On a pedagogy of critical reflection

I like to think that revision and reflection are significant parts of my pedagogy. Reflective writing can help students retain what they've learned, it can promote transfer to other contexts, and it allows me, as the instructor, to understand and assess a student's writing and research processes. In many ways, I've found student reflective writing to be more useful than whatever product they make for one of my classes. In Technical Communication, a student could complete an instructions document that does not fully meet the assignment objectives, but they can still do well in class -- that is, they can demonstrate their learning -- by articulating what they think they missed, why they may have missed it, and what they would do next time to improve. Students can elect to revise and resubmit their completed documents based on their reflections.

Similarly, I participate in this reflection process throughout the semester, posting my self-critique and revision ideas to the course wiki, and now, on this blog space. In doing so, I'm not just interested in reflecting on what I'm doing and what I'm asking my students to do, but in doing so critically, approaching reflection as a concept, habitual practice, and complication. The term has achieved a sort of buzzword status across popular discourse and higher education alike, commonly as "critical thinking," which I feel is the crucial skill publics expect professional educators to convey to students. Rarely, in those external conversations, do I hear critical defined in any specific way (partially, of course, because that's not a thing that publics typically do).

So what do I mean by "critical"? And how does it apply to reflection? Since it's where I situate myself disciplinarily, I try to embrace the connotation used within Critical Discourse Studies, which Mautner (2009) summarizes as, "unveiling and challenging  taken-for-granted assumptions about language and the social, as well as recognizing discourse as a potentially powerful agent in social change" (pp. 123-124). With this definition as a guidepost, I encourage students to reflect not only on their work, but on the course and assignment, including through lenses of accessibility, alignment, and process. Applying that definition to my own reflective writing, I'm attuning myself to the ways my teaching and assignments create space for students to challenge institutional hierarchies, but also how my teaching reinforces those structures.

Just composing this post is leading me to two lines of inquiry. First, how are my assignment designs leading/constraining students to/from reflecting critically? Second, what can we learn from the differing ways that academia and publics define "critical." Next week, though, my plan is to write on the craft branding projects that graduate students in the Theory in Rhetoric, Composition, & Literacy Studies course that I teach are currently collaborating on. One group is making kimchi and the other is making beer. The groups are documenting their processes, with photographs, video, and text, and will next exchange notes so that each group can design branding for the other group's product.