John Dewey

John Dewey is the figure most other reflective practice thinkers cite first. Writing in the early twentieth century, he made a single sharp distinction that the rest of the field has built on. There is action driven by habit and instruction, and there is action driven by careful thought about a real problem. Most teaching falls into the first kind by default. Dewey’s life work argued that the second kind is what makes professional growth possible.

Routine action versus reflective action

Dewey’s models rest on the difference between routine action and reflective action.

Routine action

Routine action is guided by tradition, instruction, and imitation. A teacher does what their teachers did. They follow the printed curriculum. They use the methods they were trained in. None of this is wrong on its own; it is how a profession carries knowledge across generations.

The problem comes when routine becomes the whole of practice. Dewey wrote that routine action amounts to prejudgments that rest on a survey of evidence not actually carried out. The teacher acts as if the question has been settled, when in fact it has only been inherited.

Reflective action

Reflective action, in Dewey’s framing, is based on active, persistent, and careful consideration. It is grounded in the need to solve a problem. For Dewey, problem solving is the steadying and guiding factor in the entire process of reflection. Without a problem, the flow of suggestions runs at random.

This is a sharper claim than it sounds. Reflection without a problem is daydreaming. Reflection that begins with a real difficulty has direction.

Reflection as rationality

Dewey saw reflection as a further dimension of thought, in need of education. He wrote that we cannot be taught to think, but we do have to learn to think well, especially to acquire the general habit of reflection (Dewey, 1933).

For Dewey, reflection is a rational and purposeful act. He defined it as:

The 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 conclusions to which it leads. It includes a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of evidence and rationality.

Three things in this definition are worth noticing.

1. Active and persistent. Reflection takes work and time. A passing thought does not count.
2. Considers grounds. The teacher asks not only what they believe but why they believe it.
3. Considers further conclusions. The teacher follows the belief out, asking what else would have to be true.

From a modern educational perspective, Dewey’s reference to different forms of belief and knowledge suggests he was willing to apply careful thinking even to emotional and affective concerns. Reflection, for him, was not a coldly logical process. It was rational thinking applied to the messy material of real experience.

Dewey’s five-stage model

Dewey laid out reflection as a five-stage process that begins with a problem and ends with a tested response.

Stage 1: Identify a problem

Reflective thought begins when we find ourselves having an experience that raises some difficulty or dilemma. The teacher feels something is off. A lesson did not land. A student’s response was unexpected. The energy in the room dropped at a moment that surprised her.

Naming this felt difficulty is the first step. Without it, reflection has nothing to work on.

Stage 2: Observe and refine the problem

Once a problem is named, the teacher observes it more carefully. What exactly happened? When did the energy drop? Which students disengaged first? The first description of a problem is rarely the most useful one. Refinement sharpens the question.

Stage 3: Develop a hypothesis

The teacher forms a hypothesis about the problem’s origins and possible solutions. This stage is creative. It is where the teacher’s reading, conversation, and experience all come into play.

A useful hypothesis is specific. “Students are bored” is not a hypothesis. “Students disengage when I introduce three new terms in two minutes without giving them a chance to use any of them” is.

Stage 4: Test the hypothesis

Dewey’s reflection does not end with thinking. The teacher subjects the hypothesis to scrutiny and reasoning, and then tests it in practice. The classroom is the laboratory. The next lesson is the experiment.

Stage 5: Reflect on the cycle

Dewey placed great emphasis on reflective thought as part of a cycle that lets us learn from experience. The result of the test feeds the next round of problem identification. Each cycle deepens the teacher’s working knowledge.

Flashcard

What are the five stages of Dewey's reflective model?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Identify, observe, hypothesise, test, cycle

A felt difficulty is named. The problem is observed and refined. A hypothesis is developed about its origins and possible solutions. The hypothesis is tested in practice. The whole sequence runs as a cycle that produces learning from experience.

Why Dewey still matters

Dewey wrote in the 1910s and 1930s. The classroom of his time looked different from a 2026 classroom in Karachi or Jakarta. His framing has lasted for a few reasons.

1. The routine-versus-reflective distinction holds up. It still describes what separates a teacher who develops from one who repeats.
2. The insistence on a real problem prevents drift. Modern reflective practice can drift into journaling about feelings. Dewey would have called that incomplete.
3. The link to action keeps the work honest. Reflection without testing is, in his view, decoration.

Schon, Kolb, Gibbs, and Johns all built on this base. Reading them without first reading Dewey is possible, but it makes the later models look like checklists when they are actually variations on his central claim.