550359004.doc p.

Reflection and teaching: a taxonomy

Henk Vos a,*, John Cowan b

a
University of Twente, POB 217-EWI-BFD, 7500AE Enschede, The Netherlands.
b
Open University of Schotland, Edinburgh
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 53 489 2808; fax: +31 53 489 1065.
E-mail address: [email protected]

Abstract

A major problem in teaching reflection is that educational objectives for reflection in terms of
student behaviour are lacking. Therefore a taxonomy of reflection has been developed based on
Bloom’s taxonomy. Reflective assignments can then be better focused on any chosen educational
objectives. The act of reflection has been analysed and abstracted from goal, content, context, means,
and moment of reflecting. Reflection was operationalised as answering reflective questions. Bloom’s
taxonomy has been analysed, in order to apply this taxonomy to reflective questons. The result is a
taxonomy of reflection. Reflection turns out to be basically a comparison of two thoughts.

Keywords: reflection, taxonomy, learning, teaching, questions

1. Introduction

Reflection is a highly valued way of thinking. Reflecting is an important part of professional

practice (Schön, 1983), of learning (Kolb, 1984), and a means for metacognitive development (Vos,
2001, Chap. 2 and 6). Students write often reports, personal development portfolio's, reflective
journals, etc.. In reflective assignments the students have to think about what they did, how they did it,
and why, what they learned from it, and how their knowledge and skills developed.
Nevertheless, few people, including teachers, are inclined to reflect for learning by themselves
(Moon, 1999). Teachers who stimulate students to reflect meet many difficulties. It is the experience
of the first author that some very clever first year's students do not want to reflect intentionally. They
either remark that they already reflect every day, or that they just do not want to reflect. The last
category often entails students who have some personal problems and quit the department later in the
first year.
This situation gives the impression that sometimes the type of reflection required is too difficult or
too threatening; but in other cases reflection is done easily. Probably it is worthwhile to differentiate
the demand for the learner in reflecting, and the difficulties for the teachers in facilitating that
reflective learning. For we need to understand what are the most easy types of reflection for students,
and what topics are the most effective to reflect on at what occasions. This will be of much advantage
to us, as facilitative teachers, first of all to be able to talk with colleagues about reflection.
The teacher can then adjust the facilitation of reflection to the state of the students. The teachers
can help the students who are beginners to understand what reflection is. The teachers can give
assignments in which the students learn to use tools that stimulate their reflection - usefully. The
teachers can start with reflective assignments that are easily executed. And the teachers can more
effectively give feedback on the students' (reflective) performance (cf. Vos, Mouthaan, Olthuis, &
Gommer, 2002) or give an example by reflecting aloud or in writing themselves. Maybe we can use
our developing understanding to improve our own reflecting.
To distinguish types of reflection according to difficulty can be viewed as research to solve a
categorisation problem (Dijkstra, 1997). For this, the concept of reflection and the use of reflection in
different contexts, including teaching, have been analysed. The taxonomy of Bloom for the cognitive
domain (1956) that orders educational objectives according to the complexity (and thus difficulty) of
observable students behaviour in tasks has been analysed for an application to reflective questions.
This taxonomy of reflective questions is presented by a description of levels of reflection. Then these
descriptions are analysed to find the nature of the basic activity in reflection. Finally the validity of
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this analysis and some consequences of it for educational research and teaching reflection to students
are discussed.

2. Reflection and reflecting

The word reflection may denote a concept that can be explained by a set of examples or by a
definition. Other meanings refer to a phenomenon in human brains, a method or technique of thinking,
a mental action, or a process in a specific brain. It could also mean the result of such an activity. The
activity can be transitive, analogous to the reflection of light by a mirror (mirroring); or intransitive,
like thinking. Being reflective is a characteristic of persons that not necessarily involves a high ability
to reflect. Rogers (2001) and Lee (2005) give an overview and analysis of important literature on
reflection. In this paper reflection is taken to mean the process of reflecting.
According to Dewey (1933), reflection can be described as “the kind of thinking that consists in
turning a subject over in the mind, and giving it serious thought.”, a kind of mulling over a subject.
Moon (1999) defines “reflection” as “ … a form of mental processing with a purpose and/or an
anticipated outcome that is applied to relatively complicated or uncomplicated ideas for which there
is not an obvious solution” the process being initiated “in a state of doubt, uncertainty or difficulty”.
The stance of Moon is that apparent differences in reflection are not due to different types of
reflection; but this stance depends strongly on how you define 'different'. For Dewey, reflection seems
to be a kind of unfocused mental action, while for Moon reflection starts somewhere, and serves a
purpose that looks much like solving a problem. Moons descriptions relate the mental activity of
reflecting to its motives, its outcome, its origins, and/ or the objects to which it is applied. With respect
to the activity itself, Moon gives no hints, while Dewey says that a subject is turned over in the mind.
Then several questions arise. Can reflection be considered as an intentional activity that solves or
tempts to solve a problem? And if so, what types of problems that reflection may solve can be
distinguished? Has this activity a structure? A start? An end? Can constitutent parts of this action be
specified? Are there different types of reflection? How do these differ, and in what ways are they
similar? An important question here is whether reflection as it is used in the learning cycle of Kolb
(1984), and reflection as it is used in practice (Schön, 1983) are different types of reflection or not. A
further question is where and how (and if) to relate self-evaluation to one or both of these.
Clear answers to these questions are not evident at present. Finding an answer to such questions, or
even a part of an answer, and even beginning a search for an answer, seem useful in order to turn
reflection from an unfocused activity into an activity that is focused on an outcome that addresses a
problem (cf. Vos and Vlas, 2000). This development of ability for reflection may be partially natural,
but can probably be fostered by education and in turn is supposed to develop all human functioning.
Reflection can be used in several ways in teaching: for solving an immediate problem at hand in
practice, for improving your teaching (i.e. learning and personal development), and for learning to
reflect. As professionals, the teachers may use reflection in action in the sense described by Schön
(1983); in learning from their experiences, they may use reflection on action in the sense of Kolb
(1984); learning to reflect (Vos et al., 2002) requires more attention and is mostly approached as
learning by doing. These three uses of reflection are no different from the use of reflection by students,
though on different goals and with different criteria of effectiveness.
For engineering students, reflection on the role of the teacher, as a co-operative contribution to
learning, or on the role of fellow students, in co-operative problem solving, is difficult because that is
not what students expect to deal with in class. But reflection on the roles of other people and one's
interactions with them is useful, if not necessary before one can reflect fully on different approaches to
a problem and to learning, and thus on one's own approach. Similar considerations apply to other
students.
It will be clear that the object of reflection plays a role, alongside any inherent difficulty of
reflection. The objects (content) we distinguish include topic or domain (educational science for
teachers), co-operation (with peers, or others), strategy to solve problems, and self. So the topic or
object of reflection (with an anticipated outcome), the time of reflection (before, during or after a
task), and the purpose (to solve a problem at hand, or to learn for the future) may make reflection less
or more difficult for a specific person, alongside structure of reflective thinking itself.
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To analyse the structure of reflection the concept of reflection has been abstracted from its goals,
its contents, and other contextual elements of reflection. Levels of difficulty in reflective thinking must
not be confused with levels in the act of abstraction (Van Parreren, 1979; Vos, 1987), which represent
a different dimension in thinking and played a helpful role here.
The inherent levels of difficulty in reflection dwell in the complexity of the reflective behaviour
that is needed. Consequently becoming better in reflection, i.e. learning to reflect, involves a
development not only in the objects one is able to reflect on (generalisation), but also in the inherent
difficulty of the reflective problems one is able to tackle. Therefore one needs a taxonomy of reflective
problems.

3. Towards a taxonomy of reflective problems

We suggest an ordering of the types of reflection in accordance with the difficulty of the reflective
task that is involved would be helpful. From experience with reflective practices, Cowan (2004) has
described and identified four apparent different types of reflection. These were supposedly ordered
from easy to difficult uses of reflection, and from more supposedly common to less common types. By
considering reflection as an educational objective, it should become possible to order the types of
reflection according to the intended student behaviour. The taxonomy of Bloom was used by the first
author to find an order based on the complexity of this behaviour because complexity and difficulty
are related there.
Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives of the cognitive domain (Bloom, 1956; Anderson &
Sosniak, 1994) was intended to provide for classification of the goals of an educational system. It was
especially intended to help discuss curricular and evaluation problems with greater precision. The
reaction to the taxonomy was a shift from concern about teacher's action to a concern for what
students learned from these actions, in terms of evidence for that learning in observable behaviour.
Programs with educational objectives that can be specified in terms of intended student behaviour can
be classified.
Cognitive objectives were ordered from the simplest behaviour to the most complex. Knowledge or
information is the primary and basic educational objective in almost every curriculum. Knowledge
means in the taxonomy that the students can give evidence that they remember, either by recalling or
by recognising, some idea, or phenomenon with which they had experience in the educational process.
Next most teachers would like some evidence that the students can do something with their
knowledge. This is called "critical thinking", "reflective thinking", or "problem solving", and is
referred to by the general term "intellectual abilities and skills" in the taxonomy. Six major classes of
educational objectives are distinguished: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis,
Synthesis, and Evaluation.
Reflection has been operationalised in this research as the thinking process that takes place in
answering reflective questions. The application of Bloom's taxonomy was done in two steps. First, the
descriptions of Bloom's levels have been applied to the educational objective “the student should be
able to answer questions about a certain topic” and the student behaviour “answering those questions”.
As questions of the students themselves, after a task or communication has been presented to them, the
taxonomy can be viewed as follows. The words "what" and "it" refer to the content. Between brackets
the hypothetical mental process involved. The lines have to be read in a cumulative sense, that is a line
includes the former lines.
Taxonomy of questions of the students.
1. What? What is this? What do I recall? (raising task awareness) → Knowledge
2. What more? What is there more to the communication? What could I add? (brainstorming) →
Comprehension
3. Where? Where does it fit in the context? Where do I apply it without being prompted? (focusing) →
Application
4. How? What elements can be found? How can I apply it here? (searching) → Analysis
5. Towards what? What is to be made? What do I have to construct? (designing) → Synthesis
6. How well? Has it had any value? How good, useful, etc. is it? (comparing) → Evaluation
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Examples of this classification of questions according to Bloom's taxonomy are given by Riegle
(1976). It must be stressed that this entire taxonomy of questions lies on level two of the present
taxonomy of reflection (see section 4.2).
Secondly, this framework has been applied to reflective questions, i.e. questions applied to and
focused on thinking processes. The four types of reflection which have been mentioned were put into
the taxonomy of Bloom (levels 3 to 6), their descriptions adjusted, and the missing types of reflection
(levels 1 and 2) were added to generate a consistent and integrated hierarchy of reflective questions.
Using the taxonomy of Bloom in this way to distinguish different levels of reflection will help the
teaching profession to promote reflection in several ways. First because it provides a complete
hierarchy of problems so any missing types of reflection can be identified. Second, because lower
level types are easier reflection. Third, because lower level demands are the more common ones and
can be used as a step to make people at ease with reflection. Fourth, to measure or identify in research
the ability of the students in reflecting according to the level of reflection.

4. Levels of reflection

Six types or levels of reflection will be discussed here, corresponding to the six levels in Bloom's
taxonomy. For each level of reflection, questions to facilitate reflection and questions to facilitate
learning will be presented.
The six levels of reflection will be characterised by describing reflective behaviour at each level,
and by giving examples and non-examples of questions facilitating reflection and of questions
facilitating learning. The outcome of the activity of reflection (for the learner) and the purpose (for the
teacher) will be indicated, and the way the outcome can work to attain the purpose. In this way it is
easier to differentiate between several types of reflecting in teaching. In addition the difference
between each type and the next one will be defined by specifying a question whose answer, yes or no,
will decide if the example is on the present or the next higher level.

4.1. Recognising reflection and remembering what reflection is.

This is the level of knowledge. The question to be answered here is: "Which examples of reflection
do you know?", or "Is reflection involved in this case or not?" The educational objective at this level is
being able to identify reflection. It may involve knowing what happens inside a person when one
reflects. This level involves recalling examples of reflection and its characteristics. The outcome is
simply an identification of a case of reflection. The purpose is an awareness of reflective activities so
that they can be identified when they occur.
Examples of reflective performances on this level are the following. Knowing that reflection is
involved when answering questions that require thinking, such as "What is time?" but not questions
whose answer everybody knows, that go without thinking, or can be looked up, like "What time is it?"
Other examples of reflective questions at this level are "How are students to be motivated?" But not
"Did the student hand in his homework?" Or "What is self-regulation?". Asking the right question
requires a lot of experience and involvement of teachers.
To stimulate reflection the question should be one for which no direct answer is available for the
student, but that the student really needs to be able to answer because of formal requirements, or
better, really wants to answer out of curiosity. A teacher and a student must be aware that answering
the question "What is reflection?" with a definition from a book, or a description given by a teacher,
neither shows an understanding of the concept of reflection nor present an example of reflection.
Whether a question leads to reflection or not, thus depends on the prior knowledge the students have.
Without direct prior knowledge reflection may emerge, but only when the students are willing to put
effort in answering the question, and are able to do it.
On this level one should become aware of a thinking process different from recalling a topic and be
able to recall such a thinking process itselve. The difference between this level and the next one can be
defined as follows: Does reflective performance go beyond recalling (reflective) thinking processes;
can I explain reflection when asked questions about it?

4.2. Comprehension of reflection.

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The question to be answered on the level of comprehension is: "What do the various types of
reflection entail?" To do this, one should be able to distinguish different types of reflection, both in
theory and in practice, such as mulling infinitely over and around in circles, and purposeful reflection
that gives at least partial answers to unclear or difficult questions. One should be able to relate
reflection to thinking and learning, and to detach it from psychiatric treatment or meddling in personal
affairs. At this level one is able to explain reflection in one's own words, to interpret reflective
incidents, and to extrapolate one's understanding to other cases of reflection (outcome). The purpose is
to make a communication and a discussion about reflection possible.
Different types of reflection on this level can be related to answering different types of thinking
questions, like: What is learning? What are your strong and weak points according to this test? How
do water molecules behave in a tsunami water wave and how can your pupils simulate that in class?
How can you best represent your ideas on a topic? The types of reflection involved may not be
something of which the learner is aware, and can be open to discussion. They can be described
respectively as: Looking mentally inside for related ideas on learning; Searching for personal
experiences that relate to the test items and seeing your behaviour reflected (mirrored) in the test
results; Imagining yourself inside the water wave, feeling what you would feel when being a water
molecule; Creating a form (words, symbols, drawing, animation, etc.) that reflects (mirrors) your
ideas.
It is difficult for a teacher to demonstrate the skill of reflecting by reflecting aloud. Neither is
giving prescriptions for reflecting easy. But when the students repeat this demonstration or follow the
prescriptions their skill belongs to this level.
Comprehension of reflection requires different experiences with thinking, and maybe an awareness
of the difference of processes involved. Otherwise, the given descriptions could have been learned by
heart only, but not stated in the students’own words or used to correctly identify new and useful
examples of reflection. Asking the students to explain how they did something they are good at, or
very interested in, usually will produce explanations that can be identified as reflective, and can be
used to generate examples for understanding reflection.
Thinking is not always reflective. Examples are the thinking involved in making a summary or in
analysing a text, a schematic, a technical drawing or a formula. In these cases the mental activities are
bound to the given forms in a communication.
The difference between this level and the next one can be defined as follows:
Does reflective performance take me beyond talking and thinking about reflection, to doing it and using it?

4.3. Critical incident analysis (CIA).

CIA is a simple and straightforward application of reflection. The inherent question is “What is
important for me to take from this incident, beyond the occasion itself?” Here people reflect on
experiences which puzzle, surprise, challenge, or worry them. It involves an analysis of other
processes than thinking. How did these proceed? What was the important feature? And then maybe:
How did that touch me? There is no analysis involved of the process of reflection itself. The
developing skill of reflection is to be applied in a new concrete situation, on new objects. CIA leads to
an awareness of objects to reflect on.
The challenge of the critical incident may be within the content of a task e.g. when a dilemma or a
contradiction is subject to discussion, or dealing with disruptive behaviour of a partner one has to co-
operate with, or the emotions involved in an incident of harassment. What makes the incident a critical
one depends on how the person himself is involved. A surprisingly insufficient mark for an
examination, the preparation for which had taken a lot of effort, might be a critical incident.
Questions that facilitate reflection in CIA are: What happened exactly? What did you get from this
event, incident, or task? What is the evidence for your statement? Here the students become aware that
there is a difference between an opinion, conclusion, or feeling (the examination was unfair), and the
data on which it is based (requirements). Reflection can be assumed when the students become
excited, give long and detailed explanations of what happened, or are surprised by some details of
their answers – and show evidence of the thoughts prompted by that answers, and possibly of lessons
thus learnt for the future.
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Reflection can also be facilitated by series of questions. An example is the sequence of responsible
thinking questions used to change the behaviour of disruptive students: What are you doing? What are
the rules? What happens when you break the rules? Is this what you want to happen? What do you
want to do now? etc. (Ford, 2003). Posing a dilemma, a contradiction, or a confrontation to the
students also helps them to reflect on this level. When students use the skill of reflection correctly,
given an appropriate situation in which no mode of solution is specified, they demonstrate mastery at
the this level.
The outcome is maybe just an understanding of the incident, or being able to accept it as a life
experience. The outcome exposes a factor that was important but was overlooked. The purpose here is
to become aware of nonconscious factors in the critical incident. However, the failure to pass may be
blamed to the examination. The student then stays engaged in the particular incident. So CIA does not
necessarily lead to learning.
For learning a move from the particular to the general is needed. To focus CIA on learning, special
measures have to be taken, like asking what the student would do better next time if such an incident
would happen again or would happen in a different context. Facilitating such a move is difficult for a
teacher because imagining the critical incident to happen again can be threatening to the student. If
facilitation succeeds the outcome is an idea, concept, rule, procedure, that can be used or applied or
tested (active experimentation, Kolb) a next time. Then the purpose is to become aware of what you
can learn from the critical incident.
The difference between this level of reflection and the next one can be defined as follows:
Is this reflection in a specific case, or about more than one incident, and about a generic process?

4.4. Process analysis.

This type of reflection analyses how similar tasks are undertaken. This is an analysis of one's own
(my) processes, of what goes on inside one's mind. How do I process in executing similar tasks? Being
an analysis of my processes, it may also involve the reflective processes themselves. How do I reflect
on what I do? Reflection here involves a breakdown of self-processes into their constituent parts or
elements and detection of the relationships of the parts and the way they are organised.
Skill in analysis includes, for example, being able to distinguish fact from hypothesis, relevant
from extraneous material, to note how one idea relates to another, and to see what unstated
assumptions are involved in what is said or written. This type of analysis of an incident was already
required in CIA, but now it should be applied to thinking processes themselves, giving insight in the
arrangement and structure of thoughts which hold thinking processes together.
The challenge here lies in identifying the general approach to tackling similar tasks – e.g. because
of repeated failures or maybe the opposite, successes -, or in the need to understand oneself – e.g.
because some not intended behaviour recurs - . The outcome is a recognised structure for some
recurrent mental process. The purpose is to improve performance (e.g. to manage time more
effectively), or to describe performance (e.g. in order to improve the processes, or to simulate them by
computing).
Questions to facilitate this type of reflection include: What did you get from these tasks? How did
you do it? What was important? Why? Why did you do this task? Such questions can often with much
profit be discussed in small groups of students. Questions for the facilitator himself are "Will my
questions or comments help the students to improve their problem solving ability, learning, or
reflecting?" and "How?"
A question for learning is “How can you do it better?”. In learning and development, the process
analysis will improve performance through two elements - first by the generalisation that emerges
from the analysis; but then also in the deliberate decision to actively experiment, to carry out that
generalisation into new but similar experiences, and to test it out there. Thus, from time to time, the
generalisation will need to be developed further and made more mature.
The second writer often analyses the way he decides to make facilitative comments on students'
reflective writings. That generalisation serves him well - in three ways. Usually, it quickly becomes a
habit, and he does not think about it every time he does whatever it is. Then there is the way he goes
back to the generalisation when he is faced with a slightly unusual challenge, and sees how he can
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make it fit, or needs to adapt it. Finally, there is the situation where the generalisation doesn't fit, and
he must re-reflect, and re-generalise.
Process analysis is more personal and more demanding than CIA. To use it in learning requires a
smaller step, however, because the students have already got a process structure with weak and strong
elements identified. The teacher then goes on to ask the students to use such an analytical approach by
themselves, or asks questions like "What if you do it otherwise? What are you going to do next time?"
Thus process analysis entails analysis, and then - for learning - creative effort to engage in active
experimentation with one's own processes, which is the checking out of the generalisation, rather than
simply blindly drawing conclusions about one's particular behaviour, as on level 3. Creativity and
imagination is needed here for learning, to work out "How will I check?"
The difference between this level and the next one can be defined as follows:
Is the focus of reflection simply concentrating on pre-decided processes or rather on processes that emerge as
the reflection begins?

4.5. Open reflection.

Reflection can be open in that we do not know, when we begin, where it will or should take us. For
example, we may set out to consider how to act in a given situation, but without knowing if we will be
able to identify options for action, let alone choose between them. We may set out seeking meaning or
understanding, without knowing if we can find it, and even without knowing why we started. Here
both the origin of the puzzlement and the outcome of reflection may be questioned. The issue or
question to reflect on has to be constructed as we reflect. Questions of open reflection are questions
that concern learners' issues of immediate importance of whose full significance they may not be
aware when reflection commences.
The outcome is often a question, an answer to which may help the learners to take a further step in
the solution of a problem, or a hypothesis about the reason why they are puzzled that serves the same
goal. Another outcome may be a new representation that may help them to pursue the solving of the
puzzle. The outcome (question, hypothesis, or form) must embody somehow at least some vital
elements of the puzzle or of the reflection process itself, and thus lessen the puzzlement. In open
questions, as in all reflections, the purpose is to go at least part of the way towards finding an answer
of which we were unaware when we started.
What is the question for reflection? What is the point to reflect on? This type of reflection has a
question or an issue to consider, with the indeterminate result of this consideration as the outcome.
What shall I do next? The questions when asked involve an uncertainty both about whether they can
be answered and whether the answer will ease the puzzling.
Reflecting here entails creatively generating or synthesising (constructing) a question or a problem.
One has to see an issue in the puzzle that can lead to a solution. It is a hypothesis that, if true or
answered, will contribute to solving the puzzling issue. The difficulty lies here in the uncertainty about
whether answering the question will help or not, strengthened by the uncertainty about what it is that is
puzzling you. In this type of reflection, the outcome is not clear in the beginning, neither the outcome
of reflection nor the outcome of learning. The purpose is to continue reflection, but now from a
carefully considered question which has emerged during the process of reflection, and may then lead
to meaning, understanding, further actions, etc.
Questions to facilitate this process are "Can you pose a question about what you think? What are
you hoping to find out? Why do you spend time on this?" and then, for continuing reflection "How
would knowing the answer to that question make a difference?" A teacher could ask himself "Would
my questions help the students to ask questions by themselves?"
Here the students easily become their own teachers by asking the question "What can I learn from
my puzzling over something?" The purpose often is to learn to reflect in order to add value to the state
of puzzling by means of (a part of) an answer to a specific question that has been formulated.
The learners here have to spot a question, which is potentially fruitful as a starting point - pinpointing
what troubles them, or should trouble them, like “What are my learning goals here and now?”. They
then have to problem-solve, which is creative - and to summarise the outcome, which is analytical.
The difference between this level and the next one can be defined as follows:  
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Is there, next to continuing reflection, an element of judgement involved, which calls upon me to select and apply
appropriate criteria?
 
4.6. Self-evaluation of reflection.

This is an evaluative ordering of my processes in terms of usefulness for a given outcome or

purpose. How well do I reflect? What is the value of my questioning, my reflecting? Here how well
reflective tasks are being performed is analysed and what their profits are. Self-evaluation entails
generating, selecting, and applying criteria for reflection, making judgements by very careful
considerations of the various aspects of the object being judged, and then - creatively - deciding what
these judgements imply.
The difficulty may be positioned in the self, the behaviour of the actor himself, here. The outcome
is a judgement. The purpose is to generate and apply criteria for the evaluation of reflection. Once
formulated, these criteria may easily be used to match further performance to these criteria, next time.
Reflection on this level is also generating meaning to reflection. It contributes to understanding why
one chooses to reflect.
The purpose for teachers here is again two-fold. First, and one that we often disregard, is to
encourage students and all of us to be aware of our strengths, so that we are empowered to use them to
good effect. The second writer has often been told, and facts seem to confirm, that, electronically,
students will come to trust him, and take a lot from that relationship (Cowan, 2006). He needs to
evaluate himself under that heading, and recognise what seems a strength - and understand what
contributes to it.
At the same time, and more importantly, self-evaluation leads us to see scope for improvement, and
even ways of improving. John wants his students to self-evaluate, but then he wants them to go on and
think about what that evaluation suggests to them, not only in terms of future action but also in terms
of further reflection. Is my reflecting good enough to learn, or do I have to improve it?
For such empowerment a feeling of trust is needed, trust in the teacher and trust in oneself. It
comes to common values, to respect and self-respect, and to a stronger self. On the lowest level
recognition of reflection from among other kinds of mental processes is the case; but on the present
level, being engaged in reflecting can be used as a criterion in a reflexive way. On the highest level of
this taxonomy persons are aware that they are reflecting persons, they highly value their reflective
capabilities, while knowing that reflection is not all that there is to (meta)cognition, just like they knew
on the lowest level.

5. Results, analysis, and discussion

On the lowest level in the taxonomy, thinking induced by a given concrete question may be
compared with some memories of reflection. Knowledge is based on a first awareness of what
reflecting entails. A definition or a description of reflection may play a role. On level two,
understanding of different descriptions and cases of reflection can be discussed and compared, leading
to or arising from an awareness of different types of reflection, and to a more flexible concept of what
reflection is. On level three, reflective thinking is applied to an incident, until one identifies that a
certain factor was significant. Moving through the first three levels a person grows stepwise more
aware of the existence and use of a type of thinking called reflection.
On the next level, in process analysis, the mental processes of reflection are applied to other
(similar) recurrent processes until these processes can be divided in subprocesses and intermediate
states like walking can be divided in steps and footmarks. The structures of mental processes emerge
significantly. On level five, reflection on a puzzled state of mind is used to generate a kind of
hypothesis about what might be the cause of the puzzlement. If the question is answered, and the
puzzlement is lessened, the hypothesis turns out to be correct. If not, the puzzling should have refined
the question –usefully-. Finally, in self-evaluation the thinking processes themselves are evaluated and
subjected to constructive judgement according to objective criteria. Across the topmost three levels, a
person grows stepwise more aware of the structure, origins, and value of that thinking process called
reflection.
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Intentional reflection seems to lead to an awareness of something that was not obvious in the
beginning. Reflective questions can be used by a teacher or a peer student to focus reflective thinking.
The questions obviously contain elements (prompts) that the student should hold in mind when at the
same time a subject (with related ideas, images, or emotions) is turned over in that mind. Somehow a
similarity between the ideas generated by the prompts and the subject should trigger an outcome of
reflection. So reflection must involve a comparison of two mental processes - the status quo and a
possible option.
Somehow the human brain is able either to monitor two mental processes on line, or to compare
two mental processes that went on, or to hold two representations of its own processes and compare
these, and to find elements that can be judged as equivalent or even equal. These are metacognitive
activities since metacognition can simply be defined as cognition about cognition. From this
viewpoint, reflection leads to metacognitive knowledge, that is knowledge about one's own cognitive
processes (Vos, 2001, chap. 3).
The basic structure of reflection is thus that two thoughts are compared to find out in how far one
thought mirrors the other. Such a thought can be a conceptual attribution, a mental image, or a logical
process, about an event, situation, feelings, experiences, observable objects, or observations. The
conclusion that two thoughts mirror each other can be considered as a kind of short-circuiting that
develops in the brain.
The stance of Moon (1999) is that apparent differences in reflection are not due to different types
of reflection. According to the analysis given above, this could be interpreted as meaning that
essentially all types of reflection involve a comparison of two (or more) mental processes in some
way. This analysis also explains why one needs others to learn to reflect: They provide both mirrors
for one's own reflection and examples of (someone's else's) reflection. In practical cases the mirrors
are generated by tools, or socio-constructively by other students, or the teacher himself, serving as a
mirror.
Different forms of reflection arise because the object (content) differs. Self-reflection for instance
is reflection on the person self. When self-reflection is said to have different levels according to
whether behaviour or personal traits are considered (Korthagen & Vasalos, 2002), these levels are
different from the present levels. Self-reflection can take place on our level one if persons remember
that thinking about the way they are hand-writing letters is a form of reflection.
Other forms of reflection arise because of differences in moment (after, during, or before an
action), in goal (to solve a problem, to repeat a success, or to learn), in method (scenario -, line -,
spiral-reflection, coaching, personal development planning etc.), and in tools (using notes, sketches,
tape recorder, video recorder). Thus Schon’s reflection-in-action and Kolbs reflection-on-action just
differ in moment of reflection and in goal (to solve problems and to learn, respectively), but basically
are the same.
Some general conditions to teach reflection with impact are that the student should not be afraid to
reflect, should want to reflect because they like it or see the use of it, and should be able to reflect
explicitly. The easiest way to entice students to reflect lies in establishing a starting point at levels one
and two, in reflection on why they came to university, and what for, and then to extend that reflection
to their study. Such reflection can be formally required as a part of the curriculum (Vos et al., 2002).
The failure to engage in intentional reflection on the part of both teachers (Moon, 1999) requires
further investigation: it seems unlikely that teachers do not reflect. Maybe they do it in a different
form, type, or level. It is the first author's opinion that all people do reflect, but they often do not know
it, and usually their reflection is not about the topics of school learning but about other issues. If the
first two levels of reflection are overlooked, CIA indeed is the most common type of reflection (Gibbs,
1992).
The taxonomy of reflection here is related to questions and to the cognitive domain. Its character is
therefore normative, embedded in the empirical-analytical approach of the social sciences, with the
related ideas about knowledge and practice. In this respect this taxonomy lies on the lowest of the
three levels of reflectivity that Van Manen (1977) distinguished.
The difference between reflective and other questions is that reflective questions are directed on
cognitive goals here, and not on affective goals (although emotions can play an important role in
reflection) or other goals (cf. Gall, 1970, who also suggests criteria for the quality of the answer to
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higher order questions). Nor do we consider possible reflection in questions like "Will you please open
the window?" or "Do you like ice cream?" (Riegle, 1976).
According to Travers (1980), Bloom's taxonomy lacks a the theoretical underpinning of true
taxonomies such as those in chemistry or biology. This is one of the reasons why validation of the
taxonomy turned out to be difficult. This problem is related to the issue of the process-content
distinction. Complexity of content may interfere with complexity of the process shown in behaviour.
The challenge is how to distinguish between the complexity of the behaviour itself, and the complexity
of the content of that behaviour. The present contribution to this question is to apply the skill of
thinking to the skill of thinking itself.

6. Conclusions

The levels of reflection described form a basis for further research on reflection and for
improvement of teaching. For further research it is interesting to elaborate on mirroring and reflexivity
as special forms of reflecting. Reflecting on reflection (Von Wright, 1992) gives a start. Also, the
taxonomy should be validated empirically. The same problems are expected here as with the
validation of the taxonomy of Bloom, but they may be better observable. Research concerning the
frequency of occurrence of the different types of reflection for different populations, different goals,
and different content, is lacking but can be of value both for a theoretical understanding of reflection
and for teaching.
The levels presented describe states in the development of the ability to solve reflective problems.
This does not mean that a person has to pass through these levels successively to learn to reflect. The
levels are not generative for the development of a person. Neither does it mean that everybody is able
to progress from one level to the next in a way similar to the stepwise development of thinking (see
e.g. Van Parreren & Carpay, 1980). This possibility can only be confirmed by teaching experiments.
Good teachers of reflection not only provide effective prompts, but do more. Learning to reflect
involves becoming less dependent on the teacher by generating the prompting questions for yourself,
by applying these at different times, to more objects, by using them in more contexts, by learning to
use more tools, and by solving reflective problems of increasing difficulty. The teachers should assist
the students to be less dependent on help and still lead them through the steps mentioned before.
The teachers have to make the students aware of their reflections outside school settings, to teach
them to know and understand reflection in school settings, and then to apply reflection to useful
learning in school. Such an approach to teaching reflection puts heavy demands on teachers and
students alike (see e.g. Cowan, 2001: The first steps for the Inverness Five). It is highly urgent to
develop simpler tools to let people know and understand reflection as a first step to applying
reflection. The above analysis may support further fundamental and applied educational research on
reflection.

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