Working Group: Reflection and Contemplation Working Group

by Boston WebGroup | Jan 3, 2024

The importance of reflection and dialogue is well-established in the literature on adult learning. Jarvis (1987, 2001) defines reflective learning as the practice of planning, monitoring, and reflecting upon experiences. Brookfield (1995, 2000) points to critical reflection as a cardinal function of adult education. Freire (1970), Daloz (1999), Mezirow (2000), and Blum-DeStefano (2018) all stress the importance of dialogue, of collegial conversation, in sparking reflective, transformative learning.

At the same time, there is the risk that reflective writing and dialogue will become just one more “thing to do” on the list of a busy educational leader. And there may be some forms of reflection—or perhaps here the word contemplation suggests an important difference—that require not active dialogue but some degree of solitude, silence, and stillness. The great critic of our modern, instrumentalist culture of overwork, Josef Pieper (1998), reminds us of the Medieval distinction between ratio and intellectus. “Ratio,” Pieper (p. 11) writes “is the power of discursive thought, of searching and researching, abstracting, refining, and concluding [cf. Latin dis-currere, ‘to run to and fro’].” In intellectus, by contrast, the mind engages in a still and receptive “listening-in to the being of things” (Pieper, p. 11).

This working group is an opportunity to explore the nature and role of reflection in leadership education.

• What are the differences between different forms of reflection?

• Is reflection-in-action enough or is there a need to “slow down” and “step back”?

• How do contemplative practices contribute to our formation?

• How do dialogical interaction and inwardness both contribute to self-knowledge? Is contemplation individualistic and isolating? How might contemplative knowing be supported by and supportive of community?

• What experiences could inspire leaders to cultivate contemplative forms of knowing? And how do we support leaders to make time for reflective practice?

• When is a problem-solving mode the correct response to a difficult situation and when is it an expression of a need for distraction? What do we do when stilling the mind produces not an openness to reality but a flood of regrets and obsessive worries?