Turning Backward, Turning Forward: Reflection in the Writing

Classroom

Dr. L. Lennie IrvinSan Antonio College

SAWP Saturday Series Presentation Nov. 5, 2011

How You Use Reflection

• Briefly describe one reflective assignment you have either used as a teacher or experienced as a student.

• Then write about why you assign this reflective writing (or why you think it was assigned). Goals? Purposes?

What the literature says about reflection

It is important to engage in the metacognitive process of reflection if you want to change and grow. Metacognition is thinking about thinking. It empowers you to know what you know and know what you don’t know. Once you engage in this type of reflection about your own thinking you can be deliberate and focused in your planning. The metacognitive process helps us move toward evaluating what we currently think and move beyond it. … It is an agent for deliberate and strategic change.

Text from an Instructional Design workshop (2002)http://pixel.fhda.edu/id/Reflection/reflection_notes.html

Reflection as an agent for change and learning

Reflection as a post-task activity

Defining Reflection

• Synonyms, difficulty defining, imprecise vocabulary:

reasoning, thinking, critical thinking, reviewing, problem solving, inquiry, reflective judgment, reflective thinking, critical reflection, reflective practice

Defining Reflection

Jennifer Moon’s comprehensive definition:

“reflection is a mental process with purpose and/or outcome. It is applied in situations where material is ill-structured or uncertain in that it has no obvious solutions, a mental process that seems to be related to thinking and to learning. It is suggested that the apparent differences in reflection are not due to different types of reflection--in other words, to differences in the process itself, but to the differences in the way that it is used, applied or guided [different frameworks]” (5).

from Reflection in Learning and Professional Development (1999).

Charting the Frameworks for Reflection in the Writing

Classroom

Time

Audience

Purpose

Two Frameworks of Reflection in Composition

Rhetorical Reflection

--writer (or learner)-centered

--in-task

--validity testing

--action/problem-solving

Curricular Reflection

--reader (or teacher)-centered

--post-task

--constructivist

--evaluation/ demonstration

--interpretation

Roots of Curricular Reflection

• Writing Process movement

• birth of Writing Workshop

• constructivist views of learning

• quest for more authentic (and valid) means of assessment

Portfolio-Centric Perspective on Reflection

Characteristics--performed at the end of the semester upon completed work

--the open nature of this reflective writing becomes an “exploration that can teach” (Yancey, Reflection in 77). --students construct their own understanding on their writing and writing experience

--evaluative setting (students participate in creating the context in which their text would be read and evaluated)

--reflection enables a “seeing inside”

Promoting Reflection Throughout the Curriculum

“I liked reflection for what it promised (but often failed) to add to portfolios, and I understood that for students to write a reflection-in-presentation that satisfied, they would have to write more than that single reflective text, on the quick, at the end of the term. In other words, reflection would need to be integrated within the curriculum”(15).

Kathleen Blake Yancey Reflection in the Writing Classroom (1998)

Two Paradigmatic Uses of Reflection in the Writing

ClassroomPortfolio Letters (what Yancey calls Reflection-in-Presentation)

Draft Letters or Writer’s Memo --Writing Process statement, Companion Piece, Talk-To, Talk Back

“The Talk-Backs of reflection-in-action also provided a place where students may contemplate their writing practices over time, where they may discern patterns in multiple texts, where in reviewing these multiple texts they see themselves emerge as writers with practices and habits that transcend specific texts. Working in the particular, they mark and map the general.”(Yancey, Reflection in 59)

Mapping the Framework of Portfolio-Centric Reflection

Expanding our Perspective on Reflection

DeweySchön BoudKolb

John Dewey

reflective thought consists of “Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends” (6).

(1910)

Dewey: Reflection as Systematic Problem-Solving

Five steps of reflective inquiry

(i) a felt difficulty; (ii) its location and definition; (iii) suggestions of possible solutions; (iv) development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestion; (v) further observation and experiment leading to its acceptance or rejection; that is, the conclusion of belief or disbelief. (72)

Dewey: The Double-Movement of Reflection

“There is thus a double movement in all reflection: a movement from the given partial and confused data to a suggested comprehensive (or inclusive) entire situation; and back from this suggested whole—which as suggested is a meaning, and idea—to the particular facts” (79).

Donald Schön and the Reflective Practitioner

(1987)(1983)

The Artistry of Reflection: Schön ’s pattern of reflective

inquiry

Schön : Reflective Conversation

Schön ’s Ladder of Reflection

David Boud and Experiential Learning

David Kolb and Experiential Learning

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle

David Kolb and the Writing Feedback Loop

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle

Rhetorical Reflection

Rhetorical Reflection is a form on in-task reflection upon unfinished work, written predominantly for the writer’s own purposes of self-evaluation, validity testing, and problem-solving.

Rhetorical Reflection in the Writing Classroom

Example Writing Review Prompt

In about 300 words, write a brief review of your

thinking and writing process so far in draft 3.1. Do your initial ideas seem sufficient, or will you need to alter your problem to make it more interesting and/or significant? Specifically tell us what help your peer reviewers and instructors' commentary was and how it might have been improved. Finally, how do you plan to go about researching for your solution? Much of the strength of the final draft will depend on good “evidence” derived from outside sources, as well as a detailed description of your solution. What is your plan for developing that good “evidence”? How can you better flesh out your solution?

Example Writing Review Response

After reading over my peer responses, I realized there are a few things I need to work on. First of all, it seems I need to clarify my moves more. I did not put enough information from the quotes to help explain the move. My “for example” move needed more information from the quotes. The person reading my draft said that I needed to include a sentence from the author because at first he did not understand what the move was. After re-reading my draft I realized that he was right, because it was a little hard for me to understand what I was saying. The reader also said that my “compare/contrast” move was not very clear to him either, so a few changes need to be made so that it is clearer to the people reading my draft.

Fitting-in-Bounds: The Dynamic of Rhetorical

Reflection

Examples of the Dynamic of Rhetorical Reflection

#2: The main advice I received, which I think is the most crucial, is to clearly state my thesis [F]. The person commenting stated “Did you translate this question into a more formal thesis statement? If so, I didn't see it. [P]” I had originally thought I had stated a thesis somewhere in my paper, but the grader is usually correct, and as I re-read [F] the paper I realized there isn’t one [C]. I feel if I can make a strong, clear, and to the point thesis [R] my paper will be very much improved.

Starts with feedback

F = feedbackP = problemC = coming to knowR = revision goals

Examples of the Dynamic of Rhetorical Reflection

#4: The person who graded my paper also commented [F] on how casual my paper is starting to get. “Try not to casually insert your reader into an artificial situation. [P]” He and I [F] both found [C] myself using “you” too often. I know the reader is supposed to able to relate [R] which makes the paper somewhat difficult to avoid the word “you” but the person commenting is write and I will need to edit [R] that into different words.

Starts with feedback

F = feedbackP = problemC = coming to knowR = revision goals

Essay Success and The Dimensions of Rhetorical

Reflection

Coding revealed

The person who graded my paper also commented [reporting feedback] on how casual [identifying problem] [fitting in bounds] my paper is starting to get. “Try not to casually insert your reader into an artificial situation.” [identifying problem] He and I both [double-checking feedback] found [confirming feedback] myself using “you” too often. I know [coming to know] the reader is supposed to be [fitting in bounds] able to relate [essay success] which makes the paper somewhat difficult to avoid the word “you” but the person commenting is write [coming to know] [taking other’s word] and I will need to [fitting in bounds] edit [revision goal] that into different words.

The Double-Movement of Rhetorical Reflection

Essay Success

Suggestions and Implications for Teaching

As we consider the implications of this theory for teaching writing, I think it is important to remember two things: • that learning environments are designed to help students develop their idea of essay success through learning materials, activities, models, and clear criteria, and

• that students possess a flawed and incomplete concept of essay success which undergoes a process of construction over time

Suggestions for Teaching

1. Design peer response as the counterpart of rhetorical reflection

2. Design Writing Review prompts to engage students in reflective thinking

a. balanced between being open-ended and directive

b. designed to ask students to notice and evokec. explicitly designed to get students to consider

feedback, identify problems, and formulate revision goals

d. Targeted to engage students in exploring perplexities and problems and seeking their resolution

Suggestions for Teaching

3. Make available the key presence of essay success as students reflect

4. Model and discuss the reflective thinking process

Conclusion

“[Rhetoric is] the art which seeks to capture in opportune moments that which is appropriate and attempts to suggest that which is possible” (26)

A Review of Reflection Techniques

Whole Course Reflection

Journals—freewriting or not, open writing

Process Journals—regular writing about writing and writing experience

Writing Log—regular log about the writing and learning in a class

Mid-Term Reflection—Constructive Reflection: How’s it going so far.

Final or Portfolio reflection—Reflection in Presentation.

A Review of Reflection Techniques

Essay Cycle Reflections

Writing Process Statements: detailed description of writing process for an essay

Draft Letters/Companion Pieces—addressed to reader preparing them to appreciate the paper

Talk To—believe paper is excellent; doubt that it is horrible; predict teacher’s view.

Talk Back—student responds to paper feedback from teacher.

Peer Response—this kind of feedback is reflection upon another’s writing

Writing Reviews—between-the-draft self-evaluations and problem-solving

Reflective Essay Assignments—topic requires reflective thinking to write.

Short Bibliography on ReflectionDewey, John. How We Think. Boston: DC Heath, 1933.Flower, Linda. The Construction of Negotiated Meaning: A Social Cognitive Theoryof Writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1994.King, Patricia M., and Karen Strohm Kitchener. Developing Reflective Judgment. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994Kolb, David A. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Cresskill, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1984.Mezirow, Jack. Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.Moon, Jennifer A. Reflection in Learning & Professional Development. London: Kogan Page, 1999.Phelps, Louise Wetherbee. Composition as a Human Science. NY: Oxford UP, 1988.Qualley, Donna. Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997. Schön, Donald A. Educating the Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.—. The Reflective Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1983.Yancey, Kathleen Blake. Reflection in the Writing Classroom. Logan: Utah State UP, 1998.

PowerPoint for this presentation is available at: http://www.sanantoniowritingproject.org/Sat3.html