A Schema for Critical Thinking and Reflective Practice
A simple Venn diagram for reflective practice
Two circles:
| Circle | What it represents |
|---|---|
| Self structure | Prior learning, self-concept, characteristics, values, beliefs, assumptions |
| Concrete experience | The actual event, lesson, or interaction the teacher is reflecting on |
The overlap is where reflective practice does its work: the teacher’s self-structure meets the experience and produces new understanding.
Why this matters
The reflection a teacher produces depends on what she brings to the experience. Two teachers, same lesson, different self-structures, produce different reflections.
Worked example
A teacher leading a class on introductory algebra brings:
- Her own competence with algebra (technical knowledge)
- Her feelings about doing algebra (low self-confidence, perhaps)
- Her ability to communicate algebraic ideas simply (pedagogical skill)
These elements of self-structure shape what she sees in the lesson and what she takes away from reflecting on it.
A reflective practice produces different results for different teachers, even in the same situation. The reason is not that the situation is different. It is that what each teacher brings to the situation is different. A simple Venn diagram, with two circles, can show why this matters and how to think about it.
The Venn diagram
A reflective practitioner can frame Venn diagrams as a tool for thinking about practice. The simplest version has two circles. The structure represents the conditions under which professional learning happens.
The diagram shows two things:
- A concrete experience: the lesson, the incident, the interaction
- The teacher’s self-structure: what she brings to the experience
Where the two overlap, learning happens. The teacher’s self-structure encounters the experience and produces understanding that is shaped by both.
The self-structure circle
The left circle, in this framing, represents self-structure. It can be understood as the learning the teacher already has from previous experience and from formal professional learning. This area represents the entire perceptual experience of the teacher.
Self-structure includes:
- Self-concept. How the teacher sees herself as a teacher.
- Individual characteristics. Personality, working style, preferences.
- Relationships. The relational patterns she carries into work.
- Values. What she believes matters in education.
- Beliefs. What she takes to be true about teaching, students, and learning.
- Assumptions. What she takes for granted, often without noticing.
Each of these shapes how a particular experience is perceived and processed.
A worked example
A useful illustration. A teacher is taking a class in elementary level mathematics, perhaps on introductory algebra. Three elements of her self-structure are particularly relevant.
Element 1: Algebra competence
Her own technical knowledge of algebra. If her competence is strong, she can explain the topic with confidence. If it is weaker, her teaching may rely more on the textbook script.
Element 2: Feelings about algebra
Perhaps her own feelings of low self-confidence about doing algebra. Many teachers carry mathematical anxieties from their own student years. The anxiety colours how the teacher experiences the lesson, even if her competence is technically adequate.
Element 3: Communication ability
Her ability to communicate the ideas and mechanics of algebra simply. A teacher who knows the content but cannot simplify it for beginners will find the lesson harder than one who has built the simplifying skill.
These three elements interact. A teacher with strong technical competence but low self-confidence and limited simplifying skill will experience the lesson differently from a teacher with similar competence but high confidence and strong simplifying skill. Same content, different experience.
In reality, there are more than three elements at play. For any specific aspect of critical thinking and reflective activity, the relevant elements would be focused on certain aspects of the individual teacher’s self-concept.
The concrete experience circle
The right circle represents the concrete experience itself. The lesson, the incident, the interaction with a parent, the moment of insight or difficulty.
The experience has its own features. The students who were there. The time of day. The state of the classroom. The topic. The events that unfolded. None of these depend on the teacher’s self-structure.
What the teacher takes from the experience, however, is shaped by what she brings to it. The experience is one thing; the perception of the experience is another.
The overlap
The overlap between the two circles is where reflective practice does its work. Two things meet:
- What the teacher brings (self-structure)
- What the experience contains (concrete events)
The reflection is the work of making sense of the meeting. Some of the work attends to the experience itself, asking what happened. Some of the work attends to the self-structure, asking what the teacher brought that shaped how the experience was seen.
A reflective practice that ignores the self-structure circle treats the experience as if it could be perceived neutrally. It cannot. A reflective practice that ignores the experience circle becomes pure introspection. The point of the diagram is that both matter and the work happens at their meeting point.
The space where reflective practice does its work
The teacher’s prior learning, beliefs, and self-concept (self-structure) meet the actual events of the lesson (concrete experience) at the overlap. Reflection makes sense of the meeting: what was in the experience, and what the teacher brought that shaped how the experience was perceived. Ignoring either circle weakens the reflection.
Using the schema
The Venn diagram is most useful as a check on a reflection in progress. Two questions to ask:
What in the experience am I seeing?
The teacher names what was actually in the situation: events, words, behaviours, outcomes. As detailed as possible.
What in my self-structure is shaping what I see?
The teacher names what she brought: her prior beliefs about the topic, her self-confidence about handling this kind of class, her assumptions about the students, her relational pattern with the people involved.
The two questions sit alongside each other. A reflection that answers both produces sharper analysis than one that answers only the first.
Where the schema fits with other models
The Venn schema is not a replacement for cycle models like Kolb or Gibbs. It is a complement. The cycle models describe the process of reflection. The Venn schema describes the conditions under which reflection happens.
Used together, the cycle gives the teacher a sequence of stages, and the Venn schema gives her a way to remember that her self-structure is part of every stage. Description is shaped by self-structure. Analysis is shaped by self-structure. Even the evaluation is shaped by it.
A teacher who keeps the Venn schema in mind tends to produce more honest reflection, because she is less likely to mistake her own perception for a neutral account of the situation.