Re: Romance of reflection

From: Kevin Rocap (krocap@csulb.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 22 2004 - 12:28:16 PST

Dear Eugene,

I have only a quick moment to reply, but don't want to let too much time pass before responding to your engaging and thought-provoking post. ;-)

I believe I share many of your attitudes, and (what does NCATE call them?) dispositions (?) ;-)

And, of course, we too are always struggling with how to help teachers appreciate the value of educational philosopies, conceptualization, theory use and theory-building, but also have to own how often these have been espoused theories of teacher educators and not theories they actually put in use themselves to model, inform and promote praxis.

I would suggest that the ideological focus on reflection actually involves sets of conflicting objects, motives and approaches.  As you say, in many cases it may prioritize the technology of teaching.  I think, at least in part, it was meant, in some orientations of reflection, to engage teachers in thoughtful evaluation of their practices vis a vis theories and concepts as tools for improving/reforming their practices.  But a street-sense of "reflection" is often, as I mentioned very ahistorical and atheoretical, and, in practice, results in people employing their "common-sense" as the primary tool, without consistent or systematic reference to or provocation from external, useful or usable research, promising practices and/or critical theoretical and practical perspectives.  And that is my concern.  The notion that people can "simply" reflect on their own practices given their current understandings or conceptual toolset and come up with powerful changes to their practices is what I was questioning, and what I've seen attempted in too many reflective practitioner approaches.

The notion of caring learning communities, community learning, etc. that you reference, Eugene, besides being an acknowledged and important cultural aspect of empowering and positive learning environments, also has some bodies of research and practice that could help teachers refine their reflective process of improvement, no?  Also a number of other key theoretical and practical perspectives that respond to other situated issues confronting teachers in different circumstances are also relevant.  And to the role of external inputs, critical friends, expert perspectives, etc., all become part of what needs to be systematically integrated into practitioner reflection, imho.

Your honing in on issues of control of female voices and professional growth are I believe key critiques that need more exploration, and, as you mention, their are feminist critques and other sources of literature and practice that could or should be consulted in examining and changing these approaches.

I would add to that that we sometimes forget in teacher professional development that, in important ways, we as teacher educators and the teachers we partner with in professional growth activities also serve on some level as proxies for children and families.  And so it is incumbent on us to be able to find ways to bring the motives and interests of students and families, particularly those least well-served, into all professional development change and reflection practices, no?

Just a few thoughts.

In Peace,
K.

Eugene Matusov wrote:

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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