On Reflection.

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Reflection is to learning, what sunglasses are to vision.

I have mixed feeling regarding the glee with which people seem to be lobbing rocks at Learning Styles. As one of the early critics, it’s nice to see people are finally rejecting this particular piece of mumbo-jumbo (conveniently glossing over the fact that it was the cornerstone of ID for at least a couple of decades). On the other hand, if you are doing it to feel like you are more scientific, then you might want to have a look at the glass house you are standing in.

By way of example, I find the idea that reflection is an essential component of the learning process laughable – but many people still seem to take it quite seriously.

Now as someone who is something of an ‘extreme reflector’ – indeed have made a career out of it – you might expect me to be championing the cause. But if anything has struck me it's just how little reflection counts in everyday life - and how little influence it has. Business meetings for example, rarely seem to benefit from reflection – instead ‘nodding, smiling, saying the same thing as everyone else’ seem to be the preferred approach. Big decisions are driven by consensus and relationship-building. Reflection is generally the unwelcome guest (as perhaps it is here).

I suppose we have Kolb to thank for the bizarre notion that reflection is an essential part of the learning process.

So why should we treat it with a pinch of salt?

Argument 1: most learning happens without reflection. For example let's say I read about someone’s terrible experience with a particular company – I decide not to use them. I didn’t need to reflect on anything in particular. A small child sees their friend cry out in pain as they sit on the hot slide at the playground. They learn not to go on it. They didn’t need to reflect. I try a different route to work. It takes me 20 minutes longer, so I revert. I didn't need to reflect. In fact outside of weird world of educational contexts it is hard to think of any situations where reflection is an essential part of the process.

As the father of three daughters there is quite a noticeable point where they start to be capable of reflection at all – and for boys this seems to come much later (indeed I regularly come across grown men who rarely, if ever, seem to reflect).

Now I know some of you are doing the ‘anecdote dance’ in your head: have a look at the Iowa Gambling task. Damasio showed that learning took place far in advance of participants’ ability to explicitly say what they had learned. Other research, summarised here by Patti Shank, suggests that a significant proportion of everyday learning is unconscious – and it’s fair to say you can’t reflect on what you don’t know you’ve learned.

To be clear: I don’t doubt that in some circumstances reflection can be good (for reasons I won’t go into here), and I will continue to design programmes with opportunities to discuss and reflect – because, just like sunglasses, this can sometimes help (and there is research to support this). But the core of our approach should be experiences (where learning is deliberately implicit) and performance support (which if anything reduces the need for reflection).

Argument 2: be suspicious of magical thinking – especially if you are trying to be scientific. Reflection as an essential part of learning is a supernatural explanation - I mean this in the literal sense of the word. As a post-Darwinian I believe, like Darwin did, that there are quantitative differences between humans and other animals, but not qualitative ones.

So what do we think: are dogs doing much reflection? No? How about squirrels? Uh-huh. So just humans then? – we are literally ‘above nature’? I know people like to think that humans are completely different - don't kid yourself: there is no uniquely human characteristic (they are all demonstrable in other species). If we don't think reflection is essential for learning in other animals, then it's almost certainly not essential for us.

Imagine for a second that I take Kolb’s picture and I substitute ‘dance’ in place of ‘reflection’. Maybe if Kolb had been more of a dancer than a reflector that would have happened. Turns out, he’s got two left feet. But in my model, dance is an essential component of learning.

‘But Nick’ you say ‘that’s just silly – people often learn without dancing!’

‘Aha!’ I respond ‘but at some level they are dancing!’

Sometimes, when you look at learning theory, it’s worth putting your sunglasses on.

Image: Ashish Sharma, Pexels