In this research, I rely on an oral account of how VCAL educators have made meaning out of their experiences, rather than [my] observing how experience has informed [their] future actions. The process of articulating their everyday learning experiences tacitly required educators to reflect and consider their past experiences and subsequent actions.
Just as reflection is a critical element of the VCAL program to enable student experience to transform into learning, educators are encouraged to continually reflect on their experiences and so create their own new understandings as they teach. Latham, Blaise, Faulkner, Lang and Malone (2006) refer to reflection as an
essential skill for all teachers as it is a means of turning back to experience in the moments of teaching (in-action) or after them (upon action) (Schön 1987) in order to improve the choices that are made and to further or abandon the direction of that experience. (p. xvi)
Soini, Pietarinen and Pyhältö (2016) have reported that “reflection in action” is a predominant form of teacher learning (p. 2 citing Brookfield 1995, Lohman & Woolf 2001). They also highlight, as others do (for example Marsick, Watkins & Lovin 2010; Mezirow 1990), that reflection does not guarantee learning. Marsick, Watkins and Lovin (2010) explain various learning stages of their formal, informal and incidental learning model using actions of paramedics. They concluded
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“[r]eflection is central to every phase of learning from experience although everyone does not always consciously use reflection to its fullest potential” (p. 66). For example they acknowledge that the act of writing an incident report will not necessarily translate into learning but explain many paramedics in the study benefited from completing a written evaluation of their incident reports as they then needed to look critically at their own thinking and writing. As Fenwick and Tennant ( 2004) point out "[a]ll reflective learning theories share one central belief: as learners we construct, through reflection, a personal understanding of relevant structures of meaning derived from our actions in the world” (p. 60). This means that reflection involves interaction between action and experience in a social setting and subsequent reflective thought to make meaning of events in a particular context.
When learners choose to learn, that is, are open to considering new information in light of their own experience, observations and self-concepts, they can be regarded as self-directed learners (Darkenwald & Merriam 1982; Knowles, n.d.; Merriam, 1993). When learners consider new information in light of their own experience (reflect), and react to the reflection process by considering future actions in light of new information, they become reflexive learners or “active constructors of knowledge, reading and new meanings and realities” (Fenwick & Tennant 2004, p. 56).
Learning can become transformative when, during the process of reflection, learners put aside held assumptions and beliefs and critically examine those assumptions and beliefs in view of evidence and experience that unsettle them (Mezirow 1994, p. 223). Programs such as VCAL have the potential to be transformative for students by providing an opportunity to break free from a disposition to generational unemployment and resistance to accepting the rights and responsibilities inherent in responsible citizenship. For VCAL educators, learning to teach in the program may require them to examine their assumptions and beliefs about how learning occurs and what constitutes effective teacher practice. Mezirow (1990) believes that learning
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may be defined as the process of making a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of an experience, which guides subsequent understanding,
appreciation, and action. (p. 1)
Mezirow (1990) goes on to argue that reflection is the process by which “distortions in our beliefs and errors in problem solving” are corrected (p. 1). However, he also says “[c]ritical reflection involves a critique of the
presuppositions on which our beliefs have been built” (p. 1). Due to the counter cultural nature of VCAL, and the nature of the practice architectures within provider settings, consideration of Mezirow’s work on transformative learning is valuable as he argues that our “habits of expectation” (p. 2) that is, established ways in which things are understood impact on how new experiences are interpreted. He uses the examples of “[l]over-beloved, teacher-student, employer-employee, priest-parishioner” (p. 2) to show that understanding the relationships between related terms depends on recognising, and accepting a widely held, established perspective of how each position in the relationship has been constructed over a period of time. He calls this way of perceiving events “meaning perspectives”.
Mezirow (1990) suggests that individual meaning perspectives may have origins from several foundations. The first is “cultural assimilation” (p. 3), from living in the world individuals absorb widely held cultural norms, he uses the examples of “conservative, liberal and radical viewpoints” (p. 3). A second is philosophical perspectives which are “intentionally learned” (p. 3). A third perspective is through “stereotypes” which are “unintentionally learned” (p. 3) although clearly these are also a form of cultural assimilation and the perspective can vary
dependent on the environment in which they are learned. For example, learning about what it means to be a woman from inside a matriarchal society would contrast to learning what it means to be a woman when working in an organisation which supports victims of domestic violence. As a result of personally held meaning perspectives, Mezirow (1990) argues
what we do and do not perceive, comprehend, and remember is profoundly influenced … [w]e trade off perception and cognition for relief from the anxiety
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generated when … experience does not comfortably fit these meaning
structures. … [The] process of reflection back on prior learning … [determines] whether what we have learned is justified under present circumstances. (pp. 4-5)
Mezirow (1990) provides language for me to differentiate between the actions- during-practice of educators who draw on what they already know, which he labels as thoughtful action (p. 6 italics in original) and educators who “critically examine the justification” of their belief, which he labels reflective action (p. 6 italics in original). Mezirow labels the post-practice process during which learners reflect back on thoughtful action and question the presuppositions on which their reflective action was based as critical reflection (p. 6 italics in original). Mezirow (1990) provides a fourth term to describe learning which appears to align with Akkermann and Bakker’s (2011) assertion that learning from boundary crossing may be the result of creating a hybrid practice, that is introducing elements of one practice into another. The term Mezirow (1990) uses is communicative learning (p. 8 italics in original), which he defines as
searching, often intuitively, for themes and metaphors by which to fit the unfamiliar into a meaning perspective, so that an interpretation becomes possible. (p. 9)
This may require the learner, in this case the VCAL educator, to create a new learning perspective so as to integrate their existing understanding with what happened during a particular action. As others have pointed out, this can occur individually or which a group. Yet as Boud, Cohen and Walker (1993) caution, outcomes from engaging in group reflections will be affected firstly by the way in which members of the group interpreted the experience and secondly, by the “unique history and perceptions” of each member of the group (p. 5). This is a variable factor which may impact on my interpretation of the data; I will not necessarily be able to determine whether the account of research participants experience has been filtered through their own individual reflection or as the result of engaging in discussion and reflection with one or more others.
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Not all literature argues that purposeful teacher reflection will naturally result in meaningful learning. Hostetler (2016) is concerned that the language of
reflection has begun to create an ideology. Within the emerging ideology “teachers’ experience and the ethical perception they develop” is dismissed as not legitimate knowing (p. 188) in favour of judging how competent teachers are by their ability to understand stages of reflection and carry them out.
Hostetler (2016) accepts that reflection is an important way of producing self- research to inform future practice, but only if teacher dispositions are oriented in the right way for real reflection to occur. He cites Lear to argue
[t]o reflect well and appropriately, one must first achieve the right orientation, be the right sort of subject: ‘[I]t would seem that if we are searching for
wisdom, we find it not by finding the right object, but by becoming the right sort of subject. Only when one becomes the right kind of subject will one see the world with the appropriate objectivity’. (p. 187 citing Lear 2003, p. 86)
Hostetler (2016) contends that perception should also be recognised as a valid catalyst for present and future action. He considered research conducted by Klein of how experts, for example nurses, employed in “complex situations” did “not suspend judgment for the sake of reflection; they just know what to do” (p. 181). Hostetler (2016) subsequently argues that “[g]ood teaching is more experienced-based than research-based” as perception comes from experience (p. 179). He compares the arguments of Dewey who argues that “reflection is an indicator of expertise” (Hostetler 2016, p. 181) and the work of Klein who argues that novices are more likely to need to reflect due to their inexperience
(Hostetler 2016, p. 181). Hostetler accepts that “good perception does not guarantee good results [b]ut neither does good reflection” (p. 182). He argues the value of drawing on experience to make decisions in the moment rather than waiting to gather evidence from which to make a decision. However, similar to his argument that good outcomes from reflection require practitioners who have the right orientation, Hostetler’s argument requires the practitioner to
understand (as he says) “the conditions under which her perceptions are reliable” (p. 184). Subsequently Hostetler’s argument of decision making from perception appears similar to Mezirow’s (1990) argument of decision making
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from thoughtful action in which the decision maker draws on what they know. Neither approach includes the decision maker first justifying the premises on which their judgement is predicated.
Regardless of the similarities or contradictions between Hostetler’s (2016) view of action from perception or Mezirow’s (1990) action from thoughtful or reflective action, they both provide examples of ways in which experience can inform action when the circumstances or context are unfamiliar. As a result both provide useful language with which to understand and describe the everyday professional learning of VCAL educators.