REFLECTION

REFLECTION

 

Darvesh Karim

Assistant Instructor

Professional Development Center, North

University Road, Konodass, Gilgit.

Ph. No: (+92) 05811-454132-4 Ext: 3017

Fax No: (+92) 05811-454135

Cell No: (+92) 03465419307

Email (Official): darveshkarim@pdcn.edu.pk

Email (Private): dk_hunzai@yahoo.com, darvesh.karim@gmail.com

Online Blogs: www.dkhunza.blogspot.com; www.scribd.com/dk_hunzai

After going through the article, Smith, C and Squire, F. (2007). Narrative perspectives: two reflections from a continuum of experience. Reflective Practice. 8(3). 375-386, I came to the understanding that by reflecting on our own experiences along a mixture of narrative inquiry, we can explore the strong impact on our lives and on the lives of others as well. Because, when we reflect as teachers or as students, the stories emerge and these stories became the source of knowledge. These stories of our own experience, told as reflections to each other and told to others, illuminate how shared understandings shape the explanations, interpretations and construction of individual experience.  Each of our narrative experience tells a new story of a new life which can be seen as the surprise of a self that has become what it never expected to be.  

Through this article, the authors invite the reader to consider the power of narrative or story as a justifiable way of knowing and reflection, as knowledge and a useful tool.  They further motivate us to build on their stories; they invite the readers to construct their own connections among narratives, reflection and experience. The authors (a professor and a graduate student) describe how, through the process of mentoring, narrative inquiry and reflection became central to their work in education.  They explore the connections between narrative, reflective practice, and experience that they have discovered as the focus of each of their research interests moves from the field of education to the field of medicine. While telling their stories, they identify ways that narrative goes beyond academic research to play an important role in establishing the authors’ new identities. By incorporating reflective practice into this process they have continued to investigate their common interests in the ways that narrative can be influence an understanding of our lives.