Yesterday I posted about effective communication; today’s post presents a further explanation of self-reflection, another of the Four Capabilities for our course.
Self-Reflection
Honestly identify areas for improvement in your own understanding, and then execute and evaluate strategies for addressing them.
Students without the habit of critical self-reflection are good at judging their own work by two criteria: whether the work was done, and whether significant effort was expended to do it. So focused are they on those criteria that they often spend less time evaluating their progress towards the learning objectives in a class. Students without a habit of self-reflection are also very good at taking strong positions and sticking by them, but as a result they may not think critically enough about how their own unexamined assumptions, settled convictions, habits of thinking, or gaps in knowledge might prevent a more complex understanding. Often, students of this sort respond to feedback with defensiveness or redirection; non-reflexive thinkers hold that someone else is always wholly to blame for their own failure to understand or persuade.
Self-reflective students, on the other hand, are constantly questioning their own convictions and thinking in order to sort out warranted beliefs from prejudices. They are aware of and accurately assess the limits of their own knowledge, and they recognize unique styles or beliefs that might unjustifiably color their understanding. They hold their views provisionally, in the sense that they are willing to change their minds when evidence or logic demands it. They are aware that there may be multiple ways to accomplish a task and think hard about which way would be best. Most of all, they can engage in effective "meta-thinking" about their own learning, qualitatively evaluating their own work by criteria such as those described in the other parts of this rubric.
Evidence for the mastery of this skill is easiest to see when students are asked to evaluate their own learning progress, as you will be in the course. If your responses to such questions show awareness of changes in your own thinking, and you can effectively link those changes to the specific skills we are aiming to develop in the course, you are demonstrating self-reflection. Moreover, even in everyday exchanges with me and your peers, you show that you regularly reflect on the meaning of what you have learned. Constructive criticism is not only welcomed, but assimilated and applied, when warranted, in new contexts. When questions are posed or suggestions are made, you are able to consider them and attempt a response. In all of these ways, self-reflective students are wise, circumspect, and characterized by intellectual integrity; they take responsibility for their own learning and demonstrate a willingness to develop and use new skills.