Reflection
Critical reflection is the key element of service learning that bridges in-class learning and service experiences. Through guided prompts, students can focus on objectives before, during, and after their service experiences, creating more intentional, guided learning.
A key aspect of reflective writing or discussion is that it it not simply descriptive. Rather, it should focus on how the student is making meaning of what happened.
Goals for Reflection
Cognitive: Reflection should help students make a connection between their service experience and the academic concepts they have learned in the classroom. Reflection is a tool to help students develop critical thinking skills and improve on future performance by analyzing their experience
Personal Connection: Well-written prompts can help challenge students’ currently held beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, biases, privileges, prejudices, and stereotypes. Reflection activities provide opportunities for students make a connection between experience and their personal values, feelings, motives, desires, behaviors, and ability to create change.
Social Responsibility: Reflection activities provide space for students to consider and understand the complexity of their service experience and put it in a larger context. Well-constructed prompts help them articulate how their discipline or what they learned in a course can be used to positively impact a community.
The Four C's of Reflection
Challenging
Challenging reflection activities should challenge students to think critically about their service learning activities and how they relate to their roles as engaged citizens and to academic course content. Faculty members should set high expectations and provide engaging feedback for students.
Continuous
Continuous reflection activities are encouraged throughout the semester in a variety of formats. Ongoing reflection is key for students to have multiple opportunities to process challenges and implement new solutions.
Connected
Connected reflection activities should refer directly to each student’s service learning project. Because students will likely be working on different service learning projects, faculty members should be prepared for variety in the content of reflection activities.
Contextualized
Contextualized reflection activities should be consistent and complementary to other course content.
Eyler, J., Giles, Jr., D. E., & Schmiede, A. (1996). A practitioner’s guide to reflection in service-learning: Student voices and reflections. Vanderbilt University
Four Levels of Reflection
| Level | Description |
|---|---|
| Habitual Action | Student offers an answer without attempting to understand it. Students exemplify this level when they follow the steps without any consideration of what they are doing or why. In writing, at this level students look for material that answers the question. When asked, they cannot explain what they have written. |
| Understanding | Students understand concepts in theory, but fail to apply the concepts to real-world events or to personal experiences. |
| Reflection | Students are able to not only understand concepts, but can apply concepts to real-world events or to personal experiences. Their personal insights go beyond theory. |
| Critical Reflection | Students experience transformative changes in their perspective. New information or experiences disrupt students’ assumptions that causes them to reconstruct belief systems. Students start by recognizing their beliefs and accompanying assumptions. When something new disrupts their belief system, they begin to reconstruct or reform it. Critical reflection takes place over time and may not happen with students new to critical reflection. |
Reflection Models
Ash & Clayton (2009) define critical reflection as “evidence based examination of the sources of and gaps in knowledge and practice with the intent to improve on both (p. 28).” They represent their approach in the DEAL model: Describe, Examine, and Articulate Learning.
Describe a SL related experience (objectively and in some detail)
- When did this experience take place? Where did it take place?
- Who else was there? Who wasn’t there?
- What did I / we say or otherwise communicate?
- Who didn’t speak or act?
Examine that experience (academic learning)
- What specific academic material is relevant to this experience? Explain the concept, theory, etc clearly and concisely so that someone unfamiliar with it could understand it
- How did the material emerge in the experience (When did I see it or note its absence? How did or should I or someone else use it?)?
- What academic (e.g., disciplinary, intellectual, professional) skills did I use / should I have used? In what ways did I / others think from the perspective of a particular discipline and with what results?
- In what specific ways are my understanding of the material or skill and the experience the same and in what specific ways are they different? What are the possible reasons for the difference(s) (e.g., bias, assumptions, lack of information on my part or on the part of the author / instructor / community?)
Articulate Learning
“I learned that” …
- Express an important learning, not just a statement of fact
- Provide a clear and correct explanation of the concept(s) in question so that someone not in the experience could understand it.
- Explain your enhanced understanding of the concept(s), as a result of reflection on the experience
- Be expressed in general terms, not just in the context of the experience (so that the learning can be applied more broadly to other experiences)
“I learned this when” ….
- Connect the learning to specific activities that gave rise to it, making clear what happened in the context of that experience so that someone who wasn’t there could understand it.
- “This learning matters because” …
- Consider how the learning has value, both in terms of this situation and in broader terms, such as other organizations, communities, activities, issues, professional goals, courses, etc.
“In light of this learning” …
- Set specific and assessable goals; consider the benefits and challenges involved in fulfilling them
- Tie back clearly to the original learning statement.
Ash, S. L., & Clayton, P. H. (2009). Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection for applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1(1), 25-48.
Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model, based around Borton's 1970 developmental model, is comprised of three primary questions: What? So what? Now what?
What?
- What happened? What did you observe?
- What was your role at the community site?
- What issue is being addressed or population is being served?
- What were your initial expectations?
- Why does this organization exist?
- What learning occurred for you in this experience?
So What?
- Did you learn a new skill or clarify an interest?
- Did anything about your community involvement surprise you? If so, what?
- How is your experience different from what you expected?
- What impacts the way you view the situation/experience? (What lens are you viewing from?)
- What did you learn about the people/community?
- What are some of the pressing needs/issues in the community?
- How does this project address those needs?
- How did the experience relate to your coursework?
- Has your understanding of the community changed as a result of your participation in this project? If so, how?
- Talk about any disappointments or successes of your project. What did you learn from it?
Now What?
- How can you apply what you learned from your experience?
- What would you like to learn more about, related to this project or issue?
- What would you like to learn more about, related to this project or issue?
- What follow-up is needed to address any challenges or difficulties?
- What information can you share with your peers or the community?
- If you could do the project again, what would you do differently?
- Have your career options been expanded by your service experience?
- How can you continue your involvement with this group or social issue?
Adapted from: Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001). Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: A user’s guide. Palgrave Macmillan.
In the Gibbs’ (1988) Reflective Cycle, there are 6 stages:
Description: what happened?
- What, where and when did this happen?
- What did you do/read/see hear?
- In what order did things happen?
- What were the circumstances?
- What were you responsible for?
- What was the result of the situation?
Feelings: what were you thinking?
- What was your initial reaction, and what
- does this tell you? Did your feelings change?
- What were you thinking?
- What did you feel during / after the situation?
- What do you think about it now?
What was good or bad about the experience?
- What went well?
- What were the challenges?
- Who/what was unhelpful? Why?
- What did you and others do to contribute to the situation (positively or negatively)?
- What needs improvement?
Analysis: what sense can you make of the situation?
Break the event down into its component parts so they can be explored separately. You may need to ask more detailed questions about the answers to the last stage.
Compare theory and practice. What similarities or differences are there between this experience and other experiences? Think about what actually happened. What choices did you make and what effect did they have?
- What went well?
- What did you do well?
- What did others do well?
- What went wrong or did not turn out how it should have done?
- In what way did you or others contribute to this?
Conclusion: what else could you have done?
- During this stage you should ask yourself what you could have done differently.
- What were the factors that affected the outcome?
- What might have been some alternative actions or approaches?
- What might you have done differently (even when things went well)?
- Could negative events be avoided?
- Could positive events be made more effective?
Action Plan: what will you do next time?
- If a similar situation arose again, what would you do?
- What will you do if you encounter this kind of situation again?
- What will you do in the future to increase the likelihood of similar positive outcomes and minimize the likelihood of similar negative outcomes?
- What do you need to learn?
Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford Further Education Unit, Oxford.
Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory is a combination of a learning cycle comprised of 4 processes and 4 learning styles.
Learning Styles
- Diverging (concrete, reflective) - Emphasizes the innovative and imaginative approach to doing things. Views concrete situations from many perspectives and adapts by observation rather than by action. Interested in people and tends to be feeling-oriented. Likes such activities as cooperative groups and brainstorming.
- Assimilating (abstract, reflective) - Pulls a number of different observations and thoughts into an integrated whole. Likes to reason inductively and create models and theories. Likes to design projects and experiments.
- Converging (abstract, active)- Emphasizes the practical application of ideas and solving problems. Likes decision-making, problem-solving, and the practical application of ideas. Prefers technical problems over interpersonal issues.
- Accommodating (concrete, active) - Uses trial and error rather than thought and reflection. Good at adapting to changing circumstances; solves problems in an intuitive, trial-and-error manner, such as discovery learning. Also tends to be at ease with people.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Sample Reflection Assignments/Activities
Critical Friends Protocol (PDF): This discussion process focuses on reflective practice and rethinking leadership. Each participant has a specific role and follows a clearly-defined protocol and timeline, keeping the discussion focused and productive.
Critical Incidents Journal: Ask students to record a critical incident for each week of the service project. The critical incident refers to events in which a decision was made, a conflict occurred, a problem resolved. The critical incident journal provides a systematic way for students to communicate problems and challenges involved in working with the community and with their teams and can thus help in dealing with the affective dimensions of the service experience.
Deliberative Dialogue: Prompt students to discuss real community issues (related to the content of your course) and work together to explore courses of action. The objective of deliberative dialogue is to think together, not necessarily to debate, find consensus, or negotiate.
Directed Readings: Directed readings are a way to prompt students to consider their service experience without a broader context of social responsibility and civic literacy. Since textbooks rarely challenge students to consider how knowledge within a discipline can be applied to current social needs, additional reading must be added if this is a learning objective of the course. Directed readings can become the basis for class discussion or a directed writing.
Directed Writings: Directed writings ask students to consider the service experience within the framework of course content. The instructor identifies a section form the textbook or class readings (i.e. quotes, statistics, concepts) and structures a question for students to answer. A list of directed writings can be provided at the beginning of the semester or given to students as the semester progresses. Students may also create their own directed writing questions from the text. Directed writings provide opportunity for application and critical analysis of the course content.
Discussions: Encourage formal/informal discussions with teammates, other volunteers, and staff to introduce students to different perspectives and to challenge students to think critically about the project.
Ethical Case Studies: Ethical case studies give students the opportunity to analyze a situation and gain practice in ethical decision-making as they choose a course of action. This reflection strategy can foster the exploration and clarification of values. Students write a case study of an ethical dilemma they have confronted at the service site, including a description of the context, the individuals involved, and the controversy or event that crated an ethical dilemma. Case students are read in class and students discuss the situation and identify how they would respond.
Interviews: Interview students on service experiences and the learning that occurred in their projects.
Journals: Ask students to record thoughts, observations, feelings, activities and questions in a journal throughout the project. The most common form of journals are free-form journals. The journal should be started early in the project and students should make frequent entries. Explain benefits of journals to students such as enhancing observational skills, exploring feelings, assessing progress and enhancing communication skills. Faculty should provide feedback by responding to journals, class discussions of issue/ questions raised in journals or further assignments based on journal entries.
Personal Plan for Learning and Serving: This guide helps students articulate what matters to them, the skills they have, and how they can use those skills to engage in community. Have students complete this activity toward the beginning of the class, and have them revisit and revise it one or two times during the semester.
Photovoice Project: Photovoice can help students understand their own lived experiences and the experiences of others in different ways. If electing to incorporate photovoice, it is important to consider ethical storytelling and consent practices that should be followed by students throughout the process.
Portfolios: Ask students to select and organize evidence related to accomplishments and specific learning outcomes in a portfolio. Portfolios can include drafts of documents, analysis of problems/ issues, project activities/plans, photographs, videos, and annotated bibliography. Ask students to organize evidence by learning objectives.
Presentations: A way for students to share their service learning experience with peers is to make a class presentation through a video, slideshow, bulletin board, panel discussion or persuasive speech. Ask students to present their service experience and discuss it in terms of concepts/theories discussed in class. This is an opportunity for students to display their work in public format. A similar presentation can be offered to the community agency as a final recognition of the students’ involvement.
Root Cause Analysis through the "But Why?" Technique: Root causes are the fundamental reasons behind a problem or issue identified in the community. Helping students "get to the root" of the problem allows them to think more deeply community needs and potential solutions.
Structured class discussion: Structured reflection session can be facilitated during regular class time if all students are involved in service. It is helpful for students to hear stories of success from one another. They can also offer advice and collaborate to identify solutions to problems encountered at the service site.
Structured journals: Use structured journals to direct student attention to important issues/ questions and to connect the service experience to classwork. A structured journal provides prompts to guide the reflective process. Some parts of the journal may focus on affective dimensions while others relate to problem-solving activities.
Team journal: Use a team journal to promote interaction between team members on project related issues and to introduce students to different perspectives on the project. Students can take turns recording shared and individual experiences, reactions and observations, and responses to each other’s entries.
Adapted from Campus Compact, Types of reflective activities that can be used in service-learning projects, retrieved from compact.org/disciplines/reflection/types.html (accessed October 26, 2015) and “Tried and True Teaching Methods to Enhance Students’ Service-Learning Experience” (PDF) complied by Professor Diane Sloan, Miami Dade Community College.