Making pictures in front of a mirror

'Making pictures in front of a mirror' is the title of Inge Damen's dissertation. It came to my notice via Wilfred Ruben's blog on technology-enhanced-learning. I believe this research that explores how reflection works to be highly valuable, especially as we tend to attribute much merit to the process of reflection without knowing exactly how the process works.

The research was inspired by the observation that self-managing teams are said to be successful because of reflection practices (see for instance M. Schippers who has done research work on reflexivity in teams). Damen wants to look beyond the merits usually attributed to reflection, and goes on to answer the question: what cognitive effort does reflection involve and how does it manifest itself in (group) learning settings? She used literature, observations, interviews and surveys to ascertain what processes underlie reflection in organisational contexts. Her findings comprise:

• Reflection is questioning to disclose paradoxes, such as circular logic.
• She found six congnitive aspects inherent to questioning: 1. it is based on the willingness to do effortful thinking, 2. it is provoked by a challenging event or task, 3. it touches upon the nature of knowledge and the act of knowing, 4. it examines the combination of premises that constitute argumentation (logic), 5. it addresses strategies for problem solving (heuristics), 6. it differentiates between types of cognitive processing on the basis of the effort needed.
• Having found these factors, she defines reflection as a tendency to distinguish between subjective and objective realities and exceed one's own frame of reference by questioning the coherence of argumentation.
• Individual reflection has a positive effect on cognitive complexity and on the self-conciousness of the individual. This kind of reflection is found to be highest among people with a high need for cognition and who are open to new experiences.
• Reflection in social interaction positively influences group cognitive complexity and it indirectly influences satisfaction within the group. This kind of reflection is highest when the composition of argumentation is made explicit among group members.

Read more:

• ScienceGuide writes about this dissertation
• Wilfred Rubens writes about it on his blog
• The dissertation itself: Damen, I. (2007). Making pictures in front of a mirror. A cognitive perspective on reflection in learning. Dissertation Tilburg University.
• The painter Baldin whose painting 'reflection' (see picture above) is on the dissertation's cover