Critical Reflection
*Adapted from Understanding and Facilitating Critical Reflection, Chapter 2, Pages 26 – 49, Barbara Jacoby
What is the role of Critical Reflection in AS-L?
Critical reflection is the process of analyzing, reconsidering, and questioning one’s experiences within a broad context of issues and content knowledge. Experience without critical reflection can all too easily allow students to reinforce their stereotypes about people who are different from themselves, develop simplistic solutions to complex problems, and generalize inaccurately based on limited data. It should be ongoing for optical learning outcomes.
Using the term critical reflection reminds us that reflection is a critical element of service-learning. It is essential and irreplaceable. It is critical that the reflection is ongoing in the service-learning experience in order to develop critical thinking skills, which are an unanimously agreed-upon essential college learning outcomes.
Reflection is so fundamental to the concept and practice of service-learning that it is not an understatement that there can be no service-learning without reflection. One can do service and one can learn, but reflection is the process through which the service and learning can become transformative.
| Categories of Reflection | Activity |
|---|---|
| Speaking/Oral Reflection |
Reflection through speaking encourages students to think carefully about their messages and speech habits. Includes directed discussions, presentations, interviews, storytelling, teaching a class, debate, deliberation, preparing real or mock testimony, and even a poetry slam. Spoken reflection can occur both in the classroom and at the service site. |
| Writing |
Usually the predominant form reflection that takes place in academic courses. Writing challenges students to organize their thoughts in order to make coherent arguments. Takes many forms including journals, problem analysis, case studies, essays, theory-to-practice papers, press releases, drafting legislation, and letters to elected officials, editors, or oneself. |
| Activities, or reflection through action |
A simple example is the forced-choice exercise, in which students are given a controversial statement and asked to go to one side of the room if they agree with it or to the other side if they disagree. Participants then have the opportunity to change sides if they wish. The exercise can be repeated several times to encourage students to hone and deepen their arguments. Role plays can be quite effective, with students taking different roles in a challenging situation. This can be an effective way of preparing students to enter the service site for the first time. |
| Media and artistic creation |
This could include doing individual or collective collages, drawings, photo or video essays, musical compositions, and other art forms. Reflection through creative expression recognizes students’ various talents and learning styles and provides opportunities to capture subtle emotional truths that may be more easily expressed through media other than words. |
How Can Reflection Work in Various Disciplines?
No matter the discipline, faculty members often ask how reflection works in their own areas of scholarship and in their particular courses. Below are specific examples from a variety of disciplines of how to incorporate critical reflection that leads to achievement of course competencies and MDC learning outcomes.
| Program | Critical Reflection Practice | Learning Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| STEM |
Through readings, videos, speakers, and service, they also focus on the social issues and effects of HIV/AIDS in the black community. Teaching children STEM-related content, often in after-school tutoring or enrichment programs. |
Critical reflection can motivate them to learn content by considering how the discipline’s knowledge base can be used to address the biggest social issues of our time. Reinforce their learning of fundamental facts and concepts. |
| Nursing | They engage in activities designed to develop the habit of critical reflection in nursing practice, which include questioning previously accepted routines, values, and belief systems as well as considering how these are related to nursing, health care, and society. | Students describe, as opposed to define, a critically reflective professional. |
| Sociology | In addition to in-class reflection, the students write a paragraph on what occurred during the visit to Homeless Shelter. | Students learn the history, theories, causes, and demographics related to homelessness in American society. |
| Humanities | Written papers, discussions, class presentations on moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason. | Provides many opportunities for students to reflect on what it means to be human. |