Reflection transcends time
Although many attempts to cause people to evidence their reflection tend to be backward-looking, the reflection which can be generated by past, present and future-tense questions can be much deeper.
For example, the trio of questions:
- What worked really well for you?
- Why do you now think this worked well for you?
- What are you going to do as a result of this having worked well for you?
is a much richer agenda for reflection than just any one of these questions on its own.
Some questions to help students (or ourselves) to evidence reflection
As in the example above, questions which aid deep reflection are rarely single questions, but tend to form clusters. There is often a starter question which sets the agenda, and frequently is a 'what?' question. Then come the more important ones - the 'how?' questions and the 'why?' questions - and sometimes the '…. else?' questions which ask for even deeper thinking and reflection.
In general, it seems too obvious to state it, but simple 'yes/no' questions can rarely enable the extent of reflection which can be prompted by more open-ended questions such as 'to what extent….?'. Sadly, however, there remain far too many 'closed' questions on student feedback questionnaires, and unsurprisingly the level of student reflection that such questionnaires tend to elicit is limited.
On the next page are some clusters of questions. The first part tends to be a scene-setting starter, and the sub-questions which follow are probing or clarifying questions, intentionally leading towards deeper or more-focused reflection. These questions are not in any particular order. A set of questions to aid student reflection on a piece of work just finished could use some of these as starting points, and usefully add in subject-specific questions to help to flesh out the agenda for reflection.
Although these questions have been written with student reflection in mind, they could equally be extended to continuing professional development contexts, appraisal contexts, and suggesting some agenda items for a teaching portfolio for lecturers. Whatever the context, however, the quality of reflection which is prompted is only as good as the questions which prompt it. In other words, for optimum reflection, much more care needs to be taken with phrasing the questions than might have been thought necessary. Or, putting it more bluntly, when students seem to have difficulty in evidencing their reflection on their learning, it is often that we haven't yet spent nearly sufficient time on setting up the contexts in which we ask them to reflect.