Contextualizing Reflexivity in Adult Learning
This paper explores the role of reflexivity in the adult and professional learning context. It examines what reflexivity appears to mean for adults in a collaborative learning environment. The paper presents how adult learners make meaning of their experiences and shape their learning identities reciprocally through engaging in their own learning, in collaborating with their peers, and in reflecting upon them. Based on my review of the theoretical concern with reflexivity, I provide a description of collaborative learning processes, showing how reflective practices support adults’ engagement with learning through opportunities both to reflect upon their selves and experiences and to participate in capacity-building activities cooperatively over time. Drawing on the participants' reflexive accounts of their collaborative learning experiences, I examine adults’ learning processes and patterns that emerge from their reflective practices. Based on the analysis, I reveal the values of reflexivity by focusing on mutuality and multiplicity aspects of reflexivity in the collaborative inquiry. The paper concludes by considering the implications of reflexivity for adult education.
Keywords: Reflexivity, Reflective Practice, Adult and Professional Learning, Collaborative Learning
Lurong Wang
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto
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She has a Master’s degree in second language education. A paper, based on her MA thesis, entitled “Switching to First Language among Writers with Differing Second-Language Proficiency,” was published in the Journal of Second Language Writing and was honoured as one of the “Top 25” articles for its outstanding quality by Elsevier, a leading international publisher.
Ref: L06P0129