Shaping the embedding of reflection in engineering education

Abstract

We observe that it is difficult to adopt reflection in engineering education. Two reasons for this are that literature on reflection has a multitude of definitions for the word 'reflection' and reflection is deeply context dependent. This means we spot a couleur locale in the definition, relevance and habit of reflection. Brilliant ideas from literature and best practices of others don't survive the battlefield of teaching practice, and the application of seemingly clear-cut concepts mismatch with the messy reality of a new context.
We believe reflection requires particular attention to implementation. With our university-wide program we grow, foster, and embed reflection as a core practice in our disciplinary education and organization. Our guide in this innovation process is the model by Hamza & Regehr on eco-normalization, that describes the interaction between the innovation, the system where it is embedded, and the people doing the work.
Moreover, to align this interaction and to embed couleur locale, we use co-creation as one of our main tools. In the workshop we (I) deconstruct the couleur locale of participants' contexts, (II) analyze the stimulating and limiting interactions between system, innovation and people doing the work, (Ill) ground this in theory and share an example to illustrate how we manage that in our own messy reality. For many participants our workshop was a hands-on experience with the ambiguity of reflection as a concept as well as its implementation in our engineering education.