Work for a RAW article (on reflection)
Juup and I have been teaching and researching together in the area of Developing Researcher Competece (DRC) for some years now – for example see the earlier ‘In the Raw’ posting about the work – on which Juup had led – regarding DRC and intentionality as set in an ecological psychological perspective.
The DRC course we co-tutor makes substatial use of reflection as well as empasising the place of reflexivity in many of the types of research that our MA students undertake during their (academically-located and research-infused studies which can be characterised also as practitioner-oriented, context-focused, continuing professional development) MA studies with us at LTE.
We are now beginning work on a new piece focusing on the reflective practice aspects of the DRC curriculum we teach and also research (as part of our own reflective practice process). This preparation will lead to a RAW session in the autumn, but our preparation will begin now, and involves weekly joint readings of articles in the key areas. We are beginning this week with:
Schon, D.A. (1992). The theory of inquiry: Dewey’s legacy to education. Curriculum Inquiry, 22(2): pp. 119-139.
This is available via the Library’s e-journal collection.
As our topic may be of interest to others, and as the preparation process for article drafting may also be worth illuminating further, we will post throughout this preparation process and would welcome contributions, participation, comments etc from anyone else interested. We meet today (Tues 4th July) to discuss our reading and we will post here later in the week with some thoughts on the outcomes of this discussion.
Hi to all that follow this discussion,
It is high time that I contribute here as the co-reader and conspirator in this embryonic RAW enterprise. I am not as able to ‘reflect in public’ on the research process as Richard is. I do write a lot of notes in electronic research journal entries, but for the most part keep these private. Here, then, a more public journal entry:
First of all, I think this discussion reflects an enthusiasm that Richard and I share in developing our thinking around the pedagogical (and gradually more theoretically defined) concept of DRC. We are now keen to build on the paper we co-wrote on Intentionality in the DRC experience – which we have been invited to revise and resubmit. The present discussion will not only build towards a next RAW contribution, and hopefully a paper submission, it will also feed into the revision of the Intentionality paper.
I’d like to add my own developing understanding. I think it is very close to what is expressed by Richard in his postings, but perhaps I verbalise it slightly differently. My comments are structured by the perceived difference between Schön and Boud.
The fundamental construct in Schön’s thinking seems to be ‘knowing-in-action’. This was motivated by Schön’s wish to provide an account of professionalism to counter the dominant view of professions as guided by technical rationality. In this knowing-in-action framework, reflecting-in-action is prompted by an experience of surprise which briefly brings knowing-in-action into conscious awareness. This allows an adjustment to be made in the moment of action. When talking about reflecting-in-practice more generally, Schön points out that the action-present of practice is measured in days, weeks or even years. A surprise then may be extended in time, and the reflection that the surprise prompts may also be extended in time. So, staying in this kind of extended action-present, reflecting-in-practice is still focused on knowing-in-action (or rather knowing-in-practice). This avoids the need to talk about reflection ON action/practice. Reflection ON is inconsistent with Schön’s thinking as the ON metaphorically places the practitioner outside of the activity or practice, and this disrupts the focus on knowing-IN-action. That said, Schön makes occasional references to reflection ON – I see these references as not central to what he tried hard to communicate. One may argue that focusing only on knowing-in-action is a one-sided epistemology. However and again, this was a deliberate move by Schön to counter the dominance of technical rationality in the professions.
In sum, Schön is all about reflection for the purpose of facilitating professional practice. That is ‘the reflective practitioner’. Schön is not about learning or transforming.
I agree with Richard that Schön’s concept of the reflective practitioner shapes (more or less overtly) much of the MA experience (before participants reach the DRC unit). Note though that there are parts of the MA which expose participants to new territory – e.g. some of the technology stuff – and the reflective practitioner model is less used / less relevant in these parts.
I also agree with Richard that a reflective practitioner model is appropriate for areas where one has already developed some threshold of experience/competence. That is, our MA participants are experienced and competent teachers. DRC exposes participants to a new area which they are not yet experienced/competent in.
Moving then to possible models appropriate for deliberate learning about doing research – an area which our MA participants may not yet be experienced/competent in.
Boud: This is a three stage model, stating with a re-telling/verbalisation of experience – Richard mentioned how this might be a distancing move – and this distancing may reveal aspect of the experience not noticed previously. Next, attend to any misconceptions and feeling/emotions in the experience. These misconceptions and the feelings/emotions may be cognitive and affective barriers to learning. Finally, transform the conceptualisations and emotions. Okay, that was seriously simplified…. but I am running out of steam here…
I think Richard and I agree that Boud’s model is not a good description of what we do in DRC. We suspect, also, that when reading Mezirow (soonish) there will be more focus on transformation, and again, we may feel that it doesn’t quite describe what we are doing. Yes, we are learning a bit from these models, such as e.g. a possibly more deliberate consideration of participants preconceptions and affective reactions to research at the start of the DRC unit – Richard mentioned this.
Our ongoing search, then, is for a model of reflection for deliberate learning as played out in our DRC course. We may be able to synthesize one by taking different bits from other authors. However, we may have to develop one of our own – I think reading Richard’s postings we can begin glimpsing the contours of such a model.
Finally, I want to highlight the following two earlier statements Richard made about the journals kept as part of the DRC experience:
“The practice of writing such entries is one we hope becomes a habit the participants will take over into their more confident and competent research practice (e.g. in the Dissertation).”
“I can now see that the Researcher Journal entries we ask DRC participants to complete after each step throughout the whole 10-step process might be seen less as reflection-in-action (our original formulation) but rather as a Learner Journal entries (which seek also to inculcate the habit of maintaining a Researcher Journal in later research activity, e.g. the Dissertation) …”
The words ‘become a habit’ (first extract) and ‘inculcate’ (second extract) to me means that as participants become competent researchers in their own right (perhaps as an added dimension to their more general professional activity as language educators) the reflecting for learning we have encouraged in the DRC unit gradually becomes Schön’s reflecting-in-practice. This necessarily means that there cannot be a sharp distinction between reflecting for learning and reflecting in practice. As you move towards more competent performance, and gradually become a practitioner/ researcher, you gradually move from reflecting for learning to reflecting in practice.
To me the anchor in this is Schön’s work which we seem fairly comfortable with. This may mean then that to work the above kind of transition, from reflecting for learnign to reflecting in practice work conceptually we have to avoid making technical rationality a metaphor in our research education provision. Rather, we have to continue to embrace a learning-by-doing (experiential) conceptualisation of the DRC course unit.
I look back now and wonder how much of the above – which primary intentionality is to move Richard and myself forwards – is understandable to the wider blog audience 🙂
Juup
This week (just ending) Juup and I were meant to be discussing …
Boud, D. & Walker, D. (1998). Promoting reflection in professional courses: The challenge of context. Studies in Higher Education, 23:2, 191-206
and
Boud, D. (2001). Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, no. 90, Summer 2001.
…. but these were unfinished and we will pick them up next week. However, for now, I want to dwell on Boud’s discussion of the key idea of reflection. For example:
“Reflection has been described as a process of turning experience into learning, that is, a way of exploring experience in order to learn new things from it.” (2001: 10)
“[reflection can be described as] those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings and appreciations.” (ibid)
“Reflection involves taking the unprocessed, raw material of experience and engaging with it as a way to make sense of what has occurred. it involves exploring often messy and confused events and focusing on the thoughts and emotions that accompany them.” (ibid)
Learning journals can be powerful aids in this process, a place/space for recording the events and experiences concerned as well as forum for processing them and reforming them. Using LJs to work with events “is intended as a way to make sense of the experiences that result, recognize the learning that results, and build a foundation for new experiences that will provoke new learning” (ibid, pg.11).
I can know see that the Researcher Journal entries we ask DRC participants to complete after each step throughout the whole 10-step process might be seen less as reflection-in-action (our original formulation) but rather as a Learner Journal entries (which seek also to inculcate the habit of maintaining a Researcher Journal in later research activity, e.g. the Dissertation) through which the immediate, raw, unprocessed experience of each step is recorded and processed and perhaps reformed.
Thanks Mariam. We make no assumptions whatsoever about the pre-course reflective habits of the teachers participating on our MA programmes but rather, as mentioned higher up in this thread, we characterise the MA ethos very much in terms of reflective practice. By the time participants reach the ultimate course unit – i.e. DRC – they have had upto six modular experiences of being encouraged to think in a reflective practitioner way (rather than e.g. a theory-application way). It is this reflective practice aspect of their reflection to which we are referring, i.e. course-encouraged reflection on their body of professional experience and practice. We view this practice-related reflection as differing in some important ways from the module-stimulated reflection on their typically initial experience of being researchers. So,, on the one hand, they have a depth of teaching experiences etc on which to reflective (in a spirit of the reflective practitioner) and, on the other, the DRC module represents a deliberate educational space in which they reflect on their initial experiences of being researchers. Bearing this in mind, we can see parallels between Schon’s ideas (e.g. reflection-in-practice) and the overall MA ethos and we were hoping to see parallels between Boud et al’s reflection in deliberate educational contexts and the partcipants DRC reflections.
Thanks, Richard. Your point is clearer now, but how can you be sure that your experienced TESOL teachers are actually ‘in the habit’ of reflecting on their practice, and hence in more need for ‘reflection in deliberate learning contexts’? Isn’t it true that many practitioners rarely, or never, reflect on their teaching for many reasons? or does it have to do with the overall philosophy of the MA program which encourages them in this direction?
Thanks for this Mariam. The key distinction I was trying to verbalise was that between a focus on reflection in practice (which is Schons territory) and reflection in deliberate learning contexts. So, in the former, as an experienced language teacher educator, reflection is in the sevice of my ongoing effprts to better understand my practice through reflection on aspects of it that strike during that practice. In the latter, e.g. as a student of ethnomusicology (a subject area in which I am not yet a practitioner), I might reflect on why author x’s ideas struck such a strong chord with me and how this might be related to my earlier musical education. So the distinction is not so much a black-and–white one and more of a focus on this now and a focus on that then kind of formulation. For us in DRC, we are aware that few of our participants are practising researchers although they ar experiened TESOL practitioners and, by this stage in the MA for sure, in the habit of reflecting on that practice. Their DRC uses reflection in adifferent kindd of way we feel, hence the usefulness of the Boud focus on reflection in deliberate learning contexts such as the DRC module.
Thanks for the update, Richard. I find reading these RAW entries particularly interesting for they allow us to follow research in progress, a bit like watching a fetus develop week by week.
As for the latest DRC comment, hmm.. I am not sure I agree to what seemed like an absolute black-or-white distinction between ‘learning’ and ‘reflection’ .. or maybe it has to do with how both concepts are defined by Boud et al.
Having now read the Boud et al book chapter (listed two comments earlier) – and noted that this an early piece in Boud’s extensive output – I can see the usefulness of his ‘deliberate learning’ experiences (e.g. the DRC module) as the focus of attention (thus moving us away from a focus on Reflective Practice) since, although our DRC participants are experienced TESOL practitioners who have embarked on a reflective practitioner MA experience, in researcher terms they are nearly all relative newcomers, and thus the module represemts more of a learning space for them (we hope) rather than a Reflective Practice space.
I can see value also in paying more heed in our initial sessions on ‘What is research?’ to the affective ‘baggage’ participants may bring with them. In general, we pay very little attention to the affective dimension of the DRC experience when we consider the emphasis on the affective in the transformative learning towards about which Boud et al speak (with a nod or two towards Mezirow amongst others). Through our RJ entry prompts, we do invite participants to rcord their e.g. frustration, anxiety etc during the pilot study process, but I think our intent is less that of surfacing the affective obstacles etc to their learning, and more to do with their developing sense of what kinds of struggle (and joy!!) are involved in being a researcher, i.e. the affective for us, at the moment, is more closely connected to better understanding the lot of a researcher than it is to their individual moves towards transformation through the learning experience.
I can see value in thinking about the ongoing Researcher Journal entries less in terms of reflection-in-action (although these entries do involve reflection) and more as fieldwork journal entries through which the participants monitor the progress and process of their research and, especially important for DRC, of their researcher development. These entries also form the basis of a writing-up of the experience in some ways, and can therefore be seen as part-fulfilling the first step of Boud et al’s retrospective reflection on a learning experience. The practice of writing such entries is one we hope becomes a habit the participants will take over into their more confident and competent research practice (e.g. in the Dissertation).
In Boud et al’s retrospective reflection process, importance is placed on verbalising the experience as an experience (rather than e.g. writing a Research Report on it as is the case with DRC), and – through the response of others’ to this – beginning to see the experience with some ‘distance’. The model involves spending important time on the affective aspects of the exeprience as an experience (see above) and it is through this effort that much of the transformative potential arises. Whilst we hope that our participants will have learned through the DRC experience, and have changed vis-a-vis their status as researchers, we do not, I think, seek a transformation of their understandings of themselves vis-a-vis research. (maybe we should?)
So, whilst this recent exploration of reflection-in-learning (or maybe reflection on learning?) has been helpful in a number of ways, I can see that our intentionality in DRC is less about adult learning (with the transformative connotations that Boud at el give it in their chapter) and more about DRC as an adjunct to participants’ existing professional competences and practices.
I need to read more of Boud’s later work as the next step in our exploration 🙂 To this end, next time we meet we’ll be thinking about:
Boud, D. & Walker, D. (1998). Promoting reflection in professional courses: The challenge of context. Studies in Higher Education, 23:2, 191-206
and
Boud, D. (2001). Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice. New Directions for Adult and Coninuing Education, no. 90, Summer 2001.
And after that maybe:
Rogers, R.R. (2001). Reflection in Higher Education: A Concept Analysis. Innovative Higher Education, Volume 26, Number 1, 37-57.
Juup and I are still reading – today’s meeting will be on the Boud et al chapter mentioned in the previous comment – and am now playing around with the kind of teaching text (i.e. DRC handout) which might better capture what we think happens vis-a-vis reflection in the DRC course unit and more specifcally in the experience that module provides of participants undertaking a small-scale research project through which to develop their researcher competence (more than explicitly learn something about their research topic). So, here goes ….
The MA programmes we offer can be understood as academically-located, research-enriched/focused, continuing professional development spaces for our participating experienced TESOL practitioners. This space is ‘animated’, inter alia, through a Reflective Practitioner ethos (aside: can one animate an ethos?). This characterisation is important as it recognises the various roles that our partcipants take on in their MA studies: as reflective practitioners intent also on developing MA-level academic competence (i.e. DAC including digital literacies, criticality, etc), and on developing their researcher competence (i.e. DRC).
The DRC module provides them with a deliberate learning experience – i.e. learning about research and about being a researcher through a deliberately initiated and managed experience of undertaking a small-scale piece of research and reflecting on the process this involves and what they can learn through it primarily vis-a-vis their own DRC. Through their research journal entries, or what might be seen as their fieldnotes – an activity involving concurrent reflection? – the participants, with framing assistance from the tutors, record aspects (e.g. how they felt during each step, what they realised about the complexities of that step, their micro-decisions when faced by contingencies once implementing their research plan, etc) of that researcher experience as it unfolds. Later, as driven by the assignment (Part 3), they return to these records, and – in a process of retrospective reflection? – they try to: a) fully and critically understand their researcher experience; b) link their learning from the DRC project experience to their other professional, academic and research experiences and understandings; and c) apply these understandings in the formulation of their ongoing research and researcher agenda (as focused most immediately by the upcoming Dissertation which may well be empirical in character).
So, we first looked at:
Schon, D.A. (1992). The theory of inquiry: Dewey’s legacy to education. Curriculum Inquiry, 22(2): 119-139.
and then followed this up by looking at:
Schon, D.A. (2006). From technical rationality to reflection-in-action. In R. Edwards, A. Hanson & P. Raggatt (Eds.), Boundaries of Adult Learning (Adult Learners: Education & Training), London, Routledge. (pp. 8-31).
and we are next moving onto:
Boud, D., Keogh, R. & Walker, D. (1996). Promoting reflection in learning – a model. In R. Edwards, A. Hanson & P. Raggatt (Eds.), Boundaries of Adult Learning (Adult Learners: Education & Training), London, Routledge. (pp. 32-56).
We are doing so because our DRC discourse on reflection invokes and explicitly references Schon’s work on reflection but we felt the need to do more than name-check the commonly referenced source for ideas we use in our teaching discourse including ‘reflection-in-action’, ‘reflection-on-action’ and ‘reflective practitioner’.
To make this concrete, let us first present that teaching discourse. In our DRC materials, when introducing the reflective aspects of the DRC experience, we begin as follows:
2. Reflection
2.1 A reflective ethos
At various points during your MA studies with us, you will probably have encountered the terms reflective practitioner and reflective practice. Although not foregrounded in our programme descriptions, our LTE team tends to use these terms to capture one way in which we understand your role / identity and main activities during your MA programme. Certainly, reflection is an important element of our MA ethos (+ footnote). For example, in most course units you are explicitly required (e.g. for the assignment) to reflect on some aspect of your practice.
The Footnote reads: “There is an extensive literature on these elements as theorised influentially by Dewey (1933) and Habermas (1971), as explored re experiential learning by Kolb (1984) and Boud et al. (1985), and as linked to the reflective practitioner stance in professional development by Schön (1983, 1987). More recent works include: Bolton (2005) and Moon (1999, 2006). There are many more works in this area as library and GoogleScholar searches will very promptly demonstrate.”
Later in the same teaching text, we say:
Throughout your DRC Research Experience … we ask you to undertake ongoing reflection on the process and progress of your research. This represents what might – in an extension of Schön’s (1983) terminology – be termed reflection-in-action. Then, at the end of this DRC Research Experience, we ask you to review those earlier reflections-in-action, and draw out any insights which have resulted from your DRC Research Experience, namely insights about: a) research; and b) being a researcher. This second stage can be understood as reflection-on-action.
And later still we say:
3.4 Reflection towards your developing researcher competence
The other purpose underlying the requirement to maintain a Research(er) Journal for DRC is that if encouraging you to reflect on what you have learned about research and about being a researcher, learning that informs Part 3 of the assignment. The second purpose for your DRC Research Experience journal activity provides a link to the Learning Journals with which we started this section, i.e. one reason for maintaining a journal of your DRC Research Experience is to help you articulate what you learned through it about your developing researcher competence. In practice, the two purposes work hand-in-glove so to speak … with only one set of introspective data entries but a changing focus when you move from reflection-in-action to reflection-on-action.
We also link our thinking about reflection thinking to the researcher learning we hope the DRC course unit enables for its participants:
4.1 Resonating terminology
… Borg distinguishes between process benefits and product benefits of keeping a Research(er) Journal, a distinction which resonates with our earlier discussion ….:
[summary of the figure in the original text]
We see the function of the ongoing entries (about the experience of Steps 1-10 in the DRC model) in terms of Schon’s reflection-in-action which we think resonates with Borg’s Process Benefits
We see the function of the subsequent analysis of the above entries in terms of Schon’s Reflection-on-action which we think resonates with Borg’s Product Benefits
[the original text then continues]
For Borg, process benefits occur in the moment of writing (i.e. concurrent, reflection-in-action) and they contrast with the product benefits which you can ‘reap’ when you later read over your journal (i.e. retrospective, reflection-on-action).
So, through our reading to date what have we discovered? The headline points are as follows:
1. In our evocation of Schon’s work in our teaching – and the way in which we do it – we are far from alone.
2. However, that ‘tradition’ – maybe habut?- of evoking his work to which we seem to belong, has developed a way of working his terminology which, we are now realising, diverges in some key respects from his original thinking.
3. Given that our DRC course unit is less about practitioners reflecting in and on their established and developing practice(s) and more about teachers becoming researchers, Schon’s discourse – which is concerned with reflection in and on practice – is maybe of less relevance than discussions of reflection in and on learning. This is why we are next reading to Boud et al.
Each of these three headline points can – and we hope will – be filled out in a later posting.