Romance of reflection

From: Eugene Matusov (ematusov@udel.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 22 2004 - 08:27:26 PST


Dear Kevin-

 

Thanks A LOT for your great thought-provoking and informative message!

 

I want to make several comments on your inspirational message:

 

Your choice of gendered words made me think about masculine hegemony in
promoting reflection. You wrote,

 

"In some ways I think part of the romance of "reflection" is that it is
empowering BECAUSE it validates one's ability to just engage in some pure
relation with one's own practices and to develop and test one's own theories
without a lot of external critical inquiry or external validation for one's
perspectives. I've actually seen communities of reflective practice or
reflective inquiry use their status as a reflective community as a guard
against the need to invite or rely upon external experts or concepts (a kind
of "no one knows my practices better than I do" stance)."

 

Reflection is a very cold disaffectioned term that does not have a sense of
value, personality, or caring. Of course, it is not inherently cold but it
made cold through its decontextualized and ahistorical use (Kevin, thanks
for your idea about ahistoricity of the reflection discourse! I did not
think about it before).

 

Recently, I was teaching my preservice teachers about educational
philosophies. I knew that my students do not see much value in learning
about educational philosophies. As they told me during the class, they see a
discussion of educational philosophy as "bla-bla-bla" for job interviews to
get a teaching job. So, before starting a discussion about specific
educational philosophies, I asked them if they had choice of two topics 1)
"Educational philosophies" and 2) "The most effective pedagogical
strategies" which of the topics they would choose to study. As you may
guess, 100% of my students chose the second topic. I told my students that
they do not need to learn much about the most effective pedagogical
strategies because they have already known almost everything about them. To
illustrate my point, I offered several teaching dilemmas like "How to make
all your students to read the assigned literature". My students replied,
"Made exams and quizzes." I asked them "How to make your students stop
talking during your instruction?" My students generated a very interesting
list including "make your students fear you", "taking points out", "start
dictating notes". We discussed in details what makes these strategies so
effective. After I offered more teaching dilemmas and listed "the most
effective pedagogical strategies" that they proposed, I asked them if they
want me to run our class according to these "best strategies." They said
"no!" I asked why not if it would be very effective. They said that if I ran
our class like this I'd not care about them as learners and people (one
student made a point that the listed most effective pedagogical strategies
is how Dr. Evil would run his class). So, I asked them what they care about
as teachers. and we started a very intense and exciting discussion of
educational philosophies.

 

In my view, the ideological focus on reflection prioritizes technology of
teaching over philosophy of teaching: decontextualized and ahistorical
efficiency over personalized caring and communal concerns as rooted in
immediate and historical situations. The ongoing reflection discourse in
educational establishment (e.g., NCATE) seems to be about disciplining minds
of (mostly female) teachers rather caring about and nurturing their
professional voices. I think that feminist studies and Foucault's framework
can be helpful for analysis of ongoing romance of reflection.

 

What do you think?

 

Eugene

 

  _____

From: Kevin Rocap [mailto:krocap@csulb.edu]
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2004 1:17 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Reflection and change in a CHAT/Cultural Psychology paradigm

 

Dear Eugene,

Thanks for your comment, and to elaborate briefly:.

I've seen this happen a lot in the arena of bilngual education when teachers
not well-versed in theories and practices of language acquisition and
development, or in theories and practices of multicultural education engage
in reflection on their own practices using their own current repertoire of
conceptual tools (that don't include those I've mentioned above). I've seen
that teacher-groups in such a situation pretty roundly end up re-affirming
and building off of what I would say are fairly misinformed biases and/or
misconceptions and often come to some dubious conclusions and ideas about
how their practices should change (which often fly in the face of
respectable practice-based research in the field). So they may very well
change, but in the wrong direction (like determining that students just need
a lot more English instruction, of a certain variety, rather than thinking
about the effective design of a quality cross-cultural, bilingual program).

I think this occurs because people are often taught that they can reflect on
their own practices without necessarily examining the conceptual tools they
are employing within that reflection process. "Reflection" somehow seems to
have a widespread connotation of being an ahistorical or "natural" process,
that is not theory-driven or theory-laden. It is first "descriptive" (as
though descriptions are not based on the application of theories and lenses)
and then a process of developing opinions or hypotheses in dialogue with
one's peers (without formally or systematically necessitating the
consideration of diverse external perspectives, outside experts or
theoretical/practical issues from relevant research - if one can even
determine on one's own or within one's peer group what the appropriate,
relevant research might be, hence the need for critical friends, imho).

In some ways I think part of the romance of "reflection" is that it is
empowering BECAUSE it validates one's ability to just engage in some pure
relation with one's own practices and to develop and test one's own theories
without a lot of external critical inquiry or external validation for one's
perspectives. I've actually seen communities of reflective practice or
reflective inquiry use their status as a reflective community as a guard
against the need to invite or rely upon external experts or concepts (a kind
of "no one knows my practices better than I do" stance).

So, as others have said, these may be specifically situated notions of what
constitutes "a process of reflection" that differ from those experienced or
promoted by others in this discussion.

In Peace,
K.

Eugene Matusov wrote:

Dear Kevin-
 
I agree with you a lot!
 
Eugene
 
  

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Rocap [mailto:krocap@csulb.edu]
Sent: Saturday, March 20, 2004 11:35 PM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Reflection and change in a CHAT/Cultural Psychology paradigm
 
Dear friends,
 
A reflection on reflection...
 
Carol Macdonald wrote:
 
    

What are we all referring to when labeling something as reflective? Is
it just metacognition?
 
[Carol Macdonald] Yes it is, but in the research, the reflective practice
passes from the researcher into the teacher, in a way which would make
      

LSV
  

happy.
 
      

Perhaps, but I think the caveats of a "reflective practitioner" approach
apply - that is, that an individual or a group that lacks external
theoretical, conceptual and/or alternative practices inputs and a
process of critical inquiry (including critical friends) to go along
with a process of "reflection" runs the risk of merely engaging in
self-fulfilling prophesies and a self-affirming of inadequate practices
(by reinforcing inaccurate or at least inappropriate notions), no?
 
In Peace,
K.
    

 
 
 
  



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