Practicing reflection:
Representing and critiquing the
“real world” in the professional
classroom
David Fisher
English Department
Iowa State University
March 18, 2005
Expansion of occupational and
professional programs
“Practical arts” core replacing old liberal arts
and sciences core at Doc-granting and
Comprehensive Universities (Brint)
Question:
Do simulations like ours un-problematically
reproduce dominant social practices in the
classroom? Alternatively, do classroom
simulations afford opportunities for reflection
and critique?
Example:
Unproblematic representation
To be successful, treat this class as a job. My role is
to assign work, to provide instruction and guidance,
and to evaluate finished products. Your duty is to
come to work on time and do your tasks cheerfully
and on schedule.
Radical / critical
critique of the “real”
• Resistance (Giroux)
“. . . mechanisms of social and cultural reproduction are
never complete and are always faced with partially
realized elements of opposition .”
• Tyranny of the “real” (Herndl)
“If we recognize and explore the challenge presented
by the relationship between discourse, teaching, and
social reproduction, we may be able to discover ways to
intervene and initiate cultural critique within our
research and pedagogical practice. This would, of
course, require that we expand our research goals and
significantly alter our teaching .”
Representing “reality” in the
classroom
• Student-centered learning environments
(Jonassen)
“. . . simulate activity structure, the sociocultural context,
and the mediation systems that are prominent in those
activity systems.”
• Attribution (Pardoe)
“If the tutor or students attribute an activity or experience
to the wider profession, they will see it as significant
insight and learning.”
• Appreciative systems (Gee)
“. . . form the sorts of goals, desires, feelings, and values
that ‘insiders’ in that domain . . . typically have.”
Space and time:
(Changing) Social practices
“Human social activities, like some selfreproducing items in nature, are recursive.
That is to say, they are not brought into being
by social actors but continually recreated by
them via the very means by which they
express themselves as actors.” (Giddens, 1984)
Providing Spaces for action:
Co-constructing the “real”
• Hypertextual organizational
representation
• Dynamic environment
• Document cycling
Providing spaces for reflection
and critique
• Representation of time—e.g., given what
happened what would you change?
• Critical seeds—e.g, anti-GMO emails,
open-ended assignments
• Speech acts (performative utterances)—
e.g., non-compete contract, public polls
• Weekly prompts (one other document)
• Shadow assignment sequence
Reflection types
• Learning—e.g., What would I do
differently the next time?
• Instrumental—e.g., How might I make
things more efficient (in the environment)?
• Critical—e.g., How would I work to
change the institution or resist practices
with which I don’t agree?
Learning Reflection
I don't think we placed enough emphasis on
framework as we were trying to get the right
answer. A framework eases communication, and
efficiently captures many of the ideas that we were
struggling with, and we just didn't focus enough on
our SWOT analysis. For me, this is one of the
things I take from the course.
Instrumental reflection
If I were to send out a message to Omega employees, I
would probably use email. I think most people are like me
in that I check my email multiple times daily. I am also
more apt to read an email rather than a letter or other
paper that I can easily set down and get covered up. With
email, I see it every time I open my inbox until I read it and
then get rid of it. I feel that email is very effective as long
as the message is kept short and to the point.
Critical reflection
I think Omega as a company should establish, and
write down, its policy and beliefs about the ethics
of GMOs. The statement would require scientific
facts of the safety of GMOs. This statement
should be posted on the Website and referenced
when an outside group or person is questioning
whether Omega's practices are ethical. All
employees should be instructed to be familiar with
the policy and to refer anyone questioning Omega's
stance to the Website.
Ethics
Statement
Genetic
Modification
(Engineering)
Sales and
Marketing of
Products
Research and
Testing
Accounting and
Financial
Reporting
Communication
Ethics
Statement
Genetic Modification (Engineering)
Genetic
Modification
(Engineering)
Any product that is created should be
studied across multiple generations to
ensure a safe release to the public.
Sales and
Marketing of
Products
The country which has used native types of
species has specific rights to the organism
that is taken from that country.
Research and
Testing
Accounting and
Financial
Reporting
Communication
Final Thought
Classroom representations of the “real world”
can afford spaces for both instrumental and
critical action and reflection.
The way in which the relationship between
work and school is mediated helps determine
what shapes these spaces take and how
students fill them.