II. Recommended Readings
These articles provide theoretical and practical applications of reflexivity that are useful to both educators and students implementing reflexive practices in the classroom. Click on the title to access the article.
Bleakley, A. (1999). From Reflective Practice to Holistic Reflexivity. Studies in Higher Education, 24(3), 315–330.
This article critically examines reflexivity’s possible forms, interpretations and values. The author describes teaching as a critically reflexive, aesthetic practice, and notes that there are four underpinning epistemologies for reflective practice: technical rational; humanistic emancipatory; postmodern deconstructive; and radical phenomenological. The author proposes a complex, synthetic ‘holistic reflexivity” as an aesthetic and ethical apprehension grounded in an ontological framework of radical phenomenology.
Sudirman, A., et. al. (2021). Harnessing the Power of Reflective Journal Writing in Global Contexts: A Systematic Literature Review. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research. DOI:10.26803/ijlter.20.12.11
This systematic literature review incorporated important theoretical frameworks on reflective journal writing. The authors conducted a thorough analysis of 20 published research articles from 2016 to 2021 aimed to present written arguments that support thesis positions and credible evidence, as well as determine the global contexts of writing practices. The findings showed that reflective journal writing reinforced self-discovery, self-inquiry, and critical ideas among students. Reflective journal writers’ voices empowered significant changes in several writing aspects, including personal idea exploration, creativity, self-organization, and professional practice development.
Machost, H. & Stains, M. (2023). Reflective Practices in Education: A Primer for Practictioners. Life Sciences Education. doi: 10.1187/cbe.22-07-0148
This essay serves as a primer for educators beginning reflective practices. It briefly describes the benefits to educators and different classifications and modalities of reflection and examines some of the challenges that educators may encounter.
Freda, M. F., & Esposito, G. (2017). Promoting Reflection and Reflexivity through Narrative Devices: Narrative Mediation Path Qualitative Multimodal Method. Qualitative Research Journal, 17(1), 2-19.
This article discusses a reflexive process that makes a distinction between reflection and reflexivity as defined according to the mentalization construct. The authors conduct a case study on underachieving students who participated in counselling sessions to examine how the narrative mediation path (NMP), a novel multimodal counselling method addressed to underachieving college students, promotes reflection and reflexivity by enhancing student ability to mentalize their university experiences. They find that NMP narrative modes (metaphoric, iconographic, writing, and bodily) promoted reflection, and group-level inter-subjective steps were essential for the development of reflexivity. Furthermore, it was found that in each narrative mode, the students developed reflective and reflexive processes through the attainment of mentalization dimensions.
Esposito, G., Freda, M. F., & Picione, R. D. L. (2016). Reflexivity or “Reflexivities” in Higher Education: Conceptualizing Unique Reflexive Process. In Working with Underachieving Students in Higher Education (pp. 32-42). Routledge.
This book presents an international and interdisciplinary approach to the study of the relationships between narrative devices and reflexivity in higher education. The authors present a model that promotes personal resources and reflective competencies in non-traditional, disadvantaged and underachieving students and provide theoretical insights and practical methodologies to enhance quality teaching, innovation and diversity in higher education.
Krystalli, R. (2023). Teaching and Learning Reflexivity in the World Politics Classroom.International Political Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad018
This article explores the dilemmas, challenges, and possibilities students encounter in practicing reflexivity, such as locating the self in relation to power, moving beyond vectors of identity and analyzing manifestations of power in daily life. The author argues that both the dilemmas and possibilities of practicing reflexivity are related to hierarchies of knowledge creation in the study of world politics and discusses how teachers and students of world politics can use reflexivity in the classroom to disrupt the rigid frameworks of knowledge generation.
Ryan, M. E. (2015). Teaching Reflective Learning in Higher Education: A Systemic Approach Using Pedagogic Patterns. Springer
This book provides a theoretical model to guide the implementation of reflective learning and reflective practice across multiple disciplines and international contexts in higher education. The book presents research into the ways in which reflection is both considered and implemented in different ways across different professional disciplines, while maintaining a common purpose to transform and improve learning and/or practice. It provides a functional analysis of multiple modes of reflection, including written, oral, visual, auditory, and embodied forms. Empirical chapters analyze the application of these modes across disciplines and at different stages of a program.