9.1. What is Reflection?

Reflection entails pausing and taking note of what you are doing – finding answers to complex questions about why unemployment persists or solving a problem to ensure that schools can be safe places where all kids can learn – and observing yourself for a moment. For example, as you are skimming articles to find answers to questions or searching for possible solutions, it’s valuable to monitor what you feel you are learning, particularly if you are accustomed to doing research in an online environment where it’s easy to get distracted. Monitoring entails asking yourself a few questions: What did I just read? Did I comprehend the writer’s argument? Do I need to go back and reread the argument? It’s equally useful to evaluate what you are learning and what you still want or need to know to ensure that you discuss an issue in complex ways that avoid binary thinking. Try to formulate strategies, based on your own self-assessment, to address any challenges, such as comprehending a technical argument. What other sources of information can you consult? Whom can you ask for additional help? Finally, apply what you learn about your own learning by compiling a repertoire of strategies that can guide you in the reading, writing, and problem solving that you are doing in different classes.

            Reflection is essentially having an awareness of our own thought processes. What do I want to accomplish? Is this the right question to ask? What other questions could I be asking? Where should I look for answers? What steps should I take? Why? Educator Jackie Gerstein developed the following cycle of questions for taking control of our own learning:

• Was I resourceful in terms of finding information, resources, and materials?
• Did I ask other people for feedback and information?
• Did I share my work and findings with others?
• Did I learn something new?
• Did I try to either make something better or create something new rather than just copy something that already exists?
• Did I approach learning as an open-ended process, open to new and all possibilities?
• Did I accept failure as part of the process and use it to inform my learning?

Gerstein is insistent when she explains, “If we don’t create a process of reflecting… then we are leaving learning up to chance.”

            Reflection in writing can focus on different types of knowledge: (1) the content of an issue, such as how economic resources are distributed in different neighborhoods and schools or trade policies that affect employment; (2) the strategies one might use to write an essay to persuade readers that immigration policies do; (3) the procedures for developing an argument, such as using stories of people affected by unemployment or the failures of providing safe environments for kids of strategies might work in one context or another. That is, stories might be a powerful way to raise an issue for a class in sociology or education, but some hard data might be more appropriate in developing a persuasive argument in economics. Making decisions like this one emphasizes the role of reflection – monitoring, evaluating, developing, strategies, and taking control over your own learning.

            Finally, reflection is an important habit of mind because the act of thinking and questioning encourages us to critically examine our own lived experiences. In his memoir Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about a moment in his life when he first became literate, and he explains in the following passage how literacy – reading and writing – opened up a world that he wanted to know more about. Here Coates, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant, addresses his son, as he does throughout his memoir, to tell a story of a time when his mother would make him write when he was in trouble. For us, the story he conveys is about the power of reflection that comes from writing – the significance of writing to make thinking visible, to ask questions that prompt Coates to consider his actions in the present, and to envision future actions based on what he has learned.

 Your grandmother taught me to read when I was only four. She also taught me to write, by which I                                                 mean not simply organizing a set of sentences into a series of paragraphs, but organizing them as a                           means of investigation. When I was in trouble at school (which was quite often) she would make me                         write about it. The writing had to answer a series of questions: Why did I feel the need to talk at the                         same time as my teacher? Why did I not believe that my teacher was entitled to respect? How would                               I want someone to behave while I was talking? What would I do the next time I felt the urge to talk to                         My friends during a lesson?

 Coates admits that his mother’s assignment never really taught him to “curb” his behavior, but these early lessons were a powerful source of learning to “interrogate” the world. Reflecting on the past, and future drew Coates into “consciousness,” as he puts it. “Your grandmother was not teaching me how to behave in class. She was teaching me how to ruthlessly interrogate the subject that elicited the most sympathy and rationalizing – myself.”