my scholarship discussion. Reading these texts caused me to question the potential methodologies of my dissertation in a quite profound way. When I initially asked Dr. Yancey to do a DIS on reflection with me, my intention was to find a way to use reflective writing to code for agency. Therefore, in my initial research design, reflection is a requirement for any classroom I will study.
Yancey's Reflection in the Writing Classroom, though, caused me to think long and hard about this. So focused on finding a way to code for agency, I failed to realize I might have frozen an important variable. Without going into too much detail, my dissertation is trying to look at various response styles and see how they influence student agency. My theory is that the effect(s) of various commentary styles are highly predicated upon the classroom context; thus, the effects of directive and facilitative response styles on student agency are less determined by the actual written comments than they are by how they integrate into the classroom context.
Thus, through Yancey and the other articles, I started to question whether reflection might need to play a larger role in my research. Essentially, I realized that reflection might be, quite possibly, the most vital variable. Without droning on ad nausea, basically what I'm trying to say is that reflective writing might have quite an influence on fostering agency in our students. Could a more "directive" response style that incorporates reflection actually be less controlling than a "facilitative" style that
never asks students to reflect (these terms are in quotes since I think the binary is quite questionable)? I would tend to believe so. Hence, having reflection as a given in each classroom I study might be quite problematic.
In the end, I wound up drastically shifting my beliefs about the role reflection plays in developing agency in young writers. Intriguingly, though, I always thought I placed such a heavy value on it until I actually reflected (Have I used up my reflection "pun" quota yet?) on how I integrate it into my teaching and how it is handled in my research design. Once I brought my thought processes to the surface, it became quite apparent that I still have much to learn. While this might seem like cause for concern, isn't making our thought processes and assumptions more readily apparent to ourselves one of the primary goals of reflection?
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Reading across the Readings
What Reflection Makes Possible
The thing about reflection, in my view, is that it makes possible a meaning that is impossible otherwise. I'm not precisely sure how we do this. I do think some people are more disposed toward reflection: that is, they seem to have a reflective temperament, to take up questions that may be insolvable, to entertain conflicting ideas, and to sort them out in a process of meaning-making that is, of course, contingent. In that sense, reflection is an optimistic act.
But even for those who are not so disposed, they can learn. They can be prompted, they can be responded to, they can see other examples of reflection, and they may even catch themselves reflecting. How we go about this--the prompts, for example, and the responses--that's a work in progress, which of course is really a way of saying that we don't know. Given that we don't know, we hope.
I do think we--those of us in writing studies--are moving to some shared understandings of reflection.
One: that to think of it only as a mechanism for evaluation is to waste its potential.
Two: that in our instruction, we have focused only on pedagogy, not on curriculum.
Three: that a focus including curriculum would allow us to think more broadly about reflection--about outcomes and readings and class assignments. The stand-alone letter of reflection becomes a portal for a much more robust sense of reflection.
For me, there are two other pieces to this new sense of reflection. One is that reflection, in my mind, has a social life. We share what we learn through reflection; and we often reflect collectively. Two: one purpose for reflection that is undertheorized and underpracticed is its use to synthesize from various sources a new meaning.
But even for those who are not so disposed, they can learn. They can be prompted, they can be responded to, they can see other examples of reflection, and they may even catch themselves reflecting. How we go about this--the prompts, for example, and the responses--that's a work in progress, which of course is really a way of saying that we don't know. Given that we don't know, we hope.
I do think we--those of us in writing studies--are moving to some shared understandings of reflection.
One: that to think of it only as a mechanism for evaluation is to waste its potential.
Two: that in our instruction, we have focused only on pedagogy, not on curriculum.
Three: that a focus including curriculum would allow us to think more broadly about reflection--about outcomes and readings and class assignments. The stand-alone letter of reflection becomes a portal for a much more robust sense of reflection.
For me, there are two other pieces to this new sense of reflection. One is that reflection, in my mind, has a social life. We share what we learn through reflection; and we often reflect collectively. Two: one purpose for reflection that is undertheorized and underpracticed is its use to synthesize from various sources a new meaning.
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