By Mary Bart, Faculty Focus
More and more colleges and universities are developing general education curricula that include courses involving critical reflection, including how the various disciplines address some of the big questions facing today’s society. But be warned, critical reflection is not for the faint of heart. “Critical reflection is not a neat and tidy exercise that closes an experience with a nice, tidy, little bow. Rather, reflection is ongoing, it’s often messy, and it provides more openings than closings,” said Barbara Jacoby, PhD, senior scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park. “This is one of the challenges that faculty who engage students in critical reflection find all the time. We don’t know where students will go with their reflection, and … we have to let go of thinking of ourselves as the expert in a certain topic, because critical reflection opens questions that we are not necessarily going to be the expert on.”
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