Amplification of reflection

When I was a little kid, we visited my family at the cottage every summer. One of my favourite things about this place was that the bathroom vanity had a large mirror, about 4’ by 8’ above the sinks. On the wall behind was another similar sized mirror. The effect of this was my reflection being repeated seemingly into a tunnel of infinity with my image getting smaller and smaller in the repetitions. It was like being in a room with a hundred of myself and yet they were all slightly different (fractionally smaller) and none of them were the real me, not even the initial reflection in the first mirror.

There is so much debate about what is and isn’t reflection and reflective practice. Neither have to be proven as a way of discovering the truth or the best way forward, they can remain varied and subjective experiences and still be successful. We can think of this process in metaphor, like the bathroom mirror effect; none of the reflections are the real reality, they are only amplifications of an initial reflection. This allows us to examine many versions and possible outcomes without changing the real reality until we want to commit to the new version, which may be never. We may go on trying other possibilities, seeing how they work out and then reverting to the original. Reflection allows us the freedom to explore different ways of being without involuntarily changing or accidentally damaging ourselves until we truly decide to do so. The act of reflective practice can be thought of as a type of serious, methodological self-research, but there is also a sense of play about the process. Until there are any actions, the process of reflection is without consequence in the real world. Until our reflective process is shared out into a relationship, it remains within our own private space of thought yet has unlimited potential, once released, to bring about monumental change, or absolutely nothing at all. If risk, trust, suspension of disbelief and power differentials are required for learning in teacher / student relationships, there are many obstacles to meeting these requirements by social change at this time. Currently, we are attempting to lower the power dynamic created by the “white expert” through decolonization and promoting learning through allyship and lateral movement of knowledge. By stepping aside and sharing the stage, we do not need to be rejecting the students’ gift of willingness, we can be accepting them into a space where knowledge generation is being organized anew, where there is space for everyone’s ideas. By acknowledging previous models of education were not playing fairly with other cultural ideas of learning, we can create a new way together. This doesn’t mean that we are abandoning power dynamics because they are challenging, it means we have no choice now but to dismantle them to make room for other ways of being.

The metaphor of a reflection is so powerful because of its ability to simultaneously be different for everyone and yet connect with people in their own unique ways of having experienced reflections in their lives. They are embedded in our myths, stories and folklore, such as the witch’s fantasy reflection in Snow White, or the fox’s reflection in Aesop’s Fables come to mind. Reflections are a major part of how we understand each other, understand ourselves in the context of relationships with others and the way we perceive ourselves either accurately or dysmorphically. As a result of this, using the terms reflection and reflective practice is essentially problematic and is why everyone can agree that they are vague and difficult to be precise about. Each person experiences the reflective process within a web of personal history, varying cultural lenses and ever-shifting intentions. If we are to move forward with trying to understand the very nature of what occurs within the student teacher relationships of learning, we should abandon the vocabulary of reflection and agree on terminology less ripe with symbolism deep in the psyches of humans. Perhaps something like self-learning thought, co-learning examination, or exploration of relational epistemology, just as a few suggestions. We need terminology that will free us from the trap of the elusive word ‘reflection’. By co-opting this word ‘reflection’ into the realm of critique, we have taken it from a neutral and even positive experience and forced it into performing with an outcome at our will and with the very domination we seek to escape.