Hello to you,
I often speak to teachers I work with about the need for quiet structure, and one of those structures is the regular ritual of pausing to reflect.
Generally, reflection is used as a sort of a take-stock-and-work-out-what-next exercise, which is fine. Doing this helps keep us focused on the task at hand. It helps us meet our goals. I am not averse to these things.
One thing I do wonder about though is the way in which this kind of approach to reflection removes the person from the equation, how it narrows the way in which they can engage fully in the world; about how, as a consequence, the enrichment of their inner world is neglected. Hold that idea - I’ll come back to it later.
“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes the colour of your thoughts.”
Marcus Aurelius.
Typically, under the take-stock-and-work-out-what-next approach to reflection, the goal is the focus; meeting it, shifting ‘things’ closer towards it, the whole point of the exercise. The mistake we make is to think this is appropriate to all times and contexts.
Guy Claxton sometimes talks of mental modes, two of which are learning and performance. It is my contention that the way we predominantly ask kids to reflect, while wholly appropriate if we’re in performance mode, is ill-suited for when we’re in learning mode.
Let’s start with a thought experiment: what words do you associate with learning?
Here are some words I get: curiosity, experimentation, exploration, risk taking, flow, creativity, openness, calm, movement, focus, difficulty. Am I safe in assuming you had a similar list?
And, now that you’ve listed them, can you see how these words are an uneasy fit for the way we generally get kids to reflect?
This doesn’t mean we when we’re in learning mode we can’t reflect. It just means we need to come at it in another way. Part of the answer, I think, is to consider the focus of the reflection; we need to shift from it being product or goal focused, as we are when we take stock, and become person and process focused.
To illustrate the difference, it might be useful to think of the kinds of sentences we use when we reflect, with the shift being away from this kid of sentence,
I have been working on improving the rhythm in my poem and now I need to make the metaphor stronger so the idea becomes more developed.
to this kind of sentence,
I’ve had fun playing with magnetic poetry, exploring how words shift how it sounds, and I’m curious about making different images bounce against each other.
Notice how narrow and list-like things are in the first sentence; how open they are in the second. Notice how the first sentence is framed by focused efficiency; how the second surfaces emotions and connects the process deeply with the person and their experience.
The kind of thinking, and action, the first sentence promotes is really effective for hitting targets and this is why it’s so useful when we are in performance mode. But, and this is important, performance mode is reductive (not to mention, exhausting). It is a state where only certain things are possible or permitted. The mistake our education systems have made is to see all learning as a performative act.
Performance is an outward expression of what exists inside. This means that it is a process that involves transition: what we are being asked to make visible must cross the internal/external boundary. Sometimes this can be a smooth trip. Often, it’s not. All performers know this. Anyone who has been in an audience knows that each night is different.
Also, it’s not just the ‘thing’ we are asking the kids to perform that crosses that boundary. Emotions come too. History. Self-narratives. Relationships. Affinities. (Dis)Abilities.
For the fortunate student, these things are in harmony with the context for performance. When we ask these students to reflect, the process is smooth. They can complete those itemised, goal-focused sentences easily.
But what of the less fortunate?
When we invite them to reflect in a performance mode, take-stock-and-work-out-what-next way, the process is not quite as smooth. What we typically surface is disharmony. We amplify the ways in which they are out of tune with the focus of the performance. Have you felt this?
I’m sure you’ve seen it. Often it manifests itself as avoidance, especially as the kid gets older. Eg, One class gets skipped but not another …
This is how the chance to enrich the inner life is missed. And that goes for both kinds of students. The fortunate are never really challenged: tick the list off and arrive in accomplishment city. The less fortunate seek refuge in surrender and avoidance, the list of steps towards achievement overwhelming, unachievable. A student I knew called the impact of too many experiences like this - where their performance is out of tune with what is expected - as creating what she called the ‘closed-off learner’.
There is no silver bullet here, but we can do things that minimise the disharmony. One of those is being careful with the way in which we ask our learners to reflect. Let’s ask questions that are people and process focused, holding open the possibilities for engagement. Let’s reduce the number of performance mode reflections we ask them to engage in.
Look back at the two sentences. While both are inviting the learner to describe, the difference in what’s being described is stark.
The first asks the student to describe their movement through a list and their position in relation to the end goal. It is inherently judgement oriented. This is why this way of reflecting is useful when we’re in performance mode and we have to demonstrate what we can do.
The second asks the student to describe what they have been engaging with and the impact it has had on their thinking, both emotionally and intellectually. It is inherently growth-oriented and full of possibility.
And it is here that we glimpse how positioning reflection in the mode of learning offers the chance for the enrichment of the learner’s inner world. This kind of reflection is multi-dimensional; it offers the kind of scope and depth the list-like, performance mode reflection doesn’t; it opens up space for questions and contemplation, for wonder and deep knowing.
If we want our kids’ souls to be coloured beautifully, what we need to do is give this process time to work its magic.
I’m reading
Mindwandering by Moshe Barr.
While I’m finding it slow going, that’s a function of the ideas it has requiring lots of chewing over rather than it being a dull read.
This caught my eye
An article, by Jo Buchan, published on the National Library of New Zealand’s blog on August 22.
‘How teachers who read create readers: An interview with Sue McDowall on teachers as readers’
“They did all those things we know are good to do. They read to the children. They provided children time to read silently for pleasure on their own, and to talk with each other about the texts. But what they thought made the most difference was that they themselves were readers in and out of school time. They brought their identity into the classroom and talked about books, thought about books and interacted with books in ways that were different because they were readers.”
Current favourite poem
‘The Hospital’ by Boris Pasternack.
The contrast between the ruthless efficiency of the doctor and ‘the system’, and the image of solidarity between the patient and the maple tree is a powerful image I keep coming back to.
(Of course I’m seeing a metaphor to do with education here!)
I’m wondering about
What does being well educated mean?