Handbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry: Mapping a Way of Knowing for Professional Reflective Inquiry
Language: English
Pages: 829
ISBN: 1489979204
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Philosophers have warned of the perils of a life spent without reflection, but what constitutes reflective inquiry - and why it’s necessary in our lives - can be an elusive concept. Synthesizing ideas from minds as diverse as John Dewey and Paulo Freire, theHandbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry presents reflective thought in its most vital aspects, not as a fanciful or nostalgic exercise, but as a powerful means of seeing familiar events anew, encouraging critical thinking and crucial insight, teaching and learning. In its opening pages, two seasoned educators, Maxine Greene and Lee Shulman, discuss reflective inquiry as a form of active attention (Thoreau’s "wide-awakeness"), an act of consciousness, and a process by which people can understand themselves, their work (particularly in the form of life projects), and others. Building on this foundation, the Handbook analyzes through the work of 40 internationally oriented authors: - Definitional issues concerning reflection, what it is and is not; - Worldwide social and moral conditions contributing to the growing interest in reflective inquiry in professional education; - Reflection as promoted across professional educational domains, including K-12 education, teacher education, occupational therapy, and the law; - Methods of facilitating and scaffolding reflective engagement; - Current pedagogical and research practices in reflection; - Approaches to assessing reflective inquiry.
Educators across the professions as well as adult educators, counselors and psychologists, and curriculum developers concerned with adult learning will find the Handbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry an invaluable teaching tool for challenging times.
dynamic, a rhythm of learning that might be called incremental fluctuation; put colloquially, it can be understood as two steps forward, one step back, followed by four steps forward, one step back, followed by one step forward, three steps back, and so on in a series of fluctuations marked by overall movement forward. It is a rhythm of learning which is distinguished by evidence of an increased ability to take alternative perspectives on familiar situations, a developing readiness to challenge
self-reflective inquiry at the point of practice and construction of inside-out versus outside-in knowledge may promote substantive changes in teacher education and support democratic, transformative efforts to provide a quality education for all students” (p. 543). But again, this can only happen if those in self-study ask these questions, something many believe has yet to happen to any substantive degree (e.g., LaBoskey 2004b; Schulte 2004; Whitehead 2004). By giving more explicit attention to
relevance. The provision of reflective space (aka the portfolio) does not always lead to reflection (Pearson and Heywood 2004). Grant et al. (2006) noted that undergraduate medical students who did not fully engage with reflective learning often stated that the process did not match their learning preferences. To date, learning style has received limited attention in medical programs (Cook and Smith 2004; Laight 2004). However, recently, it has been suggested that there are fundamental
about our practice in new ways. The experience of this incident from Mary’s perspective means that the “ideas” presented in a public forum could become “something more” when they are engaged with in a public inquiry oriented way. It connects students to each other as sources of knowledge, and it shifts the focus onto “talking about practice” in new ways. Becoming Undone: “Erasing the Hand that Fed Me” The portfolio, in sponsoring and supporting student-teachers’ reflection,
feedback sessions with students freed them up to be more themselves in the classroom and not, as one teacher wrote, “this ‘teacher-esque’ thing that [we] pluck out of thin air.” Bronwyn noted that, like Marc, when she started from herself, and her own genuine desire to know what her students were thinking (both about their learning and about the texts they were studying), she learned. “I ask questions to which I do not know the answer,” she writes. The connection to self is a potent source