Personal Reflection and WebQuest

While working with the students I was conscious of the fact that reflection on experience in the classroom seemed to be helpful for Anne, my teacher-education student, and for me. Drawing on the dialogic nature of the action learning work in NCVA I was conscious of the lack of dialogue within my classroom. I wondered if I could find a way through ICT that would support reflection and perhaps lead to dialogue in the classroom.

click here to access the Personal Reflection WebQuest

The LCA programme includes a task called the Personal Reflection task, but this had not been carried out through the medium of ICT previously. At the same time I was conscious in my research that I had been making claims that other people were learning, I could not provide evidence from the learners that they were learning. Focusing on self evaluation and personal reflection might support both of these purposes.
A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which most or all of the information used by students is online. By providing links necessary to complete the quest, the student is able to focus on the material rather than spend time looking for it. WebQuests usually have five parts: introduction, task, process, evaluation and conclusion. Following through an assignment using these steps are claimed to promote critical thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation (Dodge 1995).

The third reflection process involved visiting one of seven web sites and reading an article there. The learner had to summarise the article and write out the three things he considered most important. The learners then had to forms groups and see if the group could agree on the three most important things.
In his account one student wrote:
" We went over the three points as a group and agreed that the damage has been done is a good point because he can’t change what has already happened. The most he can do is say sorry for what he has done. 'I learned that we can work as a group and agree on three points without any arguments among the group. You can use this in the workplace if you are working with a group to make the job a lot easier for us. It can also be used in school for setting up an event in a group."
Christopher and his co-workers were able to enter into discussion within a small group and discuss different points of view and come to a consensus on the outcome. This is a dialogic community participating in a system of intersubjective learning (Arnett 1986, 1992; Gadamer ([1960] 1982; Freire1972). Dialogic learning involves the engagement of learners and teachers, it takes as its subject matter content which is relevant to the learning and produces learning which is relevant to the learner. In Christopher’s case we can see these elements. While the prompt for the formation of the discussion group came from the teacher, through the WebQuest, the action to form the group came from Christopher.The formation of the group and the work undertaken helps develop democratic values in the educative process, supports the building of character, and assists the establishment of a community for the educative enterprise (Dewey, 1981; Friere, 1972).

Beyond this, Christopher is able to reflect on his tacit learning from experience and make that learning explicit (Varela et al. 1993) to members of his learning community. By writing his account of his learning and making it available for publication he is making his learning explicit publicly. He is contributing to the knowledge base of education (Snow 2001). Further he can apply his learning to similar situations and anticipate where this learning might be useful later. Facilitation or leading discussions is one of the ‘great difficult things’ of classroom teaching (Greene 1954) Christopher has taken it in his stride! Perhaps the main insight for the teacher from this experience is that some matters that are difficult to teach can easily be learned within communities of practice (Wenger 1998).

When the LCA students were carrying out their assignment through the medium of ICT they were involved in labour, work and action (Arendt 1958). Labour is ‘routine behaviour required to meet basic needs. The labour for the students was the basic ICT skills like logging-on, saving files and printing documents. When they produced multimedia artifacts like web sites and PowerPoint presentations they were involved in work. ‘Work includes activity by artists and craftspeople to make lasting objects that comprise the human world’. However as they took control of their own lives through these activities they were taking action. ‘Action requires collective interaction to determine what is good and just’ They were involved in action in that they got to know themselves better, they got to understand their capacities better, and they were able to articulate those capacities better. This was achieved through the medium of technology on the one hand but also the provision of an environment which supported collaborative work. That environment was not created on its own. The work of the LCA programme was the work of a team of teachers working together with their students; some of them using ICT but some of them using other methods to arrive at the same type of outcome. ‘ICT as political action’ was not operating in a vacuum but within the context of a group of people who were working collaboratively to support non-traditional forms of learning.