Learning or thinking?
While doing some prep work for tomorrow’s appointments, I began searching good ole Google. (How did I survive all those years? I LOVE having answers at my fingertips.) I had questions and wanted to see what the world had to answer them.
Then, I found her (actually she is using HIS work). An article that defines “reflection.” It’s long. It’s scholarly. So I’ll differentiate. I’ll pull out some phrases that are AWESOME, and I’ll provide the link. You can choose your route. (Isn’t choice nice? How often do you give your students a choice?) Hopefully these pieces will spark your interest enough to dig into the article called, “Defining Reflection: Another Look at John Dewey and Reflective Thinking” by Carol Rodgers. Here are some highlights:
- My purpose is, quite simply, to provide a clear picture of Dewey’s original ideas so that they might serve as we improvise, revise, and create new ways of deriving meaning from experiences-thinking to learn.
- “What (an individual) has learned in the way of knowledge and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations which follow. The process goes on as long as life and learning continue.”
- …other kinds of thinking is stream of consciousness. It is the thinking all of us are involuntarily awash in all the time….This is often the only kind of thinking teachers have time for.
- …moves the learner from a disturbing state of perplexity…to a harmonious state of settledness. Perplexity is created when an individual encounters a situation whose “full character is not yet determined.” That is, the meaning of the experience has not yet been fully established.
- An additional source of motivation is curiosity, without which there is little energy for the hard work of reflection.
- The store of one’s wisdom is the result of the extent of one’s reflection.
- Formulating the problem or question itself is half the work. As Dewey says, “A question well put is half answered.”
- Reflection must include action.
- Dewey knew that merely to think without ever having to express what one thought is an incomplete act….The experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated.
- Curiosity about and enthusiasm for that subject matter is essential to good teaching. Without them a teacher has no energy, no fuel, to carry out reflective inquiry-much less teaching itself.
There is great information in this article. It helps to define true reflection, its purpose, and the importance of disciplined reflection. Eye opening. I hope you’ll take the time to read the article for yourself.
Teach to Educate 