Reflection Journaling and Problem-based Learning

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Reflection Journaling and Problem-based Learning

• Glen OGrady
• Centre for Educational Development
• Republic Polytechnic
• glen_ogrday_at_rp.sg

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• Turn to your neighbour and share a reflection
  about this conference

• So how did your neighbour chose to reflect
• Recall something that was said at the conference
• How they feel about the conference
• The task of having to reflect
• Something about themselves
• Choose not to share

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• The importance of reflection in learning
• How PBL promotes reflection (RP)
• Strategies for enabling deeper reflection

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Importance of Reflection

• Means for turning experience into learning (Dewey
  1916, 1920)
• Meta-cognition, accessing our thinking or
  "thinking about "thinking (Winn 1996).
• Looking to our experiences, connecting with our
  feelings, and attending to our theories in use.
  It entails building new understandings to inform
  our actions in the situation that is unfolding
  (Schon 1983).
• Reflection is the basis of Reflexion purposeful
  action (Darling 1998 3-4)

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Importance of Reflection

• Returning to experience - recalling or detailing
  salient events.
• Attending to (or connecting with) feelings - this
  has two aspects using helpful feelings and
  removing or containing obstructive ones.
• Evaluating experience - this involves
  re-examining experience in the light of one's
  intent and existing knowledge etc. It also
  involves integrating this new knowledge into
  one's conceptual framework.
• (Boud, 1985)

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Importance of Reflection
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Substitute Sociology for your own discipline

• A Reflexive Sociology is and would need to be a
  radical sociology. Radical, because it would
  recognize that knowledge of the world cannot be
  advanced apart from the sociologist's knowledge
  of himself and his position in the social world,
  or apart from his efforts to change these.
  Radical, because it seeks to transform as well as
  to know the alien world inside him. Radical,
  because it would accept the fact that the roots
  of sociology pass through the sociologist as a
  total man, and that the question he must
  confront, therefore, is not merely how to work,
  but how to live... The historical mission of a
  Reflexive Sociology is to transcend sociology as
  it now exists. In deepening our understanding of
  our own sociological selves and of our position
  in the world, we can, I believe, simultaneously
  help to produce a new breed of sociologists who
  can also better understand other men and their
  social worlds. A Reflexive Sociology means that
  we sociologists must - at the very least -
  acquire the ingrained habit of viewing our own
  beliefs as we now view those held by others."
  Harold Garfinkel has also approached this idea in
  an interesting manner with his contention that
  sociologists are like goldfish swimming in a
  bowl, confidently analyzing other goldfish,
  without having ever stopped to recognize the bowl
  and the water they have in common with the fish
  they study.
• Alvin Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western
  Sociology (New York Basic Books, Inc.,
  Publishers, 1970).

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Conceptions of Learning

• Increasing ones knowledge
• Learning as memorizing reproducing
• Learning as applying
• Learning as understanding
• Learning as an interpretive process aimed at
  understanding reality
• Learning changing the person
• Willis 1993

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Learning is about becoming...
(Jarvis 1992)
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Problem-based Learning
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Instruction-based Teacher Centred
Problem-based Learner Centred
Teacher
Student
Construction of Knowledge
Dissemination of Knowledge
Instruct, discipline, assess
Facilitator
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Is PBL a fad?
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How PBL promotes reflection
Experts

• Learning entails understanding knowledge (as
  experts know it),
• To help students better understand pedagogy must
  focus on HOW understanding is constructed (make
  sense).
• Making sense as a process is bringing to bear
  all that we are.
• Learning how to learn is developed thru practice
  (with problems) reflection.

Knowledge
Student's interpretation of knowledge
Student's interpretation of knowledge
Reflection
Students processes for making sense (knowledge
construction)
Problem
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Epistemology of PBL

• Knowledge is not derived from an objective
  reality (where ideas/ facts just need to be
  found and applied)
• Because knowledge is constructed it can and must
  be critiqued and contested
• Learning is when there is a personal and
  inter-subjective connected sense of knowing

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PBL is a Reflective Pedagogy

• The Teacher Facilitator
• Engages in the problem as a learner
• Admits to the precariousness of the discipline
  (since it is constructed) and welcomes the
  scrutiny of knowledge
• Forgoes the privileged position of the person in
  control
• Helps students to reflect upon how they know

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Republic Polytechnic (RP-PBL)
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One Day One Problem Approach

• Class of 25, 5 teams of 5
• Students define the problem and identify learning
  issues
• Students find information and discuss
• Facilitator checks on their progress
• Focus on learning difficulties developing
  learning strategies
• Develop response based upon a shared team
  understanding
• Students prepare and present their
  solutions/explanations
• They observe how others have solved the problem
• Facilitators probes and critique and give
  additional information where necessary
• Students reflect upon their learning

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RP-PBL Assessment

• Presentations
• Self Peer Evaluation
• Reflection journal
• Quiz
• Classroom Observation
• Students get feedback everyday
• Verbal feedback in class
• Daily grade derived holistically
• Written feedback
• Students every month sit an understanding test
• Module grade (combination daily grades and
  understanding tests).

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Student Reflection Journals
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Strategies for facilitating deeper reflection

• Encourage regular reflection
• Use of questions to trigger reflection
• Use technology

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1. Encourage regular reflection Student
Reflection Journals
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Technology

• We shape our tools and afterwards, our tools
  shape us. We become what we behold.

Marshall McLuhan
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Encourage regular reflection
Table 1. Four levels of reflective thinking
(Mezirow, 1997).
Non-reflection
Research on Quality of Student Reflection (Lisa
Lim 2006)
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Students perceptions of their reflective
processes across three years
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Encourage regular reflection
OGrady (2009)
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2. Use of Questions to Trigger Reflection
examples

• What strategies have I used to help me learn?
• How well did I communicate with my team?
• What obstacles did I encounter today and how did
  I manage these obstacles?
• How do I feel about my team mates?
• How could I have improved my teams performance
  today?
• What insights did I gain about myself ?
• How do I feel about what I have learned and why?
• What prior knowledge did I apply to help me
  understand today's problem?
• I was confident / not confident today because?
• What did I learn today about others that allows
  me to better understand myself?
• Which feedback have I received that has had the
  most impact upon me and why?

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Effect of using Questions to Trigger Reflection

• Activity Watch the video
• (Link)
• Attention and inattentional blindness (lesson we
  get what we ask for)

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Using technology in facilitating reflection
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Use Technology

• Students are using technology to reflect (blogs
  wikis).
• technology can also can be use it to capture and
  organise information (processes students employ
  for learning, learning artifacts)

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Using technology in facilitating reflection
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• What happens when you give back this information
  to students?
• Can it facilitate better reflection and
  reflexivity, one that helps us to breakdown
  blindness bias?

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What about facilitators?

• Can they use the information to better understand
  students learning?

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Reflection Your own reflection
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References

• Boud, D. et al (eds.) (1985) Reflection. Turning
  experience into learning, London Kogan
• Darling, I., (1998) Action evaluation and action
  theory An assessment of the process and its
  connection to conflict resolution. pp 1-6. The
  on-line conference on "The reflective
  practitioner." Dedicated to Donald Schön on
  ACTLIST. 1st of March to 3rd of April.
• Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education. An
  introduction to the philosophy of education (1966
  edn.), New York Free Press.
• Gouldner, Alvin, The Coming Crisis of Western
  Sociology (New York Basic Books, Inc.,
  Publishers, 1970).
• Jarvis, P. (1992) Paradoxes of Learning. London
  Jossey Bass.
• Lim. Lisa-Angelique, (2007) Students Reflective
  Thinking in a Problem-Based Learning Environment
  A Cross-Sectional Study. CDTL, National
  University of Singapore.
• Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. How
  professionals think in action, London Temple
  Smith
• Winn, W. Snyder D. (1996). Cognitive
  perspectives in pyschology. In D.H. Jonassen, ed.
  Handbook of research for educational
  communications and technology, 112-142. New York
  Simon Schuster Macmillan
• www.myrp.sg/ced/ns/research_paper.asp
• glen_ogrady_at_rp.sg

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What does the learning process consist of?

• Four-phase model

Kuhn,
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