REFLECTIVE THOUGHT

How different do you think is reflective thought from any other casual or idle thought?

Reflective teaching is the one in which you reflect, it goes beyond the simple recalling of memories, or pictures of your past or imagination, it’s more than an opinion or any idle idea than comes to your head. It is a more complex process; it is to think about reasons, whys, hows, and all the explanations you can come up with for a problem or situation. When thinking reflectively, you tend to find the solution, using any method or strategy.


Watch the video clip “Reflective Thought defined by John Dewey” and write down what is said about reflective thought. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGF-Oh_G7zc)

Reflective thought is not just an idle thought, it is a much more considered process, it helps you systematize your knowledge, to plan your thinking, to consider every detail as causes and consequences, it adds a richness of quality to our lives, it takes a little bit more than mere intelligence to be a clear reflective thinker, intelligence may help a person to become a good thinker, but intelligence alone is not enough, but what is more important is that you need a discipline of your thinking, your logic, and of the scientific method.


How do you personally read the following excerpt from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

“And that Inverted Bowl we call The Sky, beneath which crawling, cooped, we live and die; Lift not your hands to it for help, for it as impotently moves as you or I!”

As it is a poem, it can take me through so many points and ways my imagination, perception and sensitiveness let. But, trying to focus on the context we have, I want to recall the part of the “inverted bowl” as the way we perceive the world that surround us, we see only what we want to, and we think the way we are used to, but it usually happens that something that seems so big and magnificent as the sky can just be a bowl who gives or take our liberty and limit our thinking. So in our world, in our mind this sky can be as broad, as huge, or as narrow and small as we can perceive, or think.


What would you add to the following Dewey´s definition of reflective thought:

"Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion to which attends

I would also add that it should tend to action, to the practice and the continuous growth of possibilities.