Ned Laff, Ph.D. Augustana College

The Reflective Prompt Can Trigger A Transformative Experience

When students engage “a pluralism of values and points of view” they engage and experience that fosters their ethical and moral development and their abilities to make personal commitments in a relative world. William Perry (1970)

The Challenge of Reflective Prompts: Embedding Students-Lives-As- Texts

 Our biographies are intersected by and “shaped” by the socio-historical contexts in which we live. This is norming at the macro and micro level  “Troubles” occur in our lives at the immediate level of our daily social lives  “Issues” come from the institutionalized forces in the socio-historical moments we live.

Reflective prompts can challenge students to use their “Sociological Imagination” – To become aware of the relationship between “troubles” and “issues” and how our norming influences how we see, understand, and interact

How Do We Define Co-Curricular Activities

Goal: Students demonstrate how they use their learning to reflect on their experience and themselves. Part 1: Description of the experience; Part 2: How do they use their learning (from their courses) to gain insight or understanding about their involvement and interactions; Part 3: How do they use their insights and understanding to reflect on themselves.

Answers reflect honest, thoughtful responses that link student’s learning to the experience and then to insights about the student's own life AND that go beyond just answering the questions by connecting the student's experiences to a better sense of the student’s vocational calling Answers are sincere responses to the prompt; they demonstrate a basic sense of using one’s learning to think about the experience and an awareness of skills development that is beneficial, but does clearly connect the student's life or to the student’s life course Answers are superficial and do not reflect thoughtful consideration or reflect important aspects of the how the student's learning provides insight into the experience or how this insight might provide insight into the student’s life course

 Clarifying self-efficacy;  Understanding how learning becomes experience; how experience become learning;  Understanding the relationship between content and skills in different settings;  Identifying a personal sense of purpose;  Developing a sense of vocational (career) calling.

Students exercise their abilities to use their learning to think with, to think about, to think through their day-to-day interactions with others.

A good reflective prompt can challenge a student to step to the edge where their familiar and the unusual meet