In everyday language, the term reflection refers to people's ability to make their own thoughts and actions the subject of reflection. Reflection as a form of thinking is therefore recursive or retro-referential or self-referential. Reflexivity then refers to the habitualized or institutionalized form of such thinking.
In the iREFLECT project, reflection means taking time to think about your behavior. Think about thoughts, attitudes, routines, motivations, wishes and goals, disclose them and develop them further for your own professionalization.
Reflection is more than just remembering events: concrete experiences are critically analyzed in order to make actions more conscious, improve teaching methods, refine your own strategies and thus better support students in the learning process.
John Dewey, the father of project-oriented learning, gave “reflection” a special place within learning processes: “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey (1933)
Similar in newer models such as B. by Prof. Fred Korthagen, concrete experiences are based on situations in order to then analyze them together or alone and, using theoretical knowledge, to develop alternatives for future practice. What reflection models have in common is that they call for the three-step observation - looking for causes - pursuing alternatives.
In summary, reflection in the context of teaching and education refers to the conscious and targeted consideration of experiences, actions and results in order to gain deeper insights, understanding and improvements.
