Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Reflexive and Reflective Thinking Practices: What’s the Difference?

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

My first thought on reading this was that this is a made-up distinction, but before actually writing that, I looked it up on Google, and I guess it's a thing. Here's the distinction, as described by Tom Barrett: "Reflection focuses on your thoughts, feelings, and actions... on the other hand, reflexive thinking is a way of being in the world that involves noticing patterns in your experience." Here's a reference from the University of Warwick, and here it is discussed in Wikipedia as a social theory, describing where "theories in a discipline should apply equally to the discipline itself." So - combining all this - 'reflexive thinking' is thinking about your thinking in such a way as to inform your thinking itself. Now to me there's still a sense in which this is a made-up distinction. It's hard for me to imagine focusing on my thoughts, feelings, and actions without informing my future thinking.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Nov 03, 2024 3:34 p.m.

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