Challenging fundamental assumptions about higher education and lifelong learning.
Become a better student of your own experience.
Life is filled with autobiographical occasions, the pivotal moments when we are called to take inventory, look at where we are, consider how we got there, and plan what's next. But we don't need to wait for these reflection points to build the skills and mindsets that get us through them. Our education is a constant series of these moments, so we should be practicing all the time. Here are some of the principles at the foundation of the RL experience.
The Principles
Reflection Labs operates under the following foundational principles.
Personalized: Our personal life (curriculum) matters.
Agency: It's nature, nurture, and how we think about free will.
Whether it's formal education or on-the-job training, pausing to reflect strategically on where we're coming from will keep our hearts connected to our learning. This kind of work-life perspective should not be trivialized. We possess a wealth of experience that often goes unrecognized unless we acknowledge and value it ourselves. Reflective practices and mindful ways of being can create the space for us to bring relevant inner resources to the tasks in front of us.
How can we position ourselves in environments where we're most likely to thrive and develop? We're constantly evolving based on both internal factors and external influences. But how much control do we really have over this process? What happens when we take the time to examine and reflect on the level of control we perceive we have? And what does this mean in the context of our learning?
​
Exploring these questions can help us better understand and navigate the forces that shape us. It allows us to work with them more deliberately and intentionally.
Mechanism: knowing how as a way of knowing why.
As our formal education advances in the primary and middle years, we try to reassert the sense of curiosity and flow we once felt by asking, "Why do I have to do this?" Without professional support through that inquiry, we are more likely to be grappling with it too far down the road, long after critical windows seem closed, money has been spent, time has been lost. We are asked what our purpose is and we can get stuck in the search for it. We are always driven by the curiosity to understand how things work, whether they are the mechanisms of our own bodies and minds or the academic, professional, or cultural mechanisms through which we learn and grow. Greater support exploring those "hows" may help us respond to the "whys" we are so often confronted with. When we think about how we think, how we relate to our peers or mentors, or how our intended profession functions in the community, we are better equipped to address why we should learn something and why we might want to.​
Medium as message: design is experience.
Too often reflections simply rely on a Q and A format or on prompt-based writing. The focus here is on the content we come up with -- the answers. RL is interested in the experience of reflection, not just the content of it. A documentary of a conversation, a pitch for funding, an installation or a dramatic tableau about our past, or a visualization of us performing something: these are not just genres. They are ways of being in the world. They are aesthetic and somatic experiences that mobilize in us powerful reflective faculties. RL recognizes the varieties of human experience catalyzed by the multitude of genres across media and cultures.
Self-directed: the inquiry continuum.
Our most passionate learning moments are characterized by a sense of momentum. We feel moved. From controlled inquiry (someone asking us the questions) to guided inquiry (someone helping us ask our own questions) to open inquiry (finding questions by ourselves), our learning can be adjusted to suit our need for freedom and discovery. This can work in all disciplines. A discipline-specific reflection or contemplation can create the space for us to feel like we are directing the course of our own learning in a field we already love or one we seem to feel alienated from.
Slow multitasking: cultivating projects across time.
We commonly refer to multitasking as doing several things at the same time or in the same moment, dividing our attention, shifting it from one thing to the other. What is a moment though? Can it be a month? A Year? A decade? We might call one of these time frames "a moment," and when we look at it this way, we can see that our life's work is an exercise in many overlapping things. Something we worked on years ago is in fact relevant to what we are working on now. We didn't necessarily close down the project, or even abandon it. It is now part of us and we can incorporate it into what we are doing in the present moment. Enacting this kind of multitasking can help us connect our past, present, and future projects and learning.
Narrative Inquiry: What can we learn from looking at the way we tell our story?
Finally, what happens to us in our lives shapes us. But the story we are telling ourselves about what has happened shapes us too. We begin to acknowledge this when we look at how we reflect on experience. It can feel like our education happened to us, and it can seem like there is nothing we can do to change what happened. Like archeologists of ourselves, we can't return to what happened, but we can return to old interpretations of what happened and contextualize them given insights and understandings we've gained since those interpretations were formed. We can gain a sense of control over the whole process of our work and education going forward by engaging in this kind of "learning story" reflection.
How it works.
Reflection Labs operates in either course mode, workshop mode, or coaching mode. ​Each offering below consists of modules which you can learn more about through the RL curriculum or in consultation with RL.
Courses
Colleges: Host a course for the semester, for the year, or for the summer.
​
Individuals: Sign up for a self-paced course.
First Year Experience Lab
Signature Work Lab
College Engagement Lab
Adult Learning Lab
Workshops
Colleges: Host a faculty/staff workshop, or incorporate RL into advising or academic and career coaching.
Faculty Workshop
Academic Advising
Academic Services
Individualized Coaching
Sign up for a personalized Reflection Lab tailored to your career goals and interests, your pivot plan, or the story of your education. This will help you declare your purpose and aim for it.
Vision Statements
Mission Statements
Self-Authoring
Materials
Workbook
Cards
Interested in participating?
​Reflective Practice - Contemplative Pedagogy - Mindfulness in Education
​
Reach out if you are interested in creating or developing a course, hosting a workshop for faculty and/or students, getting personalized coaching, or if you are simply curious and want to learn more.