I use a student interest questionnaire at the beginning of the course to find out which topics in the course outline are of most interests to students supported by an explanation. That feedback helps me to know what to focus on and assess in the course in designing teaching and learning activities, which students enjoy and learn according to my course evaluations.

Best,

Debra

What about at the end of the session, ask students questions such as " Think about how relevant the topic/problem we discussed with your personal experience or development? In what ways it is relevant? Do you think you will change the way you think about the problem? " This is one of the 'methods' I used in my class.

Maintain up-to-date teacher knowledge and exchange of information with graduate students in order to objectively assess the relevance of the acquired knowledge to their current profession. Be attracted to Alumni events aimed at updating current knowledge in their professional field.

Reflective questions have a duel role, for the students and the teacher. They can be applied during the activity or in share time usually at the end of the activity.

Some examples are:

What I knew, what I found interesting/confusing, what I would like to learn.

Students can think about their learning (metacognition) and teachers can structure their lessons.

Apologies for the spelling mistake duel should have been dual.

Depends on context and level of cognitive development, i guess. "Gaining value from previous experiences" presupposes some kind of framework which enables learners to direct, identify and integrate reflections into their knowledge base, i would have thought. There needs to be some kind of process that enables learners to recognise and distil what is "valuable" from their reflections.

Although piagetian reflective abstraction or vygotskian zone of proximal development have different approaches as to how this process is managed, for example, both require that there is a practice which develops an interpretive framework for reflection.

Ultimately it depends on the motivations for learning, and how much a learner wants to know/ find something out, whether they are a child, an adolescent or an adult, i suppose. Finding ways of guiding learners to reflect may involve developing the kind of practices which other contributors have identified. Motivating people to be learners is a more complex process, since we are not all intrinsically driven to want to know.

Use the natural science of how the mind learns so you can teach like the mind learns. Suggest visit to www.criticalinstruction.com.

As Ian mentions above and you hint at in your initial question.. we cannot reflect in a vacuum. Just urging learners to reflect or keep a reflective diary is not enough.

Methods to support reflection ( to begin with at least) will need to be designed to be closely linked to the focus of and purpose for reflecting.

Unless we can help learners to 'see' that thinking about experiences can help to expand understanding, some may not see the point.

It is therefore necessary to provide enough time for the personal/contextual relevance of ideas that emerge to be discussed - in a fairly structured manner- with classmates/colleagues or /or tutors. This is an important means of enabling the 'learning' that can result from focused reflection to become 'visible'.

Hello Martin Wendell,

Very well and perceptively said.

All that you call for - yes, all of it - has already been designed. It is called Critical Instruction Pedagogy. Please visit www.criticalinstruction.com.

Victor

In addition to all the helpful ideas noted above, I would say that the basic skill of Socratic questioning is always a useful strategy.

@Victor

@Victor thanks the information about critical instruction. I will surely look for it.

thanks for this everyone I have learnt so much from this :)

hi martin. great to hear from you. hope all is well.

as you say, structure and time are needed.

Visual (spatial):You prefer using pictures, images, and spatial understanding. Aural (auditory-musical): You prefer using sound and music. Verbal (linguistic): You prefer using words, both in speech and writing. Physical (kinesthetic): You prefer using your body, hands and sense of touch. . Regards

Teaching to teach what you learn could be one of the best to retain, and utilize knowledge, I reckon.

I use a student interest questionnaire at the beginning of the course to find out which topics in the course outline are of most interests to students supported by an explanation. That feedback helps me to know what to focus on and assess in the course in designing teaching and learning activities, which students enjoy and learn according to my course evaluations.

Best,

Debra

11/17/2018

Hello Suciati,

Thank you. I hope you find value in the research reported and the solutions provided at the critical instruction site. Will be pleased to correspond [[email protected]].

Victor

@Suciati Suciati

Also, using some venue similar to the “Discussion Board” in Blackboard can be very effective. I remember in my Developmental Psychology class, all the topics were in line per week with the option that we could post for the past discussions anytime, which gave me more Insights about the topics as we moved along...

Be advise, to become a reflectionist scholar, you need to read the seminal works of theorists, John Dewey (1904, 1933) and Donald Schön in relation to Reflective Practice. Others followed them but these two made groundbreaking discoveries of the phenomenon.

the best reflective methods used for learning are phonics performances, the students repeat the tone of the teacher's voice, humor/ body performances as tools for interaction/ communication raises the curiousness of the learners. The dynamic of jokes increases the pleasure of repeating what has been said.

In my opinion, the strategies to encourage students reflexivity and critical thinking depend on the context (topics, age of students, number of students, learning styles, ...). I agree that time must be allowed for these skills to be developed either in f2f and online environments. The reflection may be around student-centered activities or topics covered in more theoretical classes. Tree examples of strategies that can promote these competences are questioning (students’ questions are more effective then those asked by teachers), self-assessment (that also promotes self-determined learning) and peer evaluation aligned with teaching and learning processes.

Some practical cases to illustrate: 1) in my daughter's primary school classroom, the teacher asked the students to make presentations on specific content, which were criticized by colleagues who should indicate the positive and negative aspects of the presentation justifying and asking questions; 2) some year ago, in a large class of undergraduate students, after the theoretical classes, an LMS forum was used to allow students to ask questions and comment the subject discussed in the f2f session. In the following f2f session, a week later, the questions that had remained unanswered were debated in the classroom; 3) in a postgraduate course on academic writing, during the academic year, students are supposed to write an article and simulate the publishing process. To do the simulation an evaluation instrument is collaboratively developed and peer evaluation is done (using a Drive folder). Both the instrument and peer evaluation are also presented and discussed in f2f sessions. The papers are submitted to a scientific journal (one of the students' tasks is to choose the journal) and normally accepted with minimal changes. I hope these experiences are inspiring.