The style and approach of teaching and learning in Jesuit education is known as Ignatian Pedagogy. Mission in Motion has previously covered Ignatian Pedagogy in the context of the University’s research about student learning habits during the pandemic and a faculty workshop at the School of Continuing Studies about how the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) is interpreted and enacted across the SCS curriculum.
The dynamic interplay of context-experience-reflection-action-evaluation occurs in a continuous learning cycle which, inspired by the orientation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, invites students to consider how best to apply their holistic knowledge in the service of truth and the common good.
The IPP attends to the whole person and counters a narrow assumption that content knowledge and technical skills alone represent the highest value of formal education. Rather, teaching and learning in the Jesuit style is a constant invitation to consider the various and diverse ways that learners, in their unique contexts, bring their lived experiences into the classroom as part of the shared educational endeavor.
In a context like SCS, whose vision is to “transform the lives and careers of diverse lifelong learners by providing access to engaged and personalized liberal and professional education for all,” the lived experience of adult professionals becomes an invaluable basis for deeper learning. In this way, professional practice itself shapes student learning goals and provides a foundation for deeper reflection about academic content. In addition to its critical significance in Ignatian Pedagogy, reflection is an important element of effective professional education.
Donald Schon’s 1983 book, “The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action,” helped bring attention to the need for greater awareness about the ways that professionals reflect, consciously and unconsciously, about their activities. The book is an important part of the curriculum of “The Reflective Professional,” the community-based learning course I teach at SCS every fall about the relationship between Jesuit mission and values and professional leadership development.
I would like to make some basic connections between Schon’s ideas and the reflection stage in the IPP. My hope is that articulating the close relationship helps illustrate the congruity between the learning styles of adults involved in professional and continuing education at SCS and the mission of Jesuit education.
Building off of the learning theories of John Dewey and others, Schon lifts up the importance of life experience in the educational process. By closely examining how professionals solve problems, Schon makes clear that professionals utilize their intuition, common sense, and habits in a range of situations including those of “uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict.” Technical reason is not enough to address such situations. The “epistemology of practice” comes from daily experience:
“When we go about the spontaneous, intuitive performance of actions of everyday life, we show ourselves to be knowledgeable in a special way. Often we cannot say what it is that we know. When we try to describe it we find ourselves at a loss, or we produce descriptions that are obviously inappropriate. Our knowing is ordinarily tacit, implicit in our patterns of action and in our feel for the stuff with which we are dealing. It seems right to say that our knowing is in our action.”
The notion that knowledge is gained in the midst of action resonates clearly with Contemplation in Action, a core value in the Spirit of Georgetown. The founding Jesuits were clear that their approach to spirituality would be broadly inclusive, paying special attention to busy professionals involved in civic affairs who could not afford to take significant time away from their duties for prayer.
While research-based theories are necessary, Schon goes on to say that the professionals will depend ultimately on “tacit recognitions, judgments, and skillful performances” in the learning process. This theory of professional reflection closely relates to a Jesuit understanding of reflection. In the IPP, reflection is understood in this way:
“We use the term reflection to mean a thoughtful reconsideration of some subject matter, experience, idea, purpose or spontaneous reaction, in order to grasp its significance more fully. Thus, reflection is the process by which meaning surfaces in human experience.”
The layers of understanding that occur in reflection include the “truth being studied more clearly,” “the sources of the sensations or reactions I experience,” “the implications of what I have grasped for myself and for others,” “personal insights into events, ideas, truth, or the distortion of truth,” and “some understanding of who I am (What moves me, and why?) and who I might be in relation to others.” This act of reflection connects up with Schon’s learning theories about reflective practitioners because of the way that daily human experience, including work, is at the root of the education experience. True to the Ignatian tradition, the act of reflection should always implicate a decision or action that magnifies the learner’s gifts and talents and capacity for generous service with others.
Professional life continues to adapt during the ongoing pandemic. Continuous reflection is called for as organizations, governments, and other entities adapt to changing trends and uncertain circumstances. At SCS, we are fortunate to be guided by and grounded in the tradition of Ignatian Pedagogy and the resources that it offers for forming civic-minded, well-informed, and globally aware students.