QLC 2

Reflection Research

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108008/chapters/Learning-Through-Reflection.aspx

Guiding Student Reflection

Teachers use many strategies to guide students through a period of reflection. We offer several here: discussions, interviews, questioning, and logs and journals.

Discussions

Sometimes, encouraging reflection is as simple as inviting students to think about their thinking. Students realize meaning making is an important goal when reflection becomes the topic of discussion. For example, conduct discussions about students' problem-solving processes. Invite students to share their metacognition, reveal their intentions, detail their strategies for solving a problem, describe their mental maps for monitoring their problem-solving process, and reflect on the strategy to determine its adequacy. During these kinds of rich discussions, students learn how to listen to and explore the implications of each other's metacognitive strategies. The kind of listening required during such discussions also builds the Habits of Mind related to empathy, flexibility, and persistence.

Interviews

Interviews are another way to lead students to share reflections about their learning and their growth in the Habits of Mind. A teacher can interview a student, or students can interview classmates. Set aside time at the end of a learning sequence—a lesson, a unit, a school day, or a school year—to question each other about what has been learned. Guide students to look for ways they can apply their learnings to future settings. Interviews also provide teachers and students with opportunities to model and practice a variety of habits: listening with understanding and empathy, thinking and communicating with clarity and precision, and questioning and posing problems.

Questioning

Well-designed questions—supported by a classroom atmosphere grounded in trust—will invite students to reveal their insights, understandings, and applications of their learnings and the Habits of Mind. Here are possible questions to pose with each student:

• As you reflect on this semester's work, which of the Habits of Mind were you most aware of in your own learnings?
• What metacognitive strategies did you use to monitor your performance of the Habits of Mind?
• Which Habit of Mind will you focus on as you begin our next project?
• What insights have you gained as a result of employing these Habits of Mind?
• As you think about your future, how might these Habits of Mind be used as a guide in your life?

Logs and Journals

Logs and journals are another tool for student reflection. Periodically ask students to reread their journals, comparing what they knew at the beginning of a learning sequence with what they know now. Ask them to select significant learnings, envision how they could apply these learnings to future situations, and commit to an action plan to consciously modify their behaviors.

Modeling Reflection

Students need to encounter reflective role models. Many teachers find such models in novels in which the characters take a reflective stance as they consider their actions. A variety of novels and films use the design element of reflection as the way to tell a story. For example, in Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, the main character is affected by the smell of a "petite madeleine" that reminds him of his past. Proust uses this device to dig into the character's past. In Mem Fox's Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge, Wilfrid discovers that life's meaning can come from the retrieval of powerful memories. The memories truly are given meaning, however, through making them explicit to someone else.