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AI & Soc (2013) 28:339349 DOI 10.1007/s00146-012-0409-z
25TH ANNIVERSARY VOLUMEA FAUSTIAN EXCHANGE: WHAT IS TO BE HUMAN IN THE ERA OF UBIQUITOUS TECHNOLOGY?
Images of reection: on the meanings of the word reection in different learning contexts
Adrian Ratkic
Received: 15 September 2011 / Accepted: 20 January 2012 / Published online: 2 March 2012 Springer-Verlag London Limited 2012
Abstract Reection is today a watchword in many learning contexts. Experience is said to be transformed to knowledge when we reect on it, university students are expected to acquire the ability to reect critically, and we want practitioners to be reective practitioners in order to improve their professional practice. If we consider what people mean when they talk about reection in practice, we will discover that they often mean different things. Moreover, their conceptions of reection are guided by images rather than by denitions. This paper explores six distinct images of reection and discusses the consequences of adopting one or more of these images in learning situations: (1) dedoublement, (2) analogical thinking, (3) mirror, (4) experiment, (5) puzzle solving, (6) criss-crossing a landscape. Reective thinking can be improved if we are sensible of what we are reecting about and according to which image of reection we are doing it, since the step between using an image and seeing this image as a model is short. Using models, in turn, implies knowing their limits.
Keywords Reection Meaning Image Model
Education Learning
1 Introduction
Experience is said to be transformed to knowledge when we reect on it, university students are expected to acquire
the ability to reect critically, and we want practitioners to be reective practitioners in order to improve their professional practice. But if we consider what people mean when they talk about reection in practice, we will discover that they are referring to different things. Moreover, their conceptions of reection are guided by images rather than by denitions. On the other hand, academic scholars often tend to claim universality of their own denitions and models of reection.
My aim with this essay is to show that trying to nd a universal denition of the word reection is a wrong way to go. There is no one and only model that covers all situations when we need to...