Over the past few months, we at ProfHacker have written articles about class/course assessment and how important it is to get students’ input in class evaluations. Certainly, course evaluations contain important information for the instructor and the university, but they rarely measure what the students actually learned in that course. We can use traditional methods of evaluation to gauge what students have learned, and that helps us (giving tests, assigning grades). But do these traditional methods of assessment and evaluation of student work help students recognize what they have learned?
Self-reflexivity can help students and educators identify the “what” and the “why” of student learning. Reflexivity is not to be confused with reflection. We often reflect on our teaching, and we ask students to reflect on their learning. Reflection is a wonderful tool. It is, though, a tool for “after the fact.” We reflect at the end of an assignment or at the end of a course. We identify what we learned and how we can possibly do differently next time. 
Reflexivity, on the other hand, is to engage in the moment, to understand the thoughts and feelings of an experience while experiencing that experience. As a self-reflexive professor, for example, I would evaluate my teaching as I’m teaching. I wouldn’t wait until the end of a course to see how I’d done or to think about changing my pedagogical strategy. I would ask some hard questions at the end of each lesson to help understand what I was doing and why I was doing it. Similarly, when we encourage students to be self-reflexive, we are asking them to understand what they are learning as they are learning. Additionally, self-reflexivity not only allows students to understand what they learned but why they learned it.
This dual understanding becomes key if we want students to retain what they have learned. I am of the belief that if students can identify and claim information they have learned in a course or in four years of study, they then own that information. However, students often need to know how to own their educations. Self-reflexivity can help them do that. Students can use the self-knowledge gained through this way of teaching/learning as a method to connect their education to their current and future lives.
John Higgins, Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Menlo College, devised “self-reflexive questions” that students and educators and use as they work on particular assignments. Think about using these questions as you move through a unit in your course. How might these questions (and the answers) help students “own” the material?
- What question do you have?
- What lead to the question?
- How did it connect with your life?
- How did it connect to authority/power/history?
- Did you get an answer?
- Did the answer help and/or hinder?
- How?
- Was the answer complete?
- What leads you to say that?
Higgins also has self-reflexive questions that can be used at the end of a semester:
- The best of what I have achieved in this course (what I am most proud of) is:
- What leads me to this response is:
- One idea or concept from this course that I found invigorating / stimulating / exciting / useful is:
- What about this concept or idea led me to find it invigorating / stimulating / exciting / useful?
- One idea or concept from this course that I have struggled with is:
- How I resolved this struggle / am resolving this struggle is:
- Something I learned from this course that I would consider a “lesson for life” is:
- How I arrived at this conclusion was:
The questions seem simple, and they are much like questions you could find on a course evaluation (the first question in each pair, at least). The second question in each pair is a different matter. These questions encourage us to think deeper. To realize the “why” and “how.” The second questions push us to make meaning of what we have learned.
How do you engage in self-reflexive behavior in your classes? In your teaching? Has it been effective? Please leave comments below.
[Image by Flickr user Envios. Used under the Creative Commons license.]
Comments
1. Tria - January 29, 2010 at 01:05 pm
On the day that my students turn in major essays, I have them fill out a reflection survey. I ask them questions about the process they used to write the essay, what tutoring and feedback resources they consulted, whether they learned something new or surprising, and how different course activities were useful (or not) in helping them craft the essay.
I use these sheets (which I keep anonymous) to remind students of all the factors that can impact and result from their writing process, and to track whether they are using the resources provided, whether I need to make more explicit how our day-to-day classwork should be applied to their writing, and so forth.
2. Nels - January 29, 2010 at 02:07 pm
You know, I used to do more of this, but I don't anymore. I've got to get back into it because it was really beneficial for students to stop and think about their own process. It's beneficial for all of us.
3. William Patrick Wend - February 09, 2010 at 04:53 pm
I try to relate group work questions to the current paper due. For example, Comp I is doing process analysis right now so this week's group assignment asks them questions relating their PA paper to what I lectured about (developing a thesis + intro/conclusion).
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