A Reactionary
Rhetoric of Learning

Reflection seems, in its natural form, a form of reactionary rhetoric dependent upon memory and lived experience. When we teach our classes, we normally convey the following about tone: narratives tell stories; arguments argue; expositions expound; descriptions describe; and, reflections reflect. As is in the nature of a description to formulate a more objective and material view of the world, a reflection attempts to portray a more subjective, yet well-reasoned view, trying to qualify what has happened, how it has happened, and why it has happened.
However, as many genre theorists know, none of these commonly taught (and learned) kinds of composition texts are exclusive categories of writing because they are slippery (switching conventions). Rhetoric scholar and genre theorist Irene Clark explains that thinking of genres in terms of their instability helps us "emphasize the rhetorical goals of the text and the role of content in determining effectiveness" as well as emphasizing the "function of language as a way of acting in the world and the importance of context in creating meaning" (9). Thus, modes of composition or communication are not static categories; they are as dynamic as the people entering into acts of communication with one another. So exposition often describes and argues. Narratives at times expound and describe, and so on. What shape genres into conventional ways of approaching reading or writing texts are the needs and expectations of audiences, the specific contexts in which they emerge, the communicative purposes they serve, and the exigences that constrain and/or bring them about. Thus, using the rhetorical situation as a framework for reading, writing, and/or composing can be an effective approach to helping students more effectively grasp not only how a composition works as a reader or composer, but also how any communicative event works, whether they enter into it as the rhetorician or audience member.
We as composition teachers can help students develop a way of looking at and assessing the world through a rhetorical theoretical lens asking them to reflect critically on the impact of identities, contexts, or exigences on their reading and writing/composing of texts. We can ask questions about their performance in class, such as:

We can ask about students' foundational literacy contexts (on which we will help them build with a rhetorical approach):

Additionally we can ask about the instruction in relation to them:

These kinds of questions that focus on the rhetorical situation (i.e. exigence, audience(s), purpose, context, and constraints) could allow for much greater teaching and learning, since they would allow students to have an impact on the progression of the course, to take greater ownership of their learning and how they achieve it. In a sense, to teach them to learn and to teach others, in the classroom and beyond. We all want students to develop strategies to reach their learning objectives, strategies that will serve them in other contexts as well.
As teachers, we all need to reflect, reflect, and do even more reflection with ourselves and with our students because doing so will improve quality in teaching and learning. It will improve communication between our students and us. And we should be willing to engage in the practices we ourselves advocate in our classrooms. If our claim is that their communication will improve, should not such a claim prove the same results for our academic lives as well? We, like our students, can think of each context we encounter as a rhetorical situation with its formal qualities, such as exigence, audience, and constraints, and recognize that we and our students can shape (and reshape) our own identities by coming into communication with each other and ourselves through critical rhetorical reflection.
Communication is important, but there are other reasons, according to current brain science that reflecting upon learned experiences might be helpful. Scientist John Medina explains that remembering something physically activates the left inferior prefrontal cortex of the brain, something that can be seen through scientific equipment such as "functional magnetic resonance imaging" (132). The more often this area of the brain is active, or the more often a person remembers something, the more likely it is that the person will recall it again, later on down the road. Most composition teachers would agree that we want our students to remember their learning experiences so that they can draw on them when they compose in future situations. Medina's research suggests that remembering is important, but remembering over time, incrementally and repeatedly will create more lasting memories. Without the reflection process, the memory of an event will fade. Thus reflection should be an ongoing process, so students (and teachers) can remember and use what they learn when they need to. This reflective process can happen in writing, but it certainly is not limited to the written word.
Within the recent decade, Cynthia Selfe has been establishing a series of narratives in the form of literacy autobiographies and technological autobiographies (see The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives). In such discourse, Selfe has asked others to divulge their inner insecurities and literacy origin stories, elaborating on what motivates them and what has moved them forward in both their technological and educational progress. In reflecting, students and participants have brought both fears and horrors to light, enabling a cathartic rhetoric of healing, while fulfilling and furthering progress in finding their place in society, in the classroom, and in the world (of the physical, the technological, and the scholarly).
These discourses and the pedagogy which informs them are indicative of a much more specific movement towards the realm of reflection, and rhetorical theory can allow teachers and students a useful way of approaching the composition of such story-telling. We as teachers envision such reflection as being an effective tool both for teaching and learning. But, reflection is not only the reactionary rhetoric of learning, reacting to our past lives and our experiences through story; reflection is also a rhetoric of assessment. Reflection is a rhetoric of assessing contexts such as current lives, projects, and even themes (whether simple compositions or more dynamic multimodal projects).