Promoting the right kind of reflection

In their 1998 article, Promoting reflection in professional courses: the challenge of context, David Boud and David Walker argue that the social and cultural context in which students find themselves in has a significant impact on their reflections – and that this has implications for the types of reflective task that can be usefully incorporated, and the way in which they should be presented to students.

Boud and Walker remind us that reflection is precipitated by dissatisfactions, doubts and dilemmas – ‘situations conducive to the questioning of experience’, and that it is not simply ‘thinking’ (you might ask here what, exactly, is thinking). You won’t find a smart definition of reflection in this article though – it is full of disapproval for anyone who dares to “translate reflection and reflective practice into…simplified and technicist prescriptions”, but that’s okay, I have a healthy respect for doubt and uncertainty…

One of the key ideas I picked up from this article is that encouraging students to ‘reflect’ by following a checklist, working through a sequence of steps or responding to a series of questions is risky. It can lead to false expectations that reflection is a linear and unproblematic process that can be memorised. Boud and Walker argue that stages or elements of the reflective process should be presented as conceptual elements rather than an operational process. However, there is potential for tension here, as “without some direction, reflection can become diffuse and disparate so that conclusions or outcomes may not emerge”. I initially thought, while reading this, that is must be very difficult to assess a task that is only loosely defined. Boud & Walker highlight that the assessment of reflection is a questionable goal (citing Sumsion & Fleet 1996) although they do appear to support the use of specific criteria for the recognition of reflective writing, such as Hatton and Smith’s (1994).

I thought it was nice that Boud and Walker highlighted a common side-effect of fostering a questioning, reflective nature in students; “It is not surprising that students may not accept the boundaries of reflection within a subject which teachers take for granted. Reflective activities may lead students to focus on…the programme of study, resources provided, assessment practices and so on.” (Boud & Walker 1998, p194)

This is exactly what I have observed on the International Construction Management programme – it can be disheartening sometimes as it can seem that the students don’t like the changes we’ve made, or that we’ve made a dreadful hash of things – but if we stand back and take in everything they are saying, it’s clear that this isn’t the case – they are simply looking into everything more deeply, and communicating their thoughts to us, and each other, much more readily. It does cause a few headaches, but if you’re in the development game all this rich feedback is a fantastic thing.

Boud and Walker’s ideas on context are thought-provoking – it would be interesting to look into how our ICM students’ reflective work is affected by context – the cultural, social & political environment in which they are working and studying. To relate this to my own reflections, the context would incorporate my blog, the readers, their comments, my relationship with them, my motivation for blogging, their motivation for commenting, etc – the most significant influences – so when Boud & Walker claim that context is ‘perhaps the single most important influence on reflection and learning’, I would agree – and it makes sense for us to stop imagining that students are reflecting robotically within a socially and politically sterile environment, and do what we can to foster a local or micro-context suitable for the promotion of reflection – this will include building trust over time, allowing students to make their own meanings from their experiences, and setting clear boundaries on what outcomes of reflection are to be shared with others.

Underlying this article is the idea that there are, in fact, no reflective activites that are guaranteed to lead to learning, and no learning activities guaranteed to lead to reflection – the process of reflection is very individual, often problematic and generally unpredictable!