Facing Flower

I have been re-reading Linda Flower's The Construction of Negotiated Meaning and realizing once again how directly Flower addressed reflection as a pedagogical activity in this book. I cite Flower's work as one of the main strands in composition that has dealt with reflection in my pre-diss proposal, and I don't think I did her work justice. This blog post is an attempt to flesh out my perspective on Flower more deeply.

She states EXACTLY (or nearly so) the question that I have for my diss study. In chpt. 8 “Metacognition” she talks about the strong tradition within liberal education that values reflection. She qualifies this tradition: “One cannot merely assume that the discourse practice of reflection is really critical to learning, much less to all students” (224). Reflection's educational significance is an “open question.” She considers that self-motivated reflection has unquestioned value, but she is less clear when reflection is prompted within a class. She calls this reflection “strategic reflection”: “Then reflection as a literate practice, chosen in place of other practices, needs to be accountable” (224). I, too, am focused on “teacher-prompted” reflections within a freshman writing class—strategic reflections.

She distinguishes reflection from “metacognition” and “awareness” by defining it as “an intentional act of metacognition, and attempt to solve a problem or build awareness by 'taking thought' of one's own thinking”(225). Discussing some of the differing perspectives on metacognition, she goes on to zero in on what she will focus on in her study: “I would like to follow the traces of another, less studied, form of metacognition found in students' observation-based self reflections” (228). It seems that she included in what she was doing having students review transcripts of things like collaborative planning and logs of their work in the process of working on an essay, but it includes the general review of work on an writing assignment. Her focus is nearly equal to mine.

She asks: “Reflection is clearly a constructive process, but the question remains: What sort of knowledge or meaning does such reflection create? And do verbal statements (including our assumptions, insights, fictions, and self-observations) actually reflect, predict, or guide the other business of regulating cognition (e.g. Planning, monitoring, managing one's thinking)?” (228).

She goes on to identify two questions that her study will add address:
1)“the problematic epistemology of reflection”
2)“the charge that reflection is merely a luxury” (229)

Aren't these basically the “problems” that I am seeking to address in my own study? Does reflection generate any knowledge that is useful? Is reflection really worth the extra effort to make happen? Does it have enough “value added” benefit to include it into the curriculum?

She continues to refine her study as the chapter progresses. She states again that an “undiscriminating embrace of reflection” is unwise and makes no sense (just as an uncritical embrace of collaboration makes no sense). Acknowleging the highly variable nature of reflection, she repeats the educator's main questions about reflection:
What kind of knowledge is being created through reflection (under a given set of condition) and

How is that knowledge going to guide action? (234)

She then lists questions she will ask to “develop a theory of reflection.” She is about theory generation too!!!! The rest of chapters 8 and all of chapter 9 detail two classroom-based research studies she conducted to “generate a theory of reflection” by asking basically the two questions above (but she has three—1) how is reflection embedded in the educational situation; 2) what is the nature of students' interpretive, constructive process and what is the nature of the knowledge they construct; 3) how does reflection lead to action? (234). She actually digs deeper into question #3 by delving into what kind of action that reflection leads to.

So she is asking basically the same questions I am asking and trying to do the same thing I am doing—generate a theory. I like her questions, but can we interrogate how she goes about generating her theory. This critique of how previous research has sought to generate a theory of reflection in writing is part of the core rationale for my dissertation.

So how does Linda Flower generate her theory? What is problematic, from a grounded theory perspective, in her methodology? Clearly, Flower engages in what Yancey would call “Reflective Research.” It is pretty much case study type qualitative research. She collects data (in the form of student reflective pieces in conjunction with other artifacts from the course related to these reflections such as students tapes and observations of themselves and drafts of writing pieces) and analyzes it loosely based upon her theoretical understandings. She does code the midterm reflections for representations of metaknowledge. As she notes on page 237, teaching in its quest to meld theory and practice in a “hypothesis-creating, prediction-testing process” is theory building too (237). But mainly she observed and analyzed her data in light of her previous theories about cognition and writing to come up with her “understanding,” her theory of what kind of knowledge reflection creates and how it connects to action. Hence her theory building process is a highly dialectic process between the data, her experience, her own goals and experimentations as a teacher, and her theories of cognition. From a grounded theory perspective she has tampered with her analysis of the data by coloring it with preconceived theoretical assumptions. Perhaps she is seeing what she wants to see in the data?

Let's explore that question by seeing what her conclusions were.

On the question of what kind of knowledge writers construct with reflection, she states:
First, the knowledge that emerges from such reflection is strategic knowledge. Students not only recognize their own strategies, maneuvers, techniques, habits, they described them in terms of the goals that were driving such strategies. ...Secondly, the strategic knowledge the writers built was clearly driven by dilemmas. It emerges out of a sense of problems and desires. (257)

Hmm... . Let's see. So reflection fits neatly within a view of the writing process as a goal-directed, problem-solving activity. What a coincidence? Could Dr. Flower have been seeing what she expected to see in the data or finding what she was predisposed to find? Of course, you could say that she is confirming what she has discovered elsewhere and this is further evidence in support of her larger cognitive theory of the writing process. Could we say that this quest to generate a theory of reflection has really become another way of validating the larger model of the writing process? Perhaps. Perhaps.

She generates this theory from one classroom research study that has only 13 students. Eventually, she elaborates on her theory through a case study of only four students. So she has with a relatively small sample jumped to her sweeping definition of a theory. I suppose I can't really argue with Dr. Flower—she based her classroom practice and analysis of data on a much larger pool of experience and knowledge to that her interpretations in this theory generating process should be considered based upon these merits alone. But it is simply a different process of theory generation than grounded theory.

And why do we need this grouned theory study? For the same reasons she initiated her study—the problematic nature of the epistemology of reflection and charges that reflection has no value-added and is a luxury.

Maybe we can get closer to addressing these charges against reflection with a grounded theory research study.