Curriculum, learning and teaching
Authentic reflection for CAS Stirling Perry and Robin Ann Martin encourage an important principle of learning It is axiomatic that there is little meaningful learning or growth without reflection. It is not enough simply to act or experience: one must also think deeply about those actions and experiences in order to internalize learning and meaning. Professional athletes, for example, spend countless hours re-watching and analyzing their games in order to improve future performance. Musicians identify their technical weaknesses and address them through practice. And one only needs to watch children on the playground as they use continual reflection to develop and adapt strategies toward having the most possible fun. This is the essence of reflection: analyzing past experiences in order to create narrative meaning and develop strategies for future experiences. Consequently, reflection is an explicit aspect of many educational curricula, including the CAS (Creativity, Activity, Service) programme – a core component of the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP). Successful completion of the CAS programme requires students to reflect extensively on their various CAS experiences. However, through our research with colleague Manolya Tanyu, we found that reflection is, for students, the most loathed and problematic aspect of CAS. We visited six IBDP schools in Turkey, interviewing stakeholders – students, CAS coordinators and advisors, teachers, and administrators – about their respective CAS programmes. While students had mostly positive comments
The founding father of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, is featured in every school room of the country where the research on reflection was conducted. Autumn
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| 2017
regarding CAS activities, the general attitude towards reflection was quite negative. When asked about the purpose of reflection, multiple students said that it was only to verify that they had actually undertaken the activities – “To [please] our advisor … he wants us to prove that we did those activities.” It was often described as a rote and meaningless exercise: “Sometimes we are writing things that we do not know. When I’m filling-out reflection forms, I’m really not me – I’m someone else … I didn’t give them my experience: I gave them what they wanted me to experience in their imagination.” (student at an IBDP school in Turkey) For many students like the one above, reflection is not seen as a meaningful learning tool. Rather, it is a bureaucratic hurdle they must surmount in order to complete their CAS requirements. This is directly counter to the goals of CAS – reflection should be a means of realizing growth through experiences. The question is, then, how can reflection be implemented so as to make it a meaningful and effective aspect of experiential learning – that is, authentic? We found some answers both in our research and in recommendations from other researchers. The timing of reflection In our experience of working with CAS students, it is often the case that they will put-off doing reflections until after finishing an activity. Boud et al. (1985) and Eyler et al. (2002) recommend, however, that reflection can be more effective if it is done before, during, and after experiential learning. How can someone reflect before the fact? In “preflection”, students can consider their assumptions, expectations, intentions, goals, strengths, and weaknesses. A supervisor or advisor may ask, “What do you already think you know about this topic? What do you think is going to happen? What do you plan on doing about it?” The preflection is important as a framework for future reflections: students can look back on their preflections to see how their thinking has (or has not) changed, and how they have grown and learned. Reflecting during an experience gives students the opportunity to re-evaluate their initial assumptions, and critically examine strategies. A student tutoring English, for example, reflects that one teaching strategy was not particularly effective, so she decides to try another strategy. At this stage, a supervisor can prompt reflection by asking questions such as, “How have your ideas and feelings changed? What has and has not worked well? How can you challenge yourself more? What would you do differently?” Lastly, of course, there should be some kind of summative
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