Summary

Throughout the weeks you have been introduced to what reflective thinking is and some models to help with practising it. Reflective thinking is very important for improving your learning. It also has similarities with Metacognition, Creative Thinking, Divergent thinking and Critical thinking. Practising reflective thinking will help you develop thinking in these other types of thinking. The opposite is also true, practising these other types of thinking will help improve your reflective thinking.

Along the way you were also introduced to the ideas of boundary objects, threshold concepts and liminal states. An understanding of these should also improve your learning and reflective thinking.

You may have found some aspects of this course challenging. This may be because as Gelter (2003) says "focused reflection needs active effort and energy, and thus is not a spontaneous activity" and that reflective thinking "has to be learned and encouraged." Hopefully this course has started you along this path.

Happiness

The literature suggests that reflective thinking can improve happiness. If negative and positive events in your past are reflected upon with a view to learning from them then this reflection can improve your present and future and lead to increased happiness. However if a person repeatedly dwells on past negative events, current problems, or potential future difficulties then this can decrease happiness.

As Elliott and Coker (2008) put it "self-reflection has the potential to both increase and decrease (when mediated by self-rumination) subjective happiness". Their research suggests that "although meaningful self-reflection may be beneficial for individuals who do not enjoy high levels of happiness, the perils of self-reflection are that it may trigger self-rumination which has detrimental consequences for happiness."

The idea behind this course is that, if used in a positive way, reflective thinking will improve your happiness.

Further Reading

You may also want to read more about the topics discussed this week and might find the following articles on Wikipedia of interest. Please note articles on Wikipedia may not be accurate and may change over time.

Metacognition

Creativity

Divergent thinking

Critical thinking

Learn more

At the time of writing this course Open Learn has a number of courses on Creative thinking and Critical thinking which you might find of interest. When you are doing these courses a number of other courses may become available on Open Learn so please do browse the courses available for other courses that might be useful for developing you reflective thinking skills.

References for week 3

Note: you may not have access to these articles unless you have a University library account.

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Hatano, G. and Inagaki, K. (no date) ‘TWO COURSES OF EXPERTISE’, p. 11.

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