Reflective Theory

Last week, I was asked to choreograph a dance to for a pilot for a new video game. The game is to be aimed at non-dancers of all ages and the idea is that they can play it in their living rooms. Therefore, the choreography had to be simple to follow and relatively compact in order for people to play at home. Yet, it also had to be fun and challenging enough so that people have the desire to play the game. This was like nothing I had ever done before, I knew it would require a lot of research into similar, pre-existing games in order for me to deliver what the client was looking for.


John Dewey describes 'reflective thought' as 'active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge' (Dewey, 1933)


When choreographing this piece I used 'active consideration' primarily to reflect on existing dance games. I viewed and played many of these games before I got to work on my own creation and considered what I liked and didn't like about each one. I was 'persistently' reviewing what I was creating while I was creating it, I changed the piece from its original form many times before I was satisfied. Finally, I had to 'carefully consider' every movement in order to ensure it fitted the brief I was given.


I can also clearly see Lewin's notion of the spiral steps reflected in my learning process.
PLANNING (Researching existing games)
ACTION (Creating the routine)
EVALUATION (Reflecting on what I thought worked and what I wanted to change)
PLANNING (More research and brain-storming ideas)
ACTION (Changing the routine and improving it)
and so on....
Lewin's 'steps' refer to having an experience as a continual or 'persistent' upward cycle finally reaching the finished result. In my case these 'steps' lead me to a routine I was contented with.


Lewin and Dewey's ideas on learning inspired Kolb to create his 'Learning Cycle'. His cycle consists of  the different stages we go through when we are having an experience.

http://serc.carleton.edu/details/images/9499.html

It is easy to see how Kolb developed his ideas from Lewin's 'spiral steps' the stages are similar:

CONCRETE KNOWLEDGE  - Doing something (Action)

REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION - Reflecting on what you've done (Evaluation)

ABSTRACT CONCEPTUALISATION - Learning from what you've done (Evaluation)

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION - Trying out new ideas (Planning/Action)

What makes this an expansion on Lewin's 'steps' is the idea is that everybody's way of learning is different and depending on who you are and your particular learning style determines at what point you enter the learning cycle and gain new knowledge.

After much deliberation I realised how my experience of choreographing for the video game fits into Kolb's cycle. My learning process went like this:

CONCRETE KNOWLEDGE - Watching and playing dance video games for research

REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION - Reflecting on what I liked and didn't like from the games

ABSTRACT CONCEPTUALISATION - Evaluating what I learned from reflecting on the games

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION - Putting what I've learned into action and coming up with my own creation

CONCRETE KNOWLEDGE - Doing the routine I created

REFLECTIVE OBSERVATION - Reflecting on what I liked and didn't like from my creation

ABSTRACT CONCEPTUALISATION - Evaluating what I've learned from reflecting on my creation

ACTIVE EXPERIMENTATION - Putting my evaluation into action and changing parts to make it better

and so on...

I think I entered Kolb's 'Learning Cycle' right at my first bout of 'concrete knowledge'. By actively watching and physically playing the video games myself I learned exactly what kind of routine I was aiming to create. Next came the 'reflective observation' where I thought about what aspects of the existing games I wanted to incorporate in my routine. Then, using 'abstract conceptualisation' I evaluated my reflections. I already knew it had to be simple enough for non-dancers to follow but from playing them myself I found they often used some harder steps to keep players interested. Then I used 'active experimentation' to put my evaluation into action and create a routine which incorporated what I had learned from the previous three stages of learning. Then the entire cycle was repeated several times but with reference to my own creation.

Although I can see how my process fits into his work, some critics have voiced problems with Kolb's learning cycle. Tony Jeffs and Mark K. Smith (2005) wrote,

"(Kolb's) steps are shown as a circular movement. In reality, these things may be happening all at once. Furthermore, if learning has taken place then, as Kurt Lewin put it, such a process could be seen as a spiral of steps,"

From my own experience with the dance video game I must disagree with their first criticism that all the steps may be happening at once. I feel that I found each step to be separate from the last and that I gained further understanding with each step. However, the second part of their argument, that Kurt Lewin's spiral steps is more in keeping with the idea that learning is taking place, I find to be quite true. As I have already said I found that I repeated the 'learning cycle' a few times before I was satisfied with what I had created.  Therefore, I visualise this as more of a steady progression upward like spiral stairs rather than a continuing cycle because each time I completed a cycle I felt closer to achieving my goals. This idea of there being no sense of achieving goals links to another critics work. Rogers (1996) writes,

"learning includes goals, purposes, intentions, choices and decision-making, and it is not clear where these elements fit into the learning cycle'

I must agree that within Kolb's cycle there is not really a sense of reaching goals. However, I feel that his cycle does in fact incorporate intentions and choices. Particularly in the evaluation and planning steps i.e Abstract conceptualisation and Active experimentation where I looked at what needed to be done to improve my piece and why. Therefore, I had both intentions and I made choices. 

I found each step of Kolb's cycle to be important because with each step I learned something new. This now opens the door to to idea of 'Multiple Intelligences' (Gardner 1983) because each step of the 'learning cycle' is a different approach to learning. Gardner introduced the idea that people can engage in learning from many different view points or 'lenses' (Gardner 2005). 'VAK' is an abbreviation of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning. In terms of my project I think I most definitely learned using all three intelligences of 'VAK':

VISUAL - When researching (i.e viewing existing games)

AUDITORY - When listening to the music I had been sent and deciding on what choreography would fit to it

KINAESTHETIC - When researching (i.e playing existing games) and when choreographing the piece

Dewey, mentions the idea of 'present' and 'future' reflections in his work (Dewey 1934). However, Donald Schon took this a stage further and developed the concept of 'Reflection-In-Action' and 'Reflection-On-Action' (Schon 1987). The difference being 'Reflection-In-Action' is reflecting in the moment as the experience is occurring and 'Reflection-On-Action' takes place after the event.

Below, is a post I made to my blog on 11-11-2010 about 'Reflection-In-Action,

"Reflection - In - Action

Today, I was taking a dance class at Amsterdam Dance Centre, which is like the version of Pineapple here. As I was following the class I was very aware of how I was learning in a way I had never considered before. Every time I corrected myself I knew I was engaging in what was named 'Reflection-In-Action' by (Schon 1984). I would never have thought before that I was reflecting at this point. We often think of refection solely as something we engage in after an event and this is why it is thought of as tacit knowledge. Our careers are very physical and if we say fall out of a pirouette we have to reflect there and then using our bodies in order to improve. Leaving it and thinking about it later or even writing it down later would not work because next time you go to do that pirouette then chances are it won't work again because we 'think' with our bodies."

In this case I was aware that I was using 'Reflection-In-Action' while taking dance class. It is common for dancers to use this type of reflection as we need to correct ourselves on the spot. However, in the video game project I was doing and indeed all types of choreography I think that 'Reflection-On-Action' is used a lot too.

While I was creating the routine I would correct myself while I was dancing because ways to improve the piece would come into my head during the process, an example of 'Reflection-In-Action'. Yet, I would also use 'Reflection-On-Action' afterwards when I wasn't dancing through the routine to think of ways to improve it. I think a mixture of the two was essential to me being contented with my creation.

There has been some criticism on Schon's theory. Eraut (1994) wrote,

"when time is extremely short, decisions have to be rapid and the scope for reflection is extremely limited.'

I understand what Eraut is saying but the fact is that that is what Schon's theory is all about and understanding that you are in fact reflecting even when time is short is the break through Schon made. 

So, when I am creating a piece it is vital for me to write things down because often a rush of ideas will come to me and I need to jot them down before I forget them. However, if I were to learn a routine that isn't my own creation I wouldn't consider doing this. Once I have learned the steps, through repetition of the movements, I no longer need to think 'whats coming next?' as my body knows what is coming next. 

Twyla Tharp explains how a dancer can falter if she tries to think about the steps she is dancing because, "Her memory of movement doesn’t need to be accessed through conscious effort" (Tharp and Reiter 2006). This muscle memory is a form of tacit knowledge i.e knowledge which is hard to put into words.

I remember when I was performing in a show in Spain last year. We did the same two hour show five nights a week for six months. One night towards the end of my contract I just 'forgot' a step. Now, when I say I forgot it wasn't my brain that was in control but my body, and so it was body that 'blanked'. When I came off stage and tried to recall what I had forgotten I couldn't. I couldn't do it because I was forcing myself to think about it. Then I asked a friend to see if she could help me, she couldn't remember either because I was forcing her to think about something which normally came naturally to her. In the end we had to physically go through the entire routine and the 'missing' step just flowed back into our bodies. It took us doing it physically to remember because it was all in our muscle memory by that point. 

(Moon 1999) and (Osterman and Kottcamp 2004) have written of the importance of articulating tacit knowledge in order to gain understanding from it. Moon particularly has written a lot about how journals are a good way to help professionals in the area of the arts to reflect. It does not have to be written. It can be drawings or poems. Anything that will help us to tap into the underlying understanding within tacit knowledge. A journal is meant to help us use 'critical thinking'.