What's reflection about?
Reflection is a term that comes up a lot in education land. But what is actually meant by it in the context of engineering education? Where do we see reflection applied within our TU education, what can it contribute to, and what (educational) challenges are there?
Reflection is a process in which people unravel and interpret a specific experience in order to gain insight from it about where he/she stands and how to move forward. Reflection has to do with giving meaning and with being able to learn (more deeply) from those experiences. Without reflection, learning becomes such a complicated task.
Literature shows a multitude of reflection definitions, reflection forms, reflection activities, reflection functions and synonyms of reflection, or related concepts. But even in a more 'homogeneous' context like TU Delft, people interpret the word 'reflection' and the relationship between reflection and the study or work of an engineer differently.
Therefore, within the Reflective Engineer program, we do not aim to look for the ´right definition of reflection´ within TU Delft, but we recognized its broad scope and all the nuances that make it unique; that broad scope is what we wanted to acknowledge and praise.
Although it is difficult to conceptualise reflection within one specific context due to the diversity of its coleur locale, we recognise how important it is for the development of future generations of engineers. Because of that, our aim is to make reflection more accessible and concrete within the context of our engineering education in Delft. Wondering how are we going to do that? Check this out!