ABSTRACT
One of the key ideas and features of all aspects of learning from experience is that of reflection. Dewey (1933) expressed an early view that ‘while we cannot learn or be taught to think, we do have to learn how to think well, especially acquire the general habit of reflecting’. Since Dewey’s time many writers in the field have emphasised the importance of reflection: Kolb (1984) has drawn attention to the role of reflection in Lewin’s experiential learning cycle, Schön (1983, 1987) has introduced the concept of the reflective practitioner into current discourse, and many others have taken the idea of reflection and explored it in the context of theory and practice in experiential learning. Reflection has also been a central feature of our own work for many years (e.g. Boud et al., 1985; Boud and Walker, 1990). Different aspects of reflection have been explored, in particular reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. Reflection has been used differently depending on the tradition from which the writer or practitioner has come. More recently the notion of critical reflection has become the centre of attention, driven partly by the interests of critical social scientists (Walker and Boud, 1992) and by practitioners who regard the idea of ‘normal’ practice as problematic (e.g. Brookfield, 1995).
