For a Law and Race seminar, I read Patricia Williams’s “On being the object of property” where she took a rather radical approach back in 1988 to discuss her theory on the objectification of law. Instead of academic scholarship, Williams focused on a narrative, hers specifically, that takes the reader on an intergenerational saga of stories of women and their lives that had shaped the author’s identity. She centers her experience as a Black woman lawyer and gives up the traditional academic narratives in favor of personal ones.
What Williams did as a rather radical act of scholarship in 1988 may somewhat be equated to the modern-day reflective journal. Reflective assessment exercises allow students to weave their personal and academics together, encouraging critical thinking and deep engagement with the taught materials. At its core, reflective journals put the onus on the student and facilitate active responsibility for their own learning process (Kim 2013).
The risk of restraining the narrative
One of the biggest challenges faced by students in reflective assessments is navigating the use of personal voice in an academic environment (Zahra 2009). Students who are from international, multicultural backgrounds, and especially those with English as a second language also often find it difficult to adapt to these models (Fleming and Martin (2007)).
Restraint is often practiced by students under the apprehension that they will be penalised for being overly personal in their reflections. But I argue that the only way to achieve the true purpose of the reflective journal, which is to contextualize learning for all students, is to meaningfully decrease restraints to the personal narrative.
Students must be assured that it is particularly their personal experience that creates the value within the journal and to sanitise it is to do a disservice to their own scholarship. Afterall, the goal of reflective journals is to allow students to critically engage with their course material, which is only possible in a decolonised space with exceptional allowances for authenticity. Instead of looking for ways to constrain the personal, we can look for ways to inform it better, and one way to do that is by practicing the standpoint theory.
The standpoint practice as remedy
Williams has the capacity to generate her own ideas without the constraint of linking them to specific literature; where her position allows her agency and choice to draw freely from her own experiences. Unfortunately, in reflective journals, at least how they are currently conceived, it would be impractical and counterintuitive to provide free reign that threatens to stray from the course’s main learning objectives. The standpoint theory promises to be a balancing act for students to contextualise learned theory with their own narratives effectively in reflections (Leane (2023)).
Standpoint practice has roots in feminist social theory, an epistemological proposal that tells us that there are multiple ways to understand the world, where each individual draws upon their unique position in society to interpret knowledge around them (Biglia & Martí (2020)). A standpoint-informed approach within pedagogical practice would mean that students are encouraged to continuously critique, review, and analyse all academic knowledge from their own experiences (Hall et al (2024)).
Much like Williams engages with the legal theory around her from her own experience, a standpoint-informed classroom would ensure that students consistently have a space to dissect learning materials utilising personal narratives and experiences as a valid form of critique. All reading, discussions, and otherwise engagement (inside or outside the classroom) should be informed by the standpoint practice. Such an approach has two critical advantages: (a) it reinvents the reflective journal from a mere assessment to a method that keeps students consistently engaged with the course and (b) it helps students practice reflection as a nature, ensuring no knowledge gaps in the required criteria when students eventually tackle the reflective journal as an assessment.
Conclusion
Reflective journals are increasingly useful tools for mitigating the lack of engagement students from diverse backgrounds experience in their course. However, for their administration to be impactful, they must not constrain their core purpose: encouraging subjectivity of student experience. The best method to encourage independent thought is to inculcate standpoint-informed practices more consistently throughout a course. Going beyond assessment exercises, reflection should be looked at as a tool that is always necessary for engaging with materials in a decolonised classroom.
Bibliography
Biglia, B., Martí J. Standpoint Theory. (2020). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. doi:https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529714388.n557.
Fleming, J. (2007). Facilitating Reflective Learning Journeys in Sport Co-operative Education. The Journal of Hospitality Leisure Sport and Tourism, 6(2), pp.115–121. doi:https://doi.org/10.3794/johlste.62.171.
Hall, D., Leeds, K., Christensen, C., Martini, C. and Moran, A. (2024). Towards Decolonising White Curricula: A Reflective Approach to Teaching Kate Mulvany’s Jasper Jones. Journal of Language Literature and Culture, pp.1–13. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/20512856.2024.2427568.
Kim, A.K. (2013). Reflective journal assessment: The application of good feedback practice to facilitating self-directed learning. Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, 13, pp.255–259. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhlste.2012.04.004.
Leane, J. (2023). Cultural Rigour: First Nations Critical Culture | Sydney Review of Books. [online] Available at: https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/essays/cultural-rigour-first-nations-critical-culture.
Williams, P.J. (1988). On Being the Object of Property. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14(1), pp.5–24. doi:https://doi.org/10.1086/494489.
Zahra, A. (2009). Language and Cultural Considerations When Implementing Innovative Approaches to Assessments: Reflective learning journals and the perception of non-English speaking students. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Education, 21(3), pp.54–59. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/10963758.2009.10696952.
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