Reassessing reflection: theorising reflection as identity formation

This paper overviews the substantial canon of research on reflection, outlines analytical taxonomies and reviews evaluation research on reflection. The latter reveals that higher levels of reflection are not strongly evidenced among full-time students. This finding has prompted recent calls for a reassessment of reflection to which this paper responds. The paper argues that evaluation research among full-time students might have been looking in the wrong place for positive outcomes from reflection on experience. However, if learning from reflection is conceptualised as prospective, as learning for practice, then reflection can be resurrected as educationally invaluable. The paper argues that reflection has an ontological function: students come to understand who they are, who they want to be, and how they can become that person. While such notions of identity feature in certain existing studies, evidence of reflection has yet to be systematically theorised through an identity lens. Therefore, the paper makes two contributions. First, the diverse literature of identity theorising is critically examined, synthesised and theoretically modelled. Second, the paper applies this theorising in interpreting qualitative evidence from a cohort of full-time postgraduate students’ reflections on their programme and work experiences. While experiences on such a programme might, unintentionally inhibit the development of students’ aspired occupational identities, certain educational experiences strongly enabled identity transitions through various forms of identity-work. The discussion develops identity theorising for application in higher-education and implications are discerned showing how reflection can the repositioned within higher education to enhance its efficacy.