Importance of Student Reflection
Reflection, a key component of many writing classes, is vital to the success of a service-learning course. Reflection is a process of examining and interpreting experience to gain new understanding. The following links highlight this important element of service-learning:
Benefits of Reflection
Facilitating Reflection
Reflection Activities
Benefits of Reflection
Facilitating Reflection
Reflection Activities
Benefits of Reflection
Reflection is integral to the service-learning experience in the following ways:
OTHER BENEFITS
Academic
Student
Community
- Reflection transforms experience into genuine learning about individual values and goals and about larger social issues.
- Reflection challenges students to connect service activities to course objectives and to develop higher-level thinking and problem solving.
- Reflection works against the perpetuation of stereotypes by raising students' awareness of the social structures surrounding service environments.
- By fostering a sense of connection to the community and a deeper awareness of community needs, reflection increases the likelihood that students will remain committed to service beyond the term of the course.
OTHER BENEFITS
Academic
- Deeper, more sustainable learning of curricular and/or co-curricular content
- Increased consciousness of what is learned
- Community teaching is shared with the educational institution
- Faculty teaching is shared with the community
- Curriculum is more relevant
Student
- Expanded capacity to notice and understanding feelings
- Skill development
- Increased understanding of self, others, community and planet
- Increased capacity for authentic relationship
- Increased capacity to listen to self and others in new ways
- Ability to hold selves accountable for mistakes
- Forgiveness of self and others for mistakes
- Celebration of successes
- Capacity to see all partners in the process more holistically
Community
- Deeper recognition of assets, interests, and needs of self, others and community
- Deeper capacity for action that results in social justice and personal transformation
- Power can be redistributed when all partners reflect, teach and learn together
- Increased quality of community contributions
Facilitating Reflection
The following tips for facilitating reflection are adapted Service-Learning and Volunteer Programs:
- Schedule regular opportunities for guided and purposeful reflection.
- Communicate in writing students' responsibilities for reflection and provide well-defined criteria for evaluating their participation.
- Seek to engage each student in both group and individual reflection activities.
- Challenge each student to assess the knowledge, values, and skills he or she brings to the project.
- Establish norms of behavior and a framework for reflection that guides students from objective observations and subjective responses to interpretation, awareness, and action.
- Devote some reflection time to orienting students to people and problems they will encounter and allowing students to practice skills that will be required, such as active listening and observing.
- Seek closure on emotional issues by the end of each reflective session.
- Leave some cognitive and topical issues open for ongoing discussion to encourage reflection between class sessions.
Reflection Activities
Reflection activities may include any or all of the following:
- Journals
- Reflective papers
- Class discussions
- Small-group discussions
- Presentations
- Responses to course readings
- Responses to outside readings, media content, and experiences relevant to the issues surrounding the service activity
- Electronic discussions (e.g., chat, e-mail, online forum)