1. REFLECTION
Jones, M., Shelton, M. (2011). Developing Your Portfolio--Enhancing Your Learning and Showing Your Stuff: A Guide for the Early Childhood Student or Professional, Second Edition. Routledge.

2. "The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action"
John Dewey

3. Reflection: A Definition
The defining characteristic of a portfolio
Intentionally bringing to consciousness motivations, thoughts, beliefs, questions, assumptions, feelings, attitudes, desires, & expectations to gain insight as to meaning, connections to what is personally known, & in light of new experiences & information
Jones & Shelton, 2006

4. Reflection
a disposition
a human capability
a cognitive skill

5. Reflection is a process of…
Thinking about thinking (metacognition)
Considering implications of past actions, knowledge, or current circumstances
Projecting into the future
Making connections across time
Writing as thinking (product)
Reflection makes possible insights needed to learn from experience & alter habitual behaviors

6. Reflection: Purposes
Bring experience & knowledge together to produce new, personally meaningful learning
Connect theory to practice
Strengthen a critical reflection disposition
Provide insight into learning & personal or professional development
Manage emotions throughout the learning process

7. Reflection Enables Connections
Relate learning to standards/guidelines (theory to practice)
Examine impact of learning on personal views or behaviors (transformation)
Determine relevance & implications of the learning on future action (so what? & what now?)

8. Reflection Frames Experiences as: An observer of self and others
focuses on qualities & content of relationship
A critical reader of professional literature
focuses on engaging the literature, rather than simply being a consumer of it
An implementer of activities
focuses on the processes and products associated with your activities

9. Dispositions
Consistent & frequent patterns of behavior wherein the individual acts intentionally in particular contexts at particular times.
Ways of responding determined more by characteristics internal to the actor than provoked by the environment
“Habits of mind,” rather than “mindless habits”
Katz, 1995

10. Some dispositions exercised in the portfolio process
Flexibility of thought
Intellectual curiosity
Perseverance
Risk-taking
Critical reflection

11. Steps in Reflecting & Connecting
Contemplate the meaning of specified learning experiences in relation to guidelines and practice (theory to practice)
Examine the impact of the learning on personal views or behaviors (transformation)
Determine the relevance and implications of the learning with regard to future action (so what? & now what?)

12. Reflective Writing
“when viewed as a process and when done properly, [reflective writing] has a unique ability to develop the interior life of the writer…”
(Fink, 2003, (p. 116).

13. The Role of Reflection To make meaning: bring experience
and knowledge together to produce
new learning
To connect theory to practice – past,
present and future
To transform the scrapbook into a
portfolio

14. Summary of facts to limited reflection skills
Reflection Continuum
Summary of facts to limited reflection skills
More insightful reflection
Sophisticated, multi-level reflection
         
Concrete operations
Formal operations

15. Prompts _____ motivated me to… I believed that…
____ has made me question… 
The question this raises for me is… 
I assumed that…
_____ makes me feel like…  
I realized that…
_____ made me realize…
My expectation was that… 
My views on… have been… 
I imagined… 
It surprised me to find out…
_____ caused me wonder
_____ is important to me because… 
_____ has affected the way I think/feel about…