Concept Mapping: Take 1

1. Reflection is the active, directed process of recollecting thoughts, emotions and knowledge both during an action and post-action.

2. It applies to all aspects of personal and professional life but within the Sciences it allows us to a) evaluate the purpose of complex labs/experiments b) integrate observations to come to a conclusion and c) remember theories to explain nature phenomena

3. Reflection helps compose knowledge by using cognition and metacognition to gather thoughts and knowledge, drawn from all areas of the brain, and use them to a) come to a logical solution to a problem based off of the assimilated evidence b) reproduce success in repetitive actions and c) know how to approach a new situation

This map is representative of my current knowledge about the practice of reflection and although I'd like to expand my understanding throughout the quarter, specifically in how we assimilate our collection of thoughts in order to come to conclusions, all of this is supported through literature. In John Dewey's "How we Think" he uses an analogy comparing reflection to a forked road. Paraphrasing, the presentation of this doubt pushes us to make astute observations and gather more evidence in order to come to a better conclusion of which way to go in order to get to your destination. Thus, reflection is active and directed towards a certain purpose. In this situation it is used during the act modifying our behavior in order to come to the successful conclusion but if we were to reflect upon how we got here, say in the case we had to give directions to someone on how to get there, it would be after the act and reflecting would be serving the purpose of evaluating how we got to the correct destination. Therefore, it is clear that during reflection we are integrating thoughts, emotions and knowledge in order to come to a logical solution to a presented problem and it allows us reproduce past success. Furthermore, the collection of articles from "Naming what We Know: Threshold Concepts in Writing Studies" explains the difference between cognition as how we are acting in the moment and metacognition as how we came about to making the rhetorical choice we did. It is the combination of the two that drives us to become more knowledgeable about a subject, and in new situations the changes/modifications we need to make. Without this reflective active thinking, we would be "locked in" to our standard actions, which may not be appropriate for the given situation.