The Student as Reflective Learner

What if we empowered every student to take ownership and leadership for his or her learning?

What would that look like?

• They would have the tools and know how to use them to determine their learning strengths and needs.
• They would have goals and the motivation to accomplish them.
• They would be involved in defining their learning targets and in creating ways to measure their progress. 
• They would be responsible for maintaining the evidence of their success and for communicating their learning to others. 

By shifting the locus of responsibility from teachers to learners the students’ natural drive to explore, experiment and discover is reignited. Reflection is both a natural consequence and natural proponent of the learning process.

The student S.M.A.R.T. Goal process is, by its very nature, a reflective practice. Data sources are examined at each step of the process to inform goal-setting, the selection and impact of strategies used to achieve the goal and, ultimately, the efficacy of the goal itself.

There are a variety of tools that teachers and students can use to develop reflective habits and to institutionalize the practice of reflection in the classroom. In an attachment at the end of this post, we share a downloadable list of simple tools and methods that can be integrated into any classroom with little or no training required. Note that each serves a specific purpose and is not age specific. That means that these reflective tools can be used by students at any level as well as by the adults in the system.