The 3 Aspects of Your Mind That Help Structure Self Reflection

Teaching engineers to organize descriptions of their own experiences.

Successful leadership development typically requires capacity for self examination (Nesbit 2012). In the context of education and self improvement, the process of examining your own experiences as others might see you is called reflection.

The word reflection is a powerful metaphor, because it is only with the aid of a mirror, or some other technology, that we can observe ourselves as others might see us. That’s why ballet dancers practice in front of mirror-covered walls, why athletes watch video of their games, and musicians listen to recordings of their own performances. The process of reflection is critical to learning, deliberate practice, and development.

Nonetheless, it is rare in engineering education to teach practices of self-reflection. As a consequence, many engineering students feel at a loss to examine their own experiences in a reflective essay. The irony is that engineers get plenty of training on making measured observations in their laboratory exercises, and lots of practice with analysis of the results. It’s just that they are often taught to remove themselves from any examination, and thus they may master the microscope, or the strain gauge, and still have no skill with the metaphorical mirror. Maybe it is because they are sometimes taught that “scientists” avoid using the first person “I,” — as if the observation could…