Reflection

In framing practice for the study group, it would be important to keep in mind Gee’s

suggestion that Discourses may be “partly defined in relationships of alignment and conflict” (2002, p. 170). Reconnaissance for this research (see Chapters 2 and 3) indicated that participants would be very likely to bring Discourses perhaps more in conflict with academic Discourses than aligned with them. The example from Rose (see 2.5) shows that he was aware of possible Discourses the veterans brought, and of Discourses of academia, and thus of possible areas of conflict and misalignment. His story (Rose, 1989, 2014) shows how he collaborated with the men to enable them to put aside inappropriate ways of being and doing and to take on new ones. His project, however, involved students attending classes full time for several months; an extended time that would allow areas of incongruence to emerge gradually. The study group would not have that extended time. Thus another facet of the exploration in the study group would be to find a way in which features of familiar Discourses might be identified. From there, we would be able to determine how those familiar Discourses aligned or conflicted with academic Discourses. One possible way suggested through the literature would be through practising reflection.

The process of reflection, widely practised in adult education (Mezirow, 1997), emerged through the literature as a possible method of enabling participants to identify features of Discourses they brought and then to then gain some distance from those Discourses as they acquired practices more appropriate to their new community. Zepke (2011) suggests that, through reflection, adult learners may be enabled to critique and deconstruct their previous educational experiences. Reflection may empower students to then adapt to different ways of learning and teaching and to take a more critical approach to their learning (Francis, 1995; Quigley, 1997). In a rather different setting, in which learners needed to re-negotiate their attitudes towards learning, Crowther,

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Maclachlan, and Tett (2010) found that such reflection helped the adult learners with whom they worked to re-engage with learning in new contexts.

Reflection with adult learners may be practised in different ways. Crowther et al. employed a collaborative approach to reflection. Navarre Cleary (2011) encouraged her writing workshop students to practise reflection in their writing. Francis (1995), in a very different context of pre-service teacher education, suggests instructors guide students through stages of reflection to apply in their writing. Through those stages, students may progress from description through critique and into proposing action.

The identified benefits of practising reflection suggested that incorporating the stages suggested by Francis (1995, p. 232) might enable participants to identify characteristics of Discourses they brought which did not align with academic Discourses:

1. Describe – uncritically describe what happened.

2. Inform – what does this mean? Why might it have been like this?

3. Confront – how did I come to be this way? What is the broad social, historical context?

4. Reconstruct – how might I now do things differently? Are there other ways of doing things?

5. Challenge – with this new knowledge, what will I now do about this?

Collective reflection may also be a means of enabling adult learners to develop confidence. Francis (1995) suggests that as adult students pause to identify what they do know and the skills they have, they are able to identify that they are indeed making progress. Bamber and Tett (2000) and O’Donnell and Tobbell (2007) write of the value their participants gleaned from times of collective reflection which allowed them to share difficulties they were experiencing with their writing and with negotiating wider aspects of academic literacy and academic culture. Students in those studies particularly valued finding they were not alone, nor unusual, in experiencing apprehension and difficulties with negotiating academic discourse, ways of thinking, accessing, and critiquing knowledge, and an unfamiliar culture. Collective reflection enabled them to

learn from each other’s experiences. Reconnaissance had indicated, too, that as many mature-aged learners do not have robust learner identities, the opportunity to succeed vicariously would be important.

81 4.3.1Succeeding vicariously

One benefit of collective reflection which would seem to have direct relevance for mature students who may well bring fragile learner identities and lack confidence in education is that through it, students may appropriate others’ success. Vicarious success, resulting from observing achievements of similar peers, is a recognised way of gaining academic self-efficacy (Bandura, 1993, 2012; Bong & Skaalvik, 2003). Similar peers provide social modelling (Bandura, 2012) through that process. As learners see others they deem to be similar to themselves gaining control of their emotions towards learning, and succeeding with new skills, they gain the confidence that it is possible for them, too, to succeed (Habel, 2009). For students with fragile learning identities, convinced since their schooldays that they are not good learners, the self-efficacy that may be gained through times of reflective discussion could be vital for their transitions to university. Chat times (5.4.6) would provide opportunities for collective reflection.

So far, this chapter has outlined the concept of Discourses as social groupings with particular ways of being and doing which identify practitioners as insiders, and it has overviewed sociocultural and pedagogical principles which might hasten the process through which newcomers immersed in a Discourse might perform as insiders. In order to support study group participants as they learned to write in ways that identified them as insiders, I also needed to identify a writing pedagogy that recognised literacies and writing as situated practices yet would provide explicit instruction in ways that participants might be able to transfer to their different disciplines. The pedagogy would need to be text-based, to allow us to analyse texts and identify the cultural values displayed in them. It would also need to employ the principles of working in the ZPD, of scaffolding, and the key role of the MCP through that process. While various approaches to teaching writing could be adapted to incorporate those principles, a scaffolded genre approach, such as Wingate and Tribble (2012) have developed, provided a model of writing pedagogy on which study group practice could draw.