The Heart of Reflection

 I have come to the conclusion that the reflective life is a kind of justified life. Reflection is what turns an otherwise lifeless landscape into something that is always a source of meaning. If anything, I would want to teach my students the value of reflection as an end in itself, as opposed to a process of finding or figuring out something. This is because the actual conclusions are not as important as the insights one has along the way. In fact, the journey is the most crucial aspect of reflection.

 Now, what the reflection is pointing to and how one reflects, is not as important as the process of reflection itself, and what it does to open the heart to an appreciation of something personal. But what's tricky about reflection is that it cannot precisely be taught in the same way that a formula in math class can be taught. This is because reflection needs to come from a genuine sense of curiosity about something that is deeply keyed into one's way of being.  In order to tease out that way of being and connecting to the moment, one needs to play with ideas and images, in the same way that a dog might play with a toy or a ball. In fact, reflection is an art of teasing out the personal felt connections that one has with a phenomena or an experience as a whole.
   How can we teach reflection in schools? I have heard reflection sometimes referred to as "reflection in action" (Schon, 1983)or "deep learning", but I think what is key to the art of reflection is that one does not measure it in terms of preconceived ideas about depth and meaning. A reflection is "meaningful" only insofar as it connects with one's personal sense of openness or ability to improvise on an idea or an inner conversation. The "what" of reflection does not matter as much as the freshness of living in that what and not thinking of that "what" as something that is already done and finished. There is no "case closed" in reflection, since the case--whatever it happens to be---is forever open to new connections or scrutiny. And reflection also requires that the person reflecting befriend their thoughts, with an attitude of "why might you be thinking this way?" "I noticed you said or thought this and not that". This curiosity almost requires a kind of slowing down to allow oneself to gently probe something that might seem obvious at first, but later turns out to be built on assumptions.
   If I were to pinpoint key elements of a reflective practice, it might go something like the following:

• The ability to slow down and catch the thread of a particular thought and draw out its key themes
• The ability to gently probe into one's relationship with a set of ideas. Is the idea stimulating or perhaps dry and boring? Did it start out as promising, only to later fizzle out? If the latter, then what happened to that idea that made it, perhaps, fizzle out?
• Not taking for granted one's interests, not matter how idiosyncratic. In other words, one doesn't rule out any topic for reflection, so far as it stimulates the imagination and the capacity to extend into a deeper sense of interconnection and meaning
• Not being afraid to be a little bit selective, in the sense of trying out what ideas one might have more affinity with
• Look for patterns and underlying meanings of things rather than sticking only with measurable phenomena.