A presentation about how to apply relfective theory to education

1. REFLECTIVE THEORY
‘I LEARN BY DOING; I THINK WHEN I PERFORM’
M. C. Rafael Alberto Velasco Argente

2. WHAT IS THIS THEORY ABOUT?
 Imagine that I ask you to create a chair out of
recycled materials such as
bottles, cans, paper, carton.
 How would you do the chair? Just imagine
 In your mind now I have created the idea that you
are working with these materials. You are ordering
and selecting which are the best to build that chair.
Of course, you have thought that some of them
would be a problem, right?
 Well that process in your head is called ‘reflection’.

3. DEFINITION
 The reflective theory is a complement of
behaviorism and cognitive theory.
 Behaviorism: emotions, instinct, basic human feelings
 Cognitive theory: Mind and mental processes; schemas
 To complete these basic theories of learning, then
we need to know what happens in your head when
you perform an action

4. HOW DOES THIS WORK?
 Simple and Hard at the same time.
 Simple: Everytime you teach and you provide an activity
your student is thinking on how to do that activity.
 Hard: As a teacher, guide, tutor, parent or whatever
authority you are, you need to be smart enough to think
and to trust that your students are smart as well, and
they could be even smarter and more creative than you
ever imagine

5. THE CORE
 This theory from ShÖn, is based upon to main ideas or
processes:
 Reflection in-action: Lets go back to our first exercise (the
one of the chair and the recycled materials). Imagine this is a
task you gave your own students (no matter the class it is).
Imagine all the dfferent forms and processes they can make
when you give the correct instructions: THOUSANDS!
 Learning by Doing: They are going to follow different
processes because they are creative and they are using all
their previous acquired knowledge and at the same time
performing. They do trial-error processes but they think about
what goes correct and what goes wrong and they learn from
it.

7. THINK…
 What I want my students to learn at the end of my
class…
 What they have to be able to do when they finish
the activities…
 What the ´situation’ I need to create is so they can
learn from it…
 What materials I need to help them to DO…
 What my role will be during the process: guide,
consultant, critic, advisor…
 How much time I have available for them…

8. EXAMPLE
 What’s your name?
 How old are you?
 Are you currently in a relationship?
 How many boyfriends or girlfriends have you ever
had?
 Are you in favor of ‘open relationships’? Yes, No,
why?