Adding Creativity to the Critical Thinking in Reflection

Written by: Joan Lennon Liptrot, Executive Director of the Institute for Global Education & Service Learning

When I first began helping others understand how to integrate and implement service-learning I embraced the “What?-So What?-Now What?” approach to Reflection. It was pretty straight forward; have students think about their own experience (What?), develop in-depth understandings of related issues (So What?), and finally have opportunities to apply new knowledge (Now What?). In addition, give students a chance to talk, write, read, or do something to express each of those steps before, during, and after the service experience. Along with that, I reminded practitioners to take into account what we learned from our old friend Benjamin Bloom, and his six levels of learning and knowing (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation). Even when working with seasoned, experienced practitioners, I was often surprised how the prompts teachers used fell within the lowest three levels of that taxonomy. So when planning reflection, I encourage teachers to challenge themselves to create opportunities for students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate their learning. The other thing that became apparent was the most commonly used strategy for conveying this learning through journals. I knew reflection was an exciting and significant part of the service-learning process, we were getting to the critical thinking piece, but I still felt like we were missing something.

Then one day, at the Forum for At-Risk Youth in South Carolina, I attended a workshop by a consultant named Howard Bowden from Kentucky. In 90 minutes he had us revisit Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligence and consider how this applied to Reflection in service-learning. If reflection is when the light bulb goes on for students, this was like a huge Broadway marquee for me! That’s what was missing…I’m a person with definite verbal linguistic strengths (more verbal than linguistic) so journaling just didn’t excite me (in fact the thought of having to keep an ongoing journal made me a little sweaty and nauseous). This idea that if we don’t all learn in the same way, then we don’t reflect in the same way was exciting and I’m not going to lie…it sounded like it could definitely add some creative thinking!

As I began sharing this idea with practitioners through workshops and trainings I was constantly amazed at how the adults I was working with were able to be so creative when asked to reflect in a way that matched their own personal learning style. There were songs, poems, skits, graphs, pictures, puzzles, and more! Everyone was very excited at the idea of helping students reflect in a way that was natural and comfortable for them. As teachers went back to their schools and classrooms and tried to embrace this exciting new idea to re-energize reflection they realized they were really good at creating reflection opportunities that reflected their own multiple intelligence strengths but not so great with intelligences that were not. Oh what to do?
There’s one resource I found “Service Learning for the Multiple Intelligences Classroom” by Sally Berman. It’s full of examples, tips, and tools for basic to advanced projects that are adaptable to a variety of curricular content areas and grade levels, but once again most reflection is focused on a student log.

After talking with teachers and students about what we wanted reflection to be, I decided to create a simple, easy to use resource that would not only incorporate Multiple Intelligences into Reflection, but would empower youth to direct that experience. With that, the Multiple Intelligence Reflection Cards were born. Designed to be used BY STUDENTS, each card identifies the main intelligence focus, a difficulty level, and whether the activity is best suited for before, during or after service. For more information about the cards visit our website www.igesl.org and go to the Resources section.

I’ve gotten great feedback from youth and adults with suggestions for improvements and modifications too, which are always welcome. I just hope that it helps get teachers and youth thinking critically and creatively about reflection!