Namala Tilakaratna and Eszter Szenes
Centre for English Language Communication, National University of Singapore and Academic Enrichment, Learning Centre, The University of Sydney
[email protected] [email protected]
Abstract
The use of reflective assignments such as critical reflection essays, learning journals and reflective journals is widespread in higher education. These tasks are used to uncover critical thinking in action and assess how students’ knowledge-in-waiting transforms into knowledge-in- practice (Gulwadi, 2009). However, there is little consensus about how to teach and assess these types of assessment. This paper, as part of an ongoing study on knowledge practices of critical thinking (Szenes, Tilakaratna and Maton, 2015), reports on how successful students demonstrate the capacity to critically reflect on practice in a manner that is valued within their disciplinary contexts. Drawing on the APPRAISAL framework from Systemic Functional Linguistics we show, through analyses of high-scoring student assignments, that successful students draw on the resources of negative AFFECT and JUDGEMENT to target and manage their emotions and opinions to demonstrate critical self-reflection within reflective assignments. By making explicit the evaluative resources by which these students construct critical ‘self-reflection’ in reflective assignments, this study intends to contribute to demystifying the linguistic demands of demonstrating critical thinking in applied disciplines.
1 Introduction
Critical reflection refers to how people make ‘judgements about whether professional activity is equitable, just and respectful of persons or not’ by drawing on ‘personal action’ examined within wider socio-historical and politico-cultural contexts (Hatton & Smith, 1994, p. 35). It is often taught and assessed through the use of a wide variety of assignments, such as learning and reflective journals and reports, reflection papers, case studies, or narratives (Carson & Fischer, 2006; Fook & Gardner, 2013; Fook, White & Gardner, 2006; Ryan & Ryan, 2013). Despite the popularity of reflective assignments across a range of disciplines, there is little understanding of what constitutes evidence of critical reflection (O’Connell & Dyment, 2011). It is typically considered a ‘creative’ process with little structure (Crème, 2008; Fook & Gardner, 2007). As a result, critical reflection tasks are considered a particularly difficult assignment to teach and assess.
This paper, as part of an ongoing project on demystifying critical thinking in applied disciplines (Szenes, Tilakaratna and Maton, 2015), will uncover how high- achieving students demonstrate critical ‘self-reflection’ in social work and business reflective assignments. Due to space constraints, we only report on a selected high scoring assignment from each discipline. Specifically, we will show that high- achieving students have the capacity to make themselves both the sources as well as targets of evaluation so that their emotions and their behaviour function as the objects of study. This ‘intrusion’ of the personal must be transformed from negative affect into couplings of negative self-judgement in order to demonstrate a shift in ATTITUDE
from emotions to opinions. Construing this shift through couplings is crucial in reflective writing for demonstrating the capacity for self-reflection, a skill considered
necessary for undergraduate students for future ‘transformation’ into professional practitioners in the fields of social work and business.
2 The theoretical framework for classifying evaluative
language: Appraisal
In order to describe the evaluative resources that are used by successful students in writing reflective assignments, we draw on the discourse semantic system of
APPRAISAL (Martin & White, 2005). From its three interacting domains, ATTITUDE,
GRADUATION and ENGAGEMENT, we will only draw on ATTITUDE, which consists of
emotions (AFFECT), judgments of behaviour (JUDGEMENT) and evaluation of things
(APPRECIATION).
A further aspect of appraisal that we need to take into consideration is the fact that items of appraisal and their targets, triggers, emoters and appraisers can combine in ways that constitute ‘any number of coordinated choices from system networks’ (Martin, 2008, p. 39; Zhao, 2010). These combinations, termed “couplings”, consist of ‘the linking of at least two types of relations at one point’ in an unfolding text (Zhao, 2010, p. 206). This paper will explore couplings of attitudinal meanings and their targets to understand what kinds of values are stabilised over the course of the unfolding reflective writing tasks.
3 Description of the data
3.1 The social work critical reflection essay
The assignment chosen for analysis here was taken from a published volume of exemplary student critical reflection essays in social work. Students were required to focus on ‘their emerging identity as “new graduate social workers” about to enter the workplace’ and were asked to ‘select a critical incident from their field education experience using Fook (2002, pp. 98-100)’. Drawing on a systemic-functional understanding of genre as a ‘staged, goal oriented social process’(Martin & Rose, 2008, p. 6) and resources of theme, appraisal and transitivity and semantic gravity (see Szenes, Tilakaratna and Maton, 2015) five distinct stages were identified in the student’s essay of which three are obligatory and described below:
(Introduction) ^ Critical Incident15 ^ Excavation ^ Transformation ^ (Coda)
In the Critical Incident stage of the essay, the writer narrates a difficult experience encountered during her field placement when, as a young female apprentice social worker, she was subjected to verbal sexual harassment by a young male patient (Jared), attending a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program. In this stage the personal pronoun “I” frequently occupies the position of Theme, which functions to draw attention to the student social worker’s personal experiences. This ‘personal’ orientation of this stage is reinforced by references to specific human participants and the use of material processes that serve to concretize the student’s experiences as shown in the example below:
15 Throughout this paper Critical Incident mention function label with initial letter capitalized will refer to the generic stage, while critical incident with small letters will be used to refer to the actual event the student social worker discusses in her assignment.
…I arrived at the unit at about lunchtime when the residential worker was starting to prepare lunch. He complained that the clients did not help with the preparation as they were supposed to…
In the Excavation stage that follows, the student contrasts her initial reaction – which was to report the incident and the resulting consequences for the male client – with a new understanding of the incident from a disciplinary perspective following her reflection. This shift from the ‘concreteness’ of the critical incident in the previous stage to its more ‘abstracted’ interpretation from the perspective of disciplinary knowledge is signaled by more abstract nominal groups in Thematic position, for example:
As I approached one of the