Every spring semester I teach a soup-to-nuts ePortfolio development class to graduate students in FIT’s Art Market Program, and every spring the word, reflection, assumes a more prominent role in my vocabulary. According to a paper by Neil Haigh from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, “reflection” is one of those words that is used, for the most part, pretty non-reflectively - which strikes a little too close to home. Drawing from Donald Schon’s concept of the “reflective practitioner”, Haigh develops a definition of reflection that is concise and all his own: thinking about an experience with the intention of deciding what it means, how it can be explained and what the meaning and explanations might imply for the future.
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