Reflective Theory: Task 2c

Without realising it I use reflective practises quite often in my day to day life, be it for work, socially or in my private life. If you don’t reflect on your experiences then how can you learn from them? Experience is what moulds us, alters us and makes us the people that we are. For example I would not present myself in the same manner at an audition or interview today as I would of six years ago, fresh out of college. As well as having the technical ability I now have the experience to go with it, I know what to do, and what not to do. These are things that we can only learn through experience.

I use the idea of reflection and “Turning experience into learning” Boud (English and Gillen, 2001), as a tool when I am teaching. If I have a dance to choreograph for a show, rather than just go in on day one with all the steps prepared and ready to throw at the students I like to give them a fuller learning and understanding of the theme, music and style. Often I will achieve this through creative tasks. Rowtree (1998) says “you should prepare for it before hand, participate actively during it, and reflect on it afterwards”

Choosing a relevant piece of music I ask the students to listen carefully to it and express through movement whatever comes to them in that moment. Afterwards I will ask them how did it make them feel? What did it make them think? What can they tell me about the music? Describe the sound to me? It really gets them thinking rather than me just providing all the answers. I would then divide them in to small groups and ask them to use the knowledge we have just talked about in order to put together a short dance sequence. Finally in their groups they will demonstrate their ideas group at a time. This gives them the opportunity to learn from what others have done, and again I will ask questions at the end. How did they feel it went? What did people like? What did they think they could improve on?

Kolbs learning cycle helps us to understand how this method of teaching would be beneficial. It shows that people start to learn at different stages and have different learning styles. It is important to recognise that people learn in different ways and use various teaching styles and techniques in order to engage all the participants visually, auditory and kinaesthetically.

Listening to the music and improvising (having an experience), talking about how they felt and what they thought (reflective observation), using their ideas to produce more structured movements (learning from the experience), demonstrating their work (actively trying out what they have learnt). This method provides an opportunity for all learning techniques to be utilised and so gives a complete learning experience for all the students involved. People need to feel, watch, do and think. Each is an important entity in the learning process.

Donald Schon’s (1987) ideas about reflection in action and reflection out of action really got me thinking. Of course we reflect out of action but the idea of reflecting in action was new to me. I couldn’t grasp how we could have time to reflect in the middle of doing something and believed this just to be merely our reactions. After further thought, discussions, blogging and enhancing my understanding of the meaning of reflection I came to realise that reflection in action is a skill that we have learnt most liking without even realising it. Moon defines reflective practice as “a set of abilities and skills, to indicate the taking of a critical stance, an orientation to problem solving or state of mind” (1999: 63)

As a dancer we reflect in action all of the time in order to give our best performance. We are constantly assessing our body and our surroundings for changes that we need to adapt too. Therefor reflection in action is our thought process and the physical change is our body reacting. But how do we know what to do and what to look out for? This must come from our reflection on action, from reflecting on previous experiences, learning from them and then putting them into action next time we need to reflect in action. It is another cycle by which we have to learn from our experiences or else we would keep making the same mistakes and not progress or improves ourselves.

Rowntree (1988) says reflection is studying one's own study methods as seriously as one studies the subject and thinking about a learning task after you have done it. Unless you do this, he says, the task will almost certainly be wasted. He suggests that we must always reflect on our experiences otherwise they were a waste. It’s true that in order to progress and become the best we can we need to look to our past experiences, decide what worked and what didn’t. We must then take forward the knowledge of our findings and implement it into our future experiences. 

Robert Kottkamp suggests that reflection in action in harder to achieve “The latter type is the more difficult to achieve, but the more powerful for improvement of practice because it results in ‘online’ experiments to adjust and improve one’s professional actions”, he goes on to say that “Reflection-on-action is accomplished ‘off-line’ at a time when full attention can be given to analysis and planning for the future without the imperative for immediate action…”

They are both important tools and go hand in hand with one another so you cannot say one is more beneficial than the other but I can see why he believes ‘’online” reflection is harder to achieve. As much as you reflect on an experience after the event unless you are then able to put that knowledge into action then you cannot move forward, improve or become better at what you do. 

All the theories mentioned prove that reflection is a fundamental part in the learning process. I was quite unaware of my use of reflection before but now I have gained awareness and knowledge of the true meaning of reflection I will be able to use this tool more efficiently and effectively.

References

ENGLISH, L. M. & GILLEN, M. A. 2001. Promoting journal writing in adult education, San Francisco, Jossey‐Bass.

KOTTKAMP, R. B. (1990) Means for facilitating reflection. Education and Urban Society, 22, 182-203.

MOON, J (1999) Learning journals: a handbook for academics, students and professional development (London: Kogan Page)

ROWNTREE D (1988) Exploring Open and Distance Learning Routledge.

SCHÖN, D. A. 1987. Educating the reflective practitioner : toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions, San Francisco, Jossey‐Bass.