My wife said an amazing thing to me just the other day. Since I think about reflection quite a bit, and she is quite reflective herself and thinks often in terms of psychology, we often will talk about reflection. She made the comment that the term "reflect" is a metaphor. Of course it is! I have been so focused on the notion of "stance" as a spacial metaphor to describe how we understand our thinking while shaping and negotiating all the aspects of writing that I had ignored the obvious and crucial point that even the term "to reflect" is a metaphor for this complex experience of "thinking about our thinking," of Janus-like looking back as we look forward. I shouldn't be surprised because all language is founded upon metaphor, but now that I am aware of the metaphor at the root of "reflect" I have to process and think about it more and what it means that we choose this visual image of mirroring to describe this mental operation/function/experience. How does this metaphor work as a "terministic screen" to shape how we understand and even experience reflection? How does is link with other metaphors to operate on the larger level of a conceptual metaphor? What are those other metaphors? At this point, I can only ask these questions, but now that I am aware of this metaphoric root within reflection I can begin to explore these answers.
1 comment:
Hi Lennie,
(After completing this post, I realize these are just ramblings...I wish we were actually in the same room so that we could bounce these ideas some more.)
This is interesting and the more I think about the metaphor, the more I think the term reflection is inappropriate.
Reflection gives us a view which we otherwise cannot access, but it also implies an "objective" view like a mirror only reflects what is actually there. Reflection (as I am using the word which now I think should be a different word) as I see it really does more than that. Reflection gives us the opportunity to shape what may be fuzzy or unclear processes and actions into understanding that is more coherent and concrete (true learning). In effect, reflection is like standing in front of a blurry mirror with controls which we can manipulate to change/recreate/define the (internal) image we see of ourselves and our processes. When we are done, we save the information into our brain (hard-drive).
I also don't like the reflection or mirror methaphor because there is that implication that when you step away the reflection is gone. So even if I stand in front of the mirror with the controls, what happens to the image I have (re)created when I step away.
And isn't this one of the major complaints in education, we can swear we taught the students something but when they go out the door so does the learning...
Reflection is an internal process which leads to transformation which is concretized in our future actions. It is the effect on the future actions which really matter to us as educators. We want to know that the students are equipped with the tools to continue learning and improving themselves after they leave our classroom.
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