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Christian Faculty TeachingReflective Practice: An ActionResearch Approach to LearningArch Chee Keen Wong aa Ambrose University College , Calgary, Alberta,CanadaPublished online: 12 Jun 2009.

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Christian Higher Education, 8:173–186Copyright C© 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1536-3759 print / 1539-4107 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15363750902782365

CHRISTIAN FACULTY TEACHING REFLECTIVE PRACTICE:AN ACTION RESEARCH APPROACH TO LEARNING

ARCH CHEE KEEN WONGAmbrose University College, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The article reports the final results of a collaborative action research project thatdevised a reflective approach to theological education. This project lives withinthe tension between prescribing and implementing a model of theological edu-cation and working at the level of applied understanding. Living within thistension are six professors in the Faculty of Theology who teach field educa-tion courses. These professors find themselves very much in the middle, in be-tween theory and practice. Our conversation and learning focused on two areas:(a) the nature of reflection as it relates to teaching and student and professoridentity; and (b) how we represent reflection in the classroom in terms of teachingand evaluation.

The interest in reflection or reflective practice as a key elementof theological education is a response to the recognition that ab-stracted and rationalized forms of knowledge do not easily trans-late into good practice. One of the consequences has been awidening tension between theoretical and practical discoursesin ministerial formation (Foster, Dahill, Golemon, & Tolentino,2006; Schon, 1983). It is within this tension between theory andpractice that theology students are often asked to make sense ofpractice.

This article presents the results of a collaborative action re-search project funded by the Wabash Center for Teaching andLearning in Theology and Religion. The research project con-cerns itself with two questions:

1. What is the meaning of “reflection” for those professors whoteach students to be reflective?

2. Can a better pedagogical approach be implemented to helpprofessors teach reflection/reflective practice?

Address correspondence to Arch Chee Keen Wong, Ambrose University College,150 Ambrose Circle, S.W., Calgary, AB T3H OL5, Canada. E-mail: awong@ambrose.edu

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Rationale

What cannot be easily demonstrated is that encouraging reflec-tion necessarily leads into good practice—that is, that there is aneat relationship between being reflective, however defined—andfuture competence as a pastor. How reflective practice is repro-duced in courses and activities may impede the way studentsconstruct their meanings and experiences. A focal point of edu-cational and theological research in the past has been to uncoverthe processes by which pastors work in their context—how pastorsthink, for example. Schon’s work (1983) on reflective practice hasbeen taken up in this way. The terms that Schon uses—knowing-in-action and reflection-in-action—are taken to be more or less accu-rate representations of inner processes of thought in action. Thus,there is an entire field of research that has developed around thisnotion, that is, around exploring pastoral knowledge or cognitionin order to uncover processes that can be formulated into princi-ples and ultimately a curriculum for theological education, whichin turn will reproduce good practice.

Reflection-in-action in Schon’s work has become one of theprimary theoretical foundations for identifying reflective practice.In fact, much of the writing about reflective practice has a matter-of-factness about it, as something that can be grasped quite pre-cisely in language. However, as Schon himself recognizes, the ideaof reflection is a problematic one for those learning a profession.

Even though Schon seems to be enthusiastically embraced bysome, there appears to be a lack of critical reflection on whetheror not reflection-in-action really describes or fits pastoral prac-tice. Moreover, despite Schon’s seeming critique of technical ra-tionality, there is still a very strong feel of what is basically a linearform of scientific thinking that typifies his model. For instance,Schon (1987) talks about reflection-in-action as a form of “on-the-spot experimenting,” and practice as “testing” understandings.Schon’s notion of reflection-in-action is on the surface a critiqueof technical rationality, but can be seen to reintroduce a recon-structed logic of rational deliberation (Van Manen, 1991).

Even in more critical approaches, Schon’s idea of reflectivepractice seems to be accepted as paradigmatic. Critical theoryas a basis for developing critical approaches in reflection and

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pedagogy also has some instrumentalist implications for theologi-cal education.

The point I want to highlight is that the way that reflection isconceptualized, written about, and taught by professors may notat all grasp the reality and complexity of the ways reflection is alived experience. Students’ experiences do not always fall in a tidyway within the technical, practical, or critical modes of reflection,though there may be times when reflection is technical, practical,or critical.

The experiences of students tend to heighten my sense of am-biguity about reflection, raising more questions about the mean-ing of reflection and its pedagogic implications in the field ed-ucation courses. That led me to the question of whether or notreflection could be thought of in a different way, in a way that at-tended to the difficulties of becoming a pastor. I started to ponderif there was something inherently amiss with the idea of reflec-tion as a way to guide the practical work of learning to minister.During the course of this action research project I wondered attimes whether and to what extent our ideas on reflection, as putto use in theological education, owe something to our modernistheritage, particularly in the way that the act of reflection is cen-tered in the consciousness of the subject, attributing ontologicalpriority of the subject over that which is to be understood. Ex-treme postmodern views—“skeptical postmodernists” as Rosenau(1992) calls those of that view—are most critical of the modernsubject and the centering of consciousness and understanding inthe work of subjectivity.

Over the past number of years, my colleagues and I haveworked with many theology students who tend to think and writeabout reflection in a kind of disengaged way. Rather than a wayof engaging the world in more meaningful ways, critical reflec-tion was received by many students as another theoretical, ab-stract notion, or a kind of method that could lead magically tobetter understanding. For those students who did not want to dis-miss the importance of reflection (assuming its strong normativemandate—i.e., it is better to be reflective than nonreflective), crit-ical reflection may even have caused more difficulty for them,creating a distancing from the contexts for understanding andengagement.

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Context

This action research project started when the Faculty of Theol-ogy’s undergraduate program at Ambrose University College re-vised and implemented a new curriculum in 2003. This new cur-riculum moves towards implementing a reflective approach totheological education. The faculty affirmed that students were tobecome reflective practitioners. How this outcome was to be im-plemented and achieved was left unanswered.

The goal of this action research project, which began in July2006 and ended May 2008, was to devise a reflective approach totheological education that could be implemented and practicedfor professors. This project lives within the tension between pre-scribing and implementing a model of theological education andworking at the level of applied understanding. Living within thistension were six professors in the Faculty of Theology who teachfield education courses. These professors found themselves verymuch in the middle, in between theory and practice. While re-flection has been appropriated as a way to describe ministry, andhas been the stimulus for all kinds of research and writing, what itmeans—either theoretically or practically—is not all unequivocaland clear.

Modes of Inquiry

Adopting a cyclical process modeled on practitioner action re-search, the group of six professors met on a regular basis to sup-port and discuss reflective practice and good pedagogy. Data wasgenerated at meetings from the professors. Notes from 20 meet-ings were taken over the two years, key events recorded, plansfollowed up on with observations and reflections from groupmembers and data was collected as the need arose. Moreover,notes were taken of professors’ perceptions and anecdotes onthe research project. Rereading and synthesizing were conductedby one professor, then shared with the group and approved bythe group. The professor’s analysis included rereading the data,noting recurring topics and issues, connecting these to actions,and then mapping the progress of the project over the two-yearperiod.

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The Project Design and Learning Process

For Carr and Kemmis (1986), action research takes its cue froma practitioner’s awareness that there is a gap between his or hertheory and practice. As professors in the Faculty of Theology, werealize this gap and addressed it in this action research project.

In the first phase of the project, we attempted to define andunderstand reflection in terms of our teaching practices. FromOctober 2006 to June 2007 we met two or three times each monthas a group with the consultants. With the help of our two consul-tants, some reading on reflection was assigned that addressed theimportance of context and the particular, the centrality of rela-tionships, and the question of what constitutes an authentic en-counter. The articles assigned were difficult but insightful. Thesearticles helped us ask some broader questions about teaching andlearning. We began to ask questions about our own teaching, suchas, “What is good teaching and the place of reflection in it?” As away to answer this question, we thought as a group that the bestway to take this up was in a narrative way—sharing and reflectingon our own stories about teaching with one another.

In the context of teaching, Kirby (1991) puts it this way: “Thestories we tell are part and parcel of our becoming. They are amode of vision, plotting what is good and what is bad for us, whatis possible and what is not—plotting who we may become” (p. 54).In sharing our narratives of our own teaching experiences as it re-lates to reflection, we were helped to question the meaning andpurpose of teaching, and ask what might be the kinds of events inour everyday experience that provoked us to think about teach-ing. What happened as we shared our narratives about teachingand reflection was this: that the talk was not so much about “re-flection” per se, but rather the deep sense of what it was that wereflect about—which in the case of the stories was not all abouttechnique of teaching and reflection, but rather its ontology. Aswe continued, the group moved in the direction of thinking aboutour students and asked: What is it that we want our students to un-derstand about reflection and what do we want them to inquireinto? How do we invite our students into the forms of inquiry thatare congruent with the process of taking up pastoral responsibili-ties? We realized as a group that as we take up these questions, thisgroup enquiry begins to provide the experience of reflection—so

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that we are coming at reflection not as a theoretical issue, butas a problem of practice: of how we express, think about, andenact our understandings of reflection specifically and teachinggenerally.

In our summary notes from our meeting on February 27,2007, this was what we learned and these are the themes thatemerged from our narratives on teaching and reflection:

1. Purpose of teaching/education:• Teaching and reflection are about experience, not telling

students what to do, because teaching and reflection to a cer-tain degree are unpredictable.

• The purposes of teaching and reflection have to do with thevalues and beliefs of students and professor.

• Teaching provides meaning to experience or pour meaninginto experience.

2. Nature of teaching and reflection and what makes it inter-esting:• Teaching/reflection is a process.• Teaching/reflection is not the technique of telling.• What is the extent of teaching in terms of our responsibilities

as professors?3. Difficulties of teaching/reflecting:

• Connecting/relationship with students can be challenging.• Teaching/reflection is not just about the mind, but about

embodiment—our whole self.• Competency in teaching/reflecting—what does that mean to

us as professors?

Based on these themes the two consultants facilitated a dis-cussion on two articles: “Teaching in Community: A Subject-Centered Education” by Parker Palmer (1998), and “LayeredVoices of Teaching: The Uncannily Correct and the ElusivelyTrue,” by Ted Aoki (2005). These two articles helped the groupfocus on three questions:

1. What do we reflect with?2. How do we trust reflection and what is the best way to represent

it?3. How do we teach or take up reflection?

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We agreed to take up these three questions by looking intothe literature. Each group member then researched and pre-sented an article in the next two meetings based on the threequestions above as a way into the discussion. The impact of thesediscussions helped us come closer to our stated two researchquestions for the action research project by looking more closelyat pedagogical approaches that might help teach reflection anddiscussing together how students process their reflections. As agroup, we realized that reflection was in some sense a ponderingand wondering, a state of contemplation, or a state of being mind-ful. One particular article by LaBoskey and Cline (2000) stoodout that generated much discussion on the legitimacy of student’snarratives/stories. More specifically, sometimes students’ narra-tives can be relative and one-sided. This begged the question:What makes a good story? If a story is an interpretation, perhapswe need to help students find a good interpretive key. Is the keythe biblical key? Is the key the Gospel story or the story of redemp-tion and fall? We then asked: How do we access student’s reflec-tions and how do we grade them? What are ways in which studentscan represent their reflection of their experiences? These ques-tions brought back to the group a reexamination of the learningjournal.

Our subsequent discussions and reflections then focused on:

• Why some students liked or disliked journaling and whetherjournaling was the best way to represent students’ experiences

• Why journal: biographical reasons, evaluative actions, observa-tions, reactions, insight to self

• Aids in identity formation

As a result of these discussions, the consultants asked us to readThomas Groome’s book, Christian Religious Education: Sharing OurStory and Vision as a way to prepare for our two-day retreat (June2007).

The purpose of the two-day retreat in Banff, Alberta, was topull together the emerging themes in the past two semesters andto decide on a direction for the upcoming fall semester. Therewas a lot of good discussion around Groome’s book. Below arethe emerging themes.

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Reflection and Journaling

• Difference between reflection and journaling. Reflection is theends and journaling is the means (not to think of it in instru-mental terms). Journaling seems to be our default mode—arethere other ways to represent reflection?

• How do we define reflection? It seems elusive. Is reflection de-fined as mindfulness?

• How we journal and assess the journaling—what actions areneedful for students to change.

• Pool of questions to start reflection.• Reflection is formational.

Teaching and Curriculum

• Competencies• Assessments• Relational aspect of teaching/mentoring.• Issues of character of students and teachers; modeling for

students.• Coherence for students in the courses/curriculum; continuity

of care.• Ethics and responsibility of teaching.• Idea of scaffolding—to help students through a learning

experience/process.• We as teachers need exposure to external ideas.

Self and Community

• Reflection is about self and yet what is the role of community?Is community a corrective about the perception of self—is thedanger of community the possible loss of individuality?

• Collaboration is important, but why the resistance to collabora-tion? Issues: trust; pride of students and teachers.

Transformation

• Change should occur in our students and our teaching.• Change is required for learning.

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A result of the retreat was a new sense of direction and confidence.Our agenda/action plans for the fall of 2007 were as follows:

• Accept Groome’s definition of reflection as a starting point andbegin to see the interpretation and application of this definitionfor our work as we meet together and discuss this for our fieldeducation and other classes in the fall semester (September toDecember);

• Recognize the need to do this in community with lots of conver-sation where we keep each other accountable, learn from eachother, and give hope to each other in our teaching;

• Meet once every three weeks.

In the fall of 2007, we began to clarify the meaning ofGroome’s definition of reflection. Groome (1999) defined reflec-tion as: “a group of Christians sharing in dialogue their criticalreflection on present action in light of the Christian story and itsVision toward the end of lived Christian faith” (p. 184). Sevenwords/phrases were significant: Christian, dialogue, critical re-flection, present action, Christian story, vision, and lived Christianfaith. The group debated and discussed what each of these termsmeant to them and came up with a common understanding forthe research project. Based on this understanding of reflectionand reflective practice, we asked what implications this work hasfor our teaching. Where do we go from here? The group felt thatwe could move on to the next phase of the action research cycle.

The group decided that the best way to incorporate our newlearning about reflective practice into our teaching was throughour class syllabus and description, class preparation, class discus-sion, and assessments for the field education courses for the win-ter 2008 (January–April) semester. We presented and critiquedeach others’ syllabi for the next semester. In the critiquing of eachsyllabus, a number of important points came up that needed to beconsidered for teaching the field education courses for the winter2008 semester:

• Reflection has to somehow incorporate the Christian story.• The use of journals is important.

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• The option of using of a book for reflection that deals with theheart of a leader that does not focus so much on how to leadwould be helpful.

• Teaching and learning are dialogical.• Reflection is done in the lived experience of the student in the

practicums/classes and if nothing significant comes out in thereflections we move over to skill development.

We agreed to meet at the end of the winter 2008 semester to sharewhat we have done and evaluate what we have learned.

Findings

Two recurring cycles characterized the development of the pro-cess consisting of planning, action, observation, and reflection,then replanning and so on.

In late May 2008, the research group met for a one-day retreaton campus to discuss the last cycle of the action research project.At the meeting, members of the group described to one anotherwhat transpired in the classroom in the last semester in terms ofteaching, evaluated what was learned, and discussed next stepsafter the research project was done. Our conversation focused ontwo areas: (a) the nature of reflection as it relates to teaching andidentity; and (b) how we represent reflection in the class in termsof evaluation.

The Nature of Reflection as It Relates to Teaching and Identity

In the wake of much initial enthusiasm, the professors in the re-search project recognized that reflection was not only a difficultconcept to apply to ministry, but indeed, to practice reflection wasa difficult way of being. We were all initially strong believers in re-flection and reflective practice. In many ways, we still believe itis an important idea. But perhaps it represents more of a “place-holder” for several important ideas that are indeed complex anddifficult to put into practice for us as professors and our students.

Reflective practice is one of those terms used to develop thenew curriculum at Ambrose University College that holds promisein the manner in which it points to understanding as a way of be-ing a pastor. However, it is also one of those terms that is applied as

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theory and may become negligent of the lived experience of learn-ing to become a pastor. As an idea and another method in prac-tical theology, reflection may not really describe the layered andtextual qualities of actual reflective experiences, nor what possi-bilities reflection may hold for the self-understanding of students.

This action research project began to show us how the experi-ences of our students in the process of learning to become pastorsexceeded the concept of reflection understood as an act of coher-ent subjectivity acting on a objective world. The experiences ofreflection for our students that we observed as we taught seemedto instead have a great deal to do with questions of identity, as astruggle to understand self as pastor, and the desire to create anarrative understanding of self and others.

Representing Student Reflection and Evaluation

Second, and related to the first point about identity, how do stu-dents represent themselves in terms of their own reflections? Aswe looked at our syllabus from the past fall semester, journalingwas one of the ways that most of us asked our students to representtheir reflections and for us to evaluate them. We found that as wetaught and asked our students to reflect about their practice intheir practicums, it seemed that the older students (25–40 yearsold) were able to reflect more deeply than the younger (19–24-year-old) students. The older students, as one of the professorssaid, “were able to get down to the ‘crap’ of life and step outsidetheir practicum experience and to reflect as people, as ministers.”Younger students were more descriptive in their reflections, whichsuggested to us that they do not necessarily have a strong under-standing of self, particularly the self as a pastor. Nevertheless, wealso found, regardless of age, the deeper journaling came fromstudents who had a relationship with the professor. In the pastsemester, we realized that we needed to develop an environmentof trust in the classroom. We needed to see ourselves throughthe students’ eyes. If trust was not developed in the classroomthen Brookfield’s (1995) words ring true: “[S]tudents are under-standably reluctant to be too honest with us. They have probablylearned that giving honest commentary on a teacher’s actions canbackfire horribly” (p. 34).

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As this trust developed, the practicum experience became amirror for students to learn more about themselves, that is, thepracticum became the mirror. Also, we realized that the reflec-tions that we received were not necessarily linear. Some profes-sors asked students to journal each week but to hand in a one-page summary of what they have learned. The result: studentswere able to describe better their learning. Other professors de-veloped a pool of questions that pertained to life in general,vocation, practicum events, critical incidents, and so on, whilestill another professor used group journals. This professor tookGroome’s definition seriously by having students who were atthe same practicum site gather together in community to sharetheir experiences. The three students went out for coffee later, re-flected together, and debriefed one another based on the criteriaset up by the professor, then handed in together the weekly reflec-tion. In some sense this communal gathering provided a check-point for these students. Moreover, all the professors who useda book as a basis for reflection found it to be helpful in terms offraming the reflection and starting the reflective dialogue in class.

Discussion

The findings indicate that construction of self is important in re-flection as it relates to identity. Gee (2000) defines identity as thetype of person that an individual is recognized as being in a givencontext. Wenger (1998) sees identity as being socially saturated,arguing that identities are shaped by the “modes of belonging”that individuals develop within communities. These two defini-tions incorporate both an individual and a community sense ofidentity construction. We realized that our emphasis of identityconstruction as it relates to reflection rested with the individualsense and we lacked this community sense of identity among our-selves as professors and in the classrooms where we teach. Wecame to know that learning to reflect involved dialogue in com-munity. In community, professors and students locate learning inthe processes of collaboration, not just in the heads of individuals.In other words, learning takes place in the context of participa-tion, not just in the thought processes of an individual mind. Thismeans that it is mediated by differences of perspective among the

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coparticipants; that is to say, it is the community members, or atleast those participating in the learning context, who learn.

Collaborating together as professors helped us understandmore deeply about our own teaching/pedagogy as it relates to re-flective practice. At the beginning of the action research projectmost of us realized that in terms of our own teaching on reflectionand the way of conceiving of self as a source of reflection, we putthe primary responsibility on the individual professor, which rein-forced the ideological view of the professor as an individualizedsubject (subjectivity). In other words, we thought of reflection asthe work of a solitary and self-reliant subjectivity. The idea thatprofessors are “self-made” or “the expert” is one of the dominantand enduring myths of becoming a professor or teacher. Accord-ing to Britzman (2003): “The . . . cultural myth, that teachers areself-made, serves contradictory functions, for it supports the con-flicting view that teachers form themselves and are ‘born’ into theprofession. This myth provides a commonsense explanation to thecomplicated problem of how teachers are made. It is highly indi-vidualistic explanation that produces the construct of ‘the naturalteacher’” (p. 230). This powerful myth perpetuates a sense of falseautonomy and self-reliance and mystifies the process of us becom-ing better teachers. Doing this action research project broke thatmyth as we learned together about our teaching in community.

Implications

We realized that journaling was just one way to represent ourstudents’ reflections. Not every student reflects best on paper. Werecognized that some students were more oral verbal processortypes. One professor realized that most of her class were oral ver-bal processors and met at a local coffee shop each week to reflectwith students. They first reflected together as a class and then theclass broke into groups of two people to reflect on their practicumand attend to issues of self. The professor set the criteria for theweekly reflections and each group was to honestly evaluate thegroup reflection time and submit a grade to the professor. Again,what we learned together as a group in our teaching to improveour students’ learning to reflect was as follows: (a) in teachingwe continually have to set an environment of hospitality and trustin the classroom; and (b) in evaluating reflection and reflective

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practice we continually have to find creative ways to evaluatereflection that best centers on student learning and engagement.

References

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Britzman, D. (2003). Practice makes practice: A critical study of learning to teach.Albany: State University of New York Press.

Brookfield, S. (1995). Becoming a critical reflective teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming critical: Knowing through action research.Victoria, Canada: Deakin University Press.

Foster, C., Dahill, L., Golemon, L., & Tolentino, B. (2006). Educating clergy: Teach-ing practices and pastoral imagination. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Gee, J. (2000). Identity as an analytic lens for research in education. Review ofResearch in Education,, 25(1), 99–125.

Groome, T. (1999). Christian religious education: Sharing our story and vision. SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass.

Kirby, A. (1991). Narrative and the self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.LaBoskey, V., & Cline, S. (2000). Behind the mirror: Inquiry-based storying in

teacher education. Reflective Practice, 1(3), 359–375.Palmer, P. R. (1998). Teaching in community: A subject-centered education. In

P. R. Palmer, The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life(pp. 117–144). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rosenau, P. (1992). Postmodernism and the social sciences: Insights, inroads and intru-sion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Schon, D. (1983). The reflective practioner: How professionals think in actions. NewYork: Basic Books.

Schon, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teachingand learning in the professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Van Manen, M. (1991). The tact of teaching: The meaning of pedagogical thoughtful-ness. London: Althouse Press.

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rsity

of

Nor

th T

exas

] at

17:

45 1

0 N

ovem

ber

2014