Reflection
| Jesuit education advocates for a process of reflection stating it is necessary for students to make meaning from their experiences. Students must be given opportunities to contemplate the meaning and value of class content. They are encouraged to discover and evaluate relationships between their prior learning experiences and new ideas.
The importance of reflection is not only a principle of Jesuit education; others also postulate that reflection is critical to learning. For example, the Practical Inquiry model establishes that after a triggering event, students should be given an opportunity for explorations and integration where they can welcome new ideas and link facts (Garrison, et al., 2000). Further, Fink (2013) maintains that without reflection, students have not made new learning meaningful to themselves. And Randy Bass (2014) contends that students are better able to extract meaning and integrate learning across courses when reflection is catalyzed through the use of ePortfolios. The work of many psychologists and philosophers rest on this constructivist approach. As Weimer (2014) points out, “In the constructivist interaction, students connect new material with what they already know. They may mold and shape the new information so that it fits with what they already believe and know, or they may use the new information to reshape, enlarge, and deepen their current understandings” (p.24). |
