The concept of reflection is ubiquitous in discussions of educational practice and in the teaching and learning of writing (e.g., Hillocks, 1996; Myhill, 2011); yet rarely is reflection defined or interrogated. As Nguyen et al. (2014) note in a review of the 15 most cited authors on reflection from 2008 to 2012, “reflection is a complex construct for which the literature does not provide a consensual definition” (p. 1177; see also Alexander, 2017; Lyons, 2010; Rogers, 2002). If reflection is key to the teaching and learning of writing (and to other educational agendas), then it is important to researchers and educational practitioners that it be clearly defined and interrogated. This review of scholarship provides one perspective on defining and interrogating reflection by making a heuristic distinction between reflection and reflective practice, and then defining reflection as relational ontological practice.
TopA Heuristic Distinction Between Reflection And Reflective Practice
Not all thinking is reflection. Dewey (1910/2019) distinguishes reflection from other forms of thinking. Dewey writes that reflection is an:
[a]ctive, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends (p. 5).
Dewey goes further arguing that there are:
… certain subprocesses which are involved in every reflective operation. There are (a) a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt; and (b) an act of search or investigation directed toward bringing to light further facts which serve to corroborate or to nullify the suggested belief. (p. 6)
While Dewey’s discussion of reflection has been widely recognized in education, scholarship on reflection and the teaching and learning of writing has predominantly located reflection in the mind of the individual writer/student. Such research asks, what cognitive processes, including reflection, does the writer/student need to acquire to write competently and effectively (e.g., Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Flower & Hayes, 1981; Graham, 2006). Even if considered potentially influenced by contextual factors (e.g., instructional factors, interactional factors, task factors, etc.), reflection within the context of writing instruction is explicitly or implicitly defined as a set of autonomous cognitive processes (see Lea & Street, 2006, for a discussion of autonomous and ideological models of writing). Often, researchers analyze reflection as a set of cognitive processes focused on formalist components of writing such as organization, clarity, and prescriptive grammar typically associated with the editing of a written draft (e.g., McCutchen, Francis, & Kerr, 1997).
One major limitation of these autonomous definitions of reflection in writing instruction as a set of autonomous cognitive processes is that they fail to capture the contextual processes or writing for others in social/rhetorical contexts (Ivanič, 1998; Lillis, 2009). Observations of classrooms and other educational sites of writing instruction show that teachers and students interact with each other and collaborate in the generation of shared consideration and investigation of their writing (Eodice et al., 2017; Yagelski, 2012). During writing instruction, across the grade levels from pre-school through university, teachers orchestrate instructional contexts in which students interact with others. That is, the material reality of writing instruction is predominately one of social interaction in which people (teachers and students) act and react to each other through languaging and related semiotic processes (Dyson, 1993; Wohlwend, 2011). Teachers and students engage in these interactions for responding to and with each other through material linguistic actions. They talk, they write, they make gestures, and use their bodies to communicate as well as draw and use all forms of semiotics in a broad range of mediums for achieving uptake from others.
Through participating in these interactions over time, teachers and students evolve together as they socially construct what they are doing, who they are, what constitutes writing (including what constitutes good writing), leading to learning what constitutes reflection. To locate reflection solely in the mind of the individual writer/student and as a set of autonomous cognitive processes is to marginalize these social and linguistic processes, contexts, and material realities of which each person plays a role, contributes to, evolves with, and from which they are inseparable (Ivanič, 1998; Lillis, 2009)
Composition research that defines reflection as an autonomous set of cognitive processes also propagates a binary of reflective versus impulsive thinking as well as a failure to connect reflection and rhetorical action (Lyons, 2010; Nguyen et al., 2014). These limitations lead to the assumption that reflection on revision of the topics, nature of the argument, flow, and rhetorical aspects may be too difficult and abstract for many students who then focus their reflections only on editing matters (cf. “unreflective reflection,” Alsup, 2005, p. 109; MacArthur, 2016).