Reflection in the Electronic
Writing Classroom
L. Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College

Introduction

The Importance of Reflection
Reflection as a Catalyst

Reflection in the Writing Classroom
Reflection in the E-Writing Classroom

Reflection as Observation
Reflection as Refraction
Reflection as Coherence

Reflection as a Catalyst for Learning

Conclusion -- Works Cited

Many scholars have noted that reflection acts as the vehicle for transforming a learner’s understanding.  Gillie Bolton uses an interesting metaphor to describe this power of reflection.  One metaphor for reflection is the mirror which projects back the object being looked at--as it is.  She, instead, prefers the notion of the “Looking Glass” out of Alice in Wonderland:

Alice ... has just crawled through the mirror.  She looks around her and, in this looking-glass-land, even "the pictures on the wall next the fire seemed to be all alive." In my experience, the things seen from the Reflexive Writing side of the looking glass are or are about to become, all alive.

Bolton points, here, to the transformational nature of reflection for the person doing the reflecting.  Donna Qualley and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater describe this effect of reflection as a knowing “deeper than reason”: “If we are to engage in authentic dialogue with our students and with each other, it must be a reflexive dialogue, one that leads all of us to a more complicated understanding and to a way of knowing 'deeper than reason'” ("Collaboration as Reflexive Dialogue").  Notice that reflection is represented as a catalyst that has the effect of a change—a change of knowledge, a change of awareness, even a change of consciousness.  David Kember points out Mezirow’s extensive work on reflective thinking “as an essential component of this model of transformative learning for adults” (383).  Kember goes on to quote the work of Boyd and Fayles, “Reflection ... is a generic term for those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings and appreciations” (qtd. in Kember 385).  For the writing classroom, these new understandings and appreciations have to do with writing.  As Joel English generalizes, “ ‘Writing about writing’ ... may well be their [the students’] key to understanding their writing process.” 

Next: Reflection in the Writing Classroom

Introduction | The Importance of Reflection | Reflection as a Catalyst | Reflection in the Writing Classroom | Reflection in the E-Writing Classroom | Reflection as Observation | Reflection as Refraction | Reflection as Coherence | Conclusion | Works Cited
by L. Lennie Irvin, San Antonio College