What does it mean to be reflective? What is the importance of reflection?
As the semester begins to dwindle down, Professor McCoy has assigned a final reflection essay for us to compose in the concluding weeks. In the past, I have written a plethora of reflection essays, but I never truly understood the importance of this type of writing. Therefore, I decided to spend some time over break to do a little research.
I began my research by searching for the definition of reflection. In order for me to truly understand the process of reflection I needed to understand what it meant to be reflective and how to do so. Therefore, the definition of reflection is, “a fixing of the thoughts on something; careful consideration.” After re-reading the definition a few times, I began to understand what it meant to be reflective, but I still struggled with the concept of how to be reflective. To further my understanding, I decided to dive deeper and re-read a few sections in Reflective Writing. According to Reflective Writing,“it is not just with the subject matter of what you are thinking about or learning, but how you think about it and how you learn.” (Williams 2) In other words, in order to be reflective, one must think reflective.
Once I began to understand what it meant to be reflective and how to do so, I began to engage in the understanding of the importance of reflection. The process of reflection is a “purposeful activity that drives learning and change.” (Williams 3) Reflection allows writers to seek out their successes and struggles and consider options for improvement or growth. In addition, when writers engage in reflection they often acquire the skill of metacognition “by assessing their writings during the revision process, explaining their choices, and evaluating their writing processes.” Metacognition is “a key element in effective learning” that can be defined as a “higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes, especially when engaged in learning.” Therefore, reflection is important because it enables writers and students to engage in a process of continuous learning.
Moreover, reflection enables students to illustrate growth in their writing. Aforementioned in a prior blog, “the purpose behind writing and posting on the blog is to reflect on the material we discuss in class.” Thus, we have been practicing the process of reflection all semester.
References:
“Writing Across the Curriculum.” Writing About Guidelines (WAGs) | Writing Across the Curriculum | Appalachian State University, wac.appstate.edu/node/235.