As part of a project I’ve just started working on I spent two days last week at a castle in Yorkshire.

The project is fascinating – and fun – it’s about integrating playfulness within the curriculum and measuring its impact. You can read more about the project at https://research.northumbria.ac.uk/replay/One of the things that came out of the workshop was being given the task with three other participants of coming up with the structure for one of the final steps, which is where we all reflect on the project. We decided that we’d actually plan the reflection for the whole project all the way through, as one is so dependent on the other. As the learning designers on the project (across six universities) have to do research diaries, it makes sense that these should all be integrated.

As part of this “working group” one of the people in the team shared this: https://eprints.staffs.ac.uk/9080/1/Lesley%20Raven_Thesis_2025.pdf It’s really focused on reflection in design education / studio learning – that general domain – but there’s a lot that’s transferable to other disciplines. The key thing that was fed into our process on the day was the key phrase “Reflection is not admin”. If we have to do repeated reflection throughout the project, it shouldn’t feel like a chore, but actually be playful practice too.

I started skimming through it, but there’s such a lot of good stuff in there, i’m reading the whole thing from beginning to end.

What I particularly liked about the bit of it I’ve read so far (p. 34 – ) is the break down of reflection into these five themes. The design ed focus shows through but most disciplines will have something that aligns to these.

1) Technical rationality – This is really the basic “did it achieve what it set out to do?” – most tasks will actually have some learning to acquire, even if it’s not a technique or skill. Bottom line is – did it work?

2) Artistry – again this is obvious for design ed (and art) not so much for other things. Though this book shows how artistry is a principle that can be applied anywhere. Chapter twelve is especially worth a read.

3) Constructivist assumptions – constructivism is the principle that we develop knowledge by building on what we already know – and so this reflection would address the extent to which these assumptions have been met. Did we build on any knowledge?

4) Tacit knowledge – tacit knowledge is the hidden bits of knowledge we have, but we’re not aware we have. This part of the reflection aims to unpack that aspect. So the question here might be “has any knowledge or understanding emerged through the process of reflection?”

5) Mind and body dualism. This is a bit trickier to apply generally. The thesis isn’t really suggesting we adopt mind body dualism but be aware of it. We often ask ourselves how have our minds developed, but of course design ed is also about physical skills. The two are intertwined so much the idea of dualism is outdated. Embodied learning. Post-humanist post-dualism etc etc. Lots of post. It’s a bit difficult to say what your body has learnt from … say a maths lecture … except lecture seats do not provide adequate lumbar support for 62 year olds. For me this makes sense in terms of Gibbs’s “feelings” stage of reflection. How did it make you feel? When you reflect do you cringe or smile? There’s a quote by Polanyi (1974) which helped me get my head round this – “practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action”. So basically, don’t overlook the embodied aspect. It’s the ontic before the ontologic (to get all Heideggery again).

Also reading the thesis I realise how much scope there is to reflection – it’s not a boring chore if you do it properly – it can be a creative act in itself. Maybe the most creative part of the cycle if done in a fun and playful way, which is what we’re here for.

Obviously I blog, I do podcasting and I have a constant internal self-critical monologue so reflection is something I do a LOT of, but finding alternative mechanisms to reflect that are creative and invite people to want to reflect is, I’ve realised, going to be a fascinating parallel part of the project.

Polanyi, M. 1974. Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press