ERIC Number: EJ944156
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 31
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0147-1635
EISSN: N/A
Reflection Revisited: The Class Collage
Sommers, Jeff
Journal of Basic Writing (CUNY), v30 n1 p99-129 Spr 2011
Through the regular use of what Donald Schon has termed reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, students can learn to improve their "reflection-in-presentation," in Kathleen Blake Yancey's term. Students are often asked to do this type of reflection-in-presentation as a capstone to first-year or basic writing courses. However, a number of critics have articulated reservations about reflective writing assignments that ask students to assess their progress in writing and, in essence, their cognitive development as they complete a composition or BW course. Laurel Bower ("JBW" 22.2, 2003), in particular, notes that such end-of-term written work is frequently superficial. This essay focuses on an alternative approach to reflective writing, one that asks students to examine their own beliefs about writing as well as those of their classmates rather than examining their cognitive development. This shift to reflecting on the epistemological grounding of their experiences as writers, coupled with a semester-long practice in reflection, seems to produce rich, fully developed reflection-in-presentation that offers some anecdotal evidence of knowledge transfer by the students as well as providing an informal outcomes assessment of course objectives for the professor. (Contains 3 notes.)
Descriptors: Writing Assignments, Basic Writing, Writing Instruction, Cognitive Development, Reflection, Writing (Composition), Teaching Methods, Student Attitudes, Beliefs, Epistemology, College Students, Heuristics, Transfer of Training
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A