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

• Therefore it is of the most vital importance and must be carefully planned as a rigorous dimension of the course.

Goal for this Workshop:

To guide you in the development of a plan for a system of reflection-assignments for your course

Overview of workshop:

• Assumptions and definitions• Types of Reflection assignments• Ways to grade reflections assignments• Discussions

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

Reflection is NOT

• Vague, inward reverie• Stream-of-consciousness diary entries• Solitary• Therapeutic• Personal opinion (unavailable to evaluation)• Busy-work

Instead, reflection should be

• Analytical• Structured and Structuring• Continuous• Collaborative• Synthetic• Documentary • Public • Graded

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

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

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

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

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”

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”

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

Types of Reflection Assignments

• At the beginning of semester• Throughout the semester• At the end of the semester

Beginning of Semester

• Interpreting course goals• Documenting first impressions• Articulating key questions or anxieties• Delineating contractual obligations

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.

At end of semester

• Class presentations• Reflective narratives• Group collaborations• Videos• Facebook Pages• Public Showcases

Grading: a 4-part rubric

1. Quotes from reading are numerous, well-integrated less numerous, less integrated not there or merely imposed2. Service-experience is described/narrated in complex detail more superficially not at all

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

Break-Out Session