David Kolb's Reflection

Based on the assumptions of socio-constructivist theories of learning, educators attempted to re-conceptualize teaching as a profession (Murray, 1996), which might be facilitated via reflective teaching learning practices. According to these theories, teaching has to start in student teachers’ reflective learning practices at the teacher education (Ostorga, 2006). Learning at the teacher education, moreover, is promoted when teacher candidates are provided with multiple learning opportunities to apply what they have learnt in meaningful contexts (Edward et al, 2002; Merrill, 2002) through the applications and integrations of classroom knowledge with actual teaching practices. This has to be initiated and accomplished through exercising reflective

Emancipatory knowledge, the third form among the three, takes reflection as its major learning tool even to work with the first two forms of Habermas’s (instrumental and practical) knowledge. It intensively uses reflective, critical or evaluative modes of thinking and leads towards the emancipation or transformation of personal, social or other situations in order to make judgments from the theoretical and practical sides of learning. For David Kolb (1984) reflection in learning is considered as a mental engagement that has roles in learning from experiences. In the Kolb cycle of experiential learning, reflection stands as processing one’s observation for ensuring learning. Donald Schon (1983, 1987) contended that the basic role of reflection in learning is to learn professional knowledge from practice (tacit-knowledge in action) because competent practitioners know more than they can

“There are links here to notions of experiential and action learning. It is not sufficient simply to have an experience to ensure proper learning but also reflection upon this experience is critical otherwise ‘learning’ quickly be forgotten, or its learning potential lost” (Gibbs, 1988: 9). Though it is suggested for any learning engagements, reflective learning is more popular in the case of teacher education and medical education (Ostorga, 2010; Colliver, 1999). Over the years Dewey 's theories of reflective thought and the principles of pedagogy he inspired were restated again and again by subsequent educators (eg. Schon, 1983; 1987; Kolb, 1984; Haberman, 1971; Moon, 1999) and have taken large spaces in theories of learning and teaching particularly in the mid 1980 's teacher education (Halbom, 1998; Luttenberg & Bergen,