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Examples Of Reflection In Education

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What is reflection?

The term “reflection” comes from the Latin term reflectere which means “to bend back”. A mirror does this. It bends back the light so that you can see what your face looks like. In education, reflection means to look back at experiences of learning and think about them. The act of reflection becomes the bridge between experiences and learning.
An example of a reflection can be your thoughts after buying a new car. You might think something like this: Did I really look at enough kinds of cars to make a good decision? I wonder if I paid too much for the car. Should I have bought a smaller car? Those are the questions that you might ask yourself. The reflection answers might be as follows: I went to three auto dealers and checked on the Internet for the features I wanted. I will check on the price of that car to see if it is right. I should have checked and then gone back to buy the car. I couldn’t have bought a smaller car as I have …show more content…

Why use reflection?

As shown in the learning equation, students learn by doing, constructing, building, talking, and writing - the action of learning. They also have to think about events, activities, and experiences - reflection of learning. In most schools, the students do the first part of the equation, but time is not provided for the second part, reflection.
Both experience and reflection are needed to produce new knowledge. Effective learners often are parallel processing, that is reflecting upon activities even as they are doing or experiencing new activities.
Students may not even realize they are learning something new until they stop to reflect. For example, they may be so engaged in an experiment that they do not think of it as learning. Providing time for them to reflect on the experiment allows them to use higher order thinking skills such as critical analysis, problem-solving, synthesis, evaluation, identifying patterns, and creating

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