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REFLECTION

REFLECTION. Or, Critically Integrating Community and Place-Based Learning in the Classroom By T. R. Johnson. Reflection is . . . The bridge between academic content and service-experience in the wider community The activity through which learning takes place

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REFLECTION

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  1. REFLECTION Or, Critically Integrating Community and Place-Based Learning in the Classroom By T. R. Johnson

  2. Reflection is . . . • The bridge between academic content and service-experience in the wider community • The activity through which learning takes place • Therefore it is of the most vital importance and must be carefully planned as a rigorous dimension of the course.

  3. Goal for this Workshop: To guide you in the development of a plan for a system of reflection-assignments for your course

  4. Overview of workshop: • Assumptions and definitions • Types of Reflection assignments • Ways to grade reflections assignments • Discussions

  5. Primary Assumption: “An ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory simply because it is only in experience that any theory has vital and verifiable significance. An experience, even a very humble experience, is capable of generating and carrying any amount of theory (or intellectual content), but a theory apart from an experience cannot be definitely grasped even as a theory. It tends to become a mere verbal formula . . .” -- Robert Bringle and Julie Hatcher

  6. Reflection is NOT • Vague, inward reverie • Stream-of-consciousness diary entries • Solitary • Therapeutic • Personal opinion (unavailable to evaluation) • Busy-work

  7. Instead, reflection should be • Analytical • Structured and Structuring • Continuous • Collaborative • Synthetic • Documentary • Public • Graded

  8. Analytical: Require students, in reflection, to . . . • Look at experience “through the lens” of assigned reading, and vice-versa: what new details become important and why? • Identify problems or conflicts – within reading or at site, or between reading(s) and site(s) • Delineate the key components of problems and dismantle ill-structured problems

  9. Structured and Structuring • Regular, short, low-stakes reflections should link each week’s reading to service experience • Larger, high-stakes reflections should assess the service-experience in light of the course goals and build on the shorter reflections • Feedback from peers, from professor, and from community partner should shape upcoming reflections – regularly and systematically

  10. Continuous,because . . . • It thereby becomes habitual in students, not an artificial “add-on” after most of the work of the semester is finished • It thereby provides invaluable opportunity to “trouble-shoot” the service project as it unfolds and open the way for immediate correctives

  11. Synthetic: it leads students to make connections . . . • Between different readings • Between readings and service-experiences • Between different service-experiences • And thereby to build a coherent body of new knowledge derived from diverse elements – actively, creatively, analytically, even argumentatively

  12. Documentary • Can be archived and used as readings in future iterations of the course • Can be revisited by the students themselves in later projects (both academic and professional) • Can be used in an on-going way by community partner (in grant applications, in out-reach…) • Can thereby strengthen in a material way the tie between the course and the community partner and help to sustain this tie, even create a shared “history”

  13. Public: when transparent, academic work can • Preserve the dynamic between the course and the community partner beyond the end of the semester • Give students a sense of meaningful and potentially open-ended audience beyond the person who awards their grade for semester • Radicalize students’ consciousness of their own subject-position in wider community, beyond Tulane “bubble”

  14. Graded • So that students will take it seriously • So that it can foster more dialogue between student and professor • So that its relation to course goals can be actualized in direct ways

  15. Types of Reflection Assignments • At the beginning of semester • Throughout the semester • At the end of the semester

  16. Beginning of Semester • Interpreting course goals • Documenting first impressions • Articulating key questions or anxieties • Delineating contractual obligations

  17. Throughout semester • Weekly Discussion Board posts that link quotes from reading and anecdotes about service experience • Weekly Double-entry journal that comment, in one column on reading, and in the other about service-experience • Weekly Critical Incident logs that describe and analyze problematic or surprising moments.

  18. At end of semester • Class presentations • Reflective narratives • Group collaborations • Videos • Facebook Pages • Public Showcases

  19. Grading: a 4-part rubric 1. Quotes from reading are numerous, well-integrated less numerous, less integrated not there or merely imposed 2. Service-experience is described/narrated in complex detail more superficially not at all

  20. Rubric cont’d . . . 3. Engages course goals in meaningful depth more sporadically not at all 4. Evinces significant develop as a person a citizen an intellectual a professional

  21. Break-Out Session

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