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We reflect on everyday problems and situations all the time: What went well?
What didn’t? Why? How do I feel about it? Reflection is a means of
processing thoughts and feelings about an incident, or a difficult day…and
gives us a chance to come to terms with our thoughts and feelings about it.
When you think and write reflectively as part of your academic studies, you
are expected to record the process of your reflection, and identify and
evaluate the learning that comes from it.
Whatever you are reflecting on, the following points are important:
It is usually necessary to select just the most significant parts of the event or
idea on which you’re reflecting. Don’t try to tell the whole story, or you will
end up only describing rather than reflecting.
Last week’s lecture presented the idea that science is the most powerful form of
evidence [1]. My position as a student studying both physics and law makes this 1. Description
an important issue for me [2] and one I was thinking about while watching the of topic
‘The New Inventors’ television program last Tuesday [3]. The two ‘inventors’ (an encountered in
odd name considering that, as Smith (2002) says, nobody thinks of things in a the course
vacuum) were accompanied by their marketing people. The conversations were 2. The author’s
quite contrived, but also funny and enlightening. I realised that the marketing voice is clear
people used a certain form of evidence to persuade the viewers (us?) of the 3. Introduces
value of the inventions [4]. To them, this value was determined solely by whether ‘everyday’ life
something could be bought or sold—in other words, whether something was experience
‘marketable’. In contrast, the inventors seemed quite shy and reluctant to use 4. The style is
anything more than technical language, almost as if this was the only evidence relatively
required – as if no further explanation was needed. informal, yet still
uses full
This difference forced me to reflect on the aims of this course—how sentences
communication skills are not generic, but differ according to time and place. Like 5. Makes an
in the ‘Research Methodology’ textbook discussed in the first lecture, these explicit link
communication skills are the result of a form of triangulation, [5] which I have between
made into the following diagram: ‘everyday’ life
and the topic
...
References
Brookfield, S 1987, Developing critical thinkers: challenging adults to explore alternative ways of
thinking and acting, Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
Mezirow, J 1990, Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: a guide to transformative and emancipatory
learning, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.
Schön, DA 1987, Educating the reflective practitioner, Jossey-Bass. San Francisco.