reflection essay about social science

Interdisciplinarity

What I Have Learned from Social Science

I’ve spent my adult life in and around social science. Academically through studying psychology and linguistics (alongside philosophy), professionally through working at SAGE for over 30 years and personally through an abiding amateur interest in various fields sometimes expressed in my own writing of books or articles.

In light of my recent election as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. I’ve been reflecting on what social science has meant to me, and why my interest continues to this day.

These reflections are a quite personal take. They are not meant to be a ‘defence of social science’ or a comprehensive review of its impact in various domains, though when people who aren’t familiar with social science ask me what the point of it is I find myself responding in this kind of vein. It’s a personal view on why I think a social science imagination can benefit us as individuals and improve society more generally, especially at a time of such upheaval and reconfiguration.

The starting point for me is in human psychology, the subject of my undergraduate degree. In my first week in October 1985 as a fresher at Exeter University, I met Steve Reicher, who was assigned as my first-year tutor.  Steve was a ‘new blood’ lecturer at the time who had a year earlier published what was to become a seminal article analysing the St Paul’s riots in Bristol in April 1980. Through my encounters and discussions with Steve and other psychologists in the department I learned about certain features of human nature. While I didn’t go quite as far as Steve, who would say ‘the nature of human nature is its capacity to transcend itself’, and while the very idea of human nature is, I realise, contested and felt confusing to me initially, I started to learn how profoundly social that nature was.

While this may sound obvious to many – we are social animals who cooperate and learn from each other, of course – I nevertheless find it hard to see myself that way consistently. And I’ve learned that it’s not just me. While social science shows how our natures are deeply social it also explains why we don’t always see this fact that well. When not looking through a social science lens we (in the West at least) tend to see ourselves and our place in the world as more individual than that, like fish swimming around unaware of the environment in which they are suspended.

It’s not that the idea of the individual is a myth. Rather it is one of many identities, all shaped by historical and cultural forces, which tends in our daily lives to be overly emphasised. We see the figure more easily than the ground along which she walks. For instance, what’s known as the ‘fundamental attribution error’ leads me to look at someone’s behaviour and explain it too quickly in terms of their imagined individual characteristics and ignore the context. So if someone cuts me up in traffic I more easily think ‘selfish!’ rather than ‘maybe there’s an emergency’.

A key value of social science, it seems to me, is to counter-balance that self-image , to help us see the ground as well as we see the figure. We know when it comes to physical health that what we want and what is good for us are not always aligned. Well so it is for the social health of this social animal. Our interests, it seems to me, are best served by a more balanced understanding of human circumstances and contexts, but for all sorts of reasons evolutionists like to explore, we don’t do this as fully as we might. The tendency mentioned above for instance, to see the individual more easily than her circumstances, has deep consequences for the chances of human flourishing – for our attitudes toward each other – if left unchecked.

And this point, the need to see more context, can be extended in various ways. Here are 10 examples of tendencies we have which a social science imagination can and should help us to counter-balance, each of which have moral or political implications for how to organise ourselves and society better. This is not to say that each tendency is a problem in itself, or that we can’t reverse it under certain conditions, it’s that a social science imagination is useful in helping us do just that. 1 I’ve added a reference for each one to help provide a bit more insight for those who are interested. But as I say these reflections are personal and highly selective rather than anything systematic. For that you should talk to the experts! I’ve put these 10 into three broad buckets:

Those tendencies which assume we have more agency, more control over our circumstances, than we do, e.g.:

• Judgement over luck. It’s easier, thanks to the ‘just-world hypothesis’ and even the idea of meritocracy to assume people have more responsibility for their outcomes than they generally have. So people who end up worse off in life can be blamed for their individual failure to measure up.
• Cure over prevention. It’s easier to say ‘lock ’em up’ and harder to be tough on the causes of crime. The same goes for health interventions. We will typically pay more for treatment rather than preventative measures.
• The conscious over the unconscious. It’s easier to focus on explicit thoughts and feelings, and to assume we are rational and objective in our judgments while ignoring the less obvious underlying tendencies such as revealed by studies of unconscious bias.

Then there are those which favour the near over the far, whether in terms of time, space or social categories, such as:

• Short term over long term. It’s easier to spend now than to save for a pension. Similarly, we can underrate the significance of climate change for future generations.
• The near at hand over the far away. It’s easier to care about the incidence of COVID-19 in our own locale rather than further afield. There’s even evidence of a ‘propinquity effect’ which describes how we find people and things more appealing merely by being physically closer to us.
• Us over Them. What’s called ‘ingroup favouritism’ makes it easier to sympathise with people ‘like me’ than the members of an outgroup. The recent surge in political polarisation, from Brexit to the recent US election, bears on this tendency.

We have tendencies to oversimplify, to prefer the status quo and then to generalise, such as when we favour

• The dominant over the marginalised. It’s easier to see a tall, white middle class man as an authority figure than almost anybody else!
• The vivid example over statistical data . It’s easier to fear terrorism and plane crashes than driving cars. And remember the line often attributed to Stalin, that a single death is a tragedy, while a million deaths are a mere statistic.
• Choosing the status quo over alternative explanations. It’s easier to say ‘that’s just how things are’, than this is how they got this way and could be different. Much of what feels immutable is in fact socially constructed.
• The simple over the complex. It’s easier to skewer politicians on the journalistic jab of ‘answer the question yes or no’, than to accept a more nuanced response. Many social problems are known as ‘wicked’ and don’t always have right or wrong answers, though hopefully better or worse ones.

It’s a simple list which reveals my starting point in psychology, and others (from sociology, anthropology, political science etc) would choose different examples I’m sure. But I hope it shows that tending to think people have more freedom and agency than they do, or tending to favour the near over the far, or to see the social world as fixed rather than constructed comes easily to us, while hampering the possibilities of human progress in many ways.

A social science imagination helps us put a thumb on the scales to counter-balance those tendencies. This offers possibilities to recalibrate society to better suit our social natures than an individualistic essentialising view will be inclined to do. Meanwhile politicians, media outlets, and more generally people with power and wanting to hold on to it exploit these tendencies; and social science analyses that, too.

Social science has a hard time breaking through because it tends not to offer up easy answers and solutions (see point 10 above). But as one physicist pointed out, it is child’s play to understand theoretical physics compared to understanding child’s play. Understanding molecules offers more law-like generalisations and predictions than understanding people and culture. The problems addressed by social science are complex and often don’t have right or wrong answers, but hopefully offer better or worse ones. And often those answers depend on some mix of different levels of analysis.

The complexity of social science reflects the complexities of humanity at many scales and magnitudes. At a global level, scientists study wars and conflict, trans-national migration, cultures and religions, international cooperation and diplomacy between nations. Zoom into a country and they look at forms of government and how power is gained, how the economy works. Zoom further into policy domains and see social scientists looking at crime, aging, mental health, physical health (obesity, vaccine uptake, physical distancing), education, social care, the use of technology, the nature of work, the media, social cohesion, inequality and social injustice. You’ll find them analysing organizations like companies, political parties, schools, prisons, cities, football clubs, unions and the forms of organization that describe how they work, and don’t work, such as leadership, crowd behaviour, discrimination, power. Zoom in further to see them study interpersonal behaviour whether in groups, teams or relationships. Looking into family systems offers yet more levels of complexity even before turning to individual differences and subjective experiences (of love, loneliness, stress, addiction, emotion, memory, motivation) let alone those who dive into perception, cognition, the unconscious and more.

These levels are intersecting and overlapping as much as we are, and the study of them leads social science to interact with other disciplines, from natural sciences on the one side to humanities on the other.

Of course there’s good and bad, deep and trivial, applied and abstract work in social science as in all fields, and the mechanism of generating scholarship which translates to everyday impact and relevance is complex and sometimes badly broken through the many mixed incentives that come from trying to create academic reputations in higher education settings. As the social scientist Garry Brewer once pithily remarked ‘the world has problems while universities have departments’.

With all that said the cumulative intellectual labour of social scientists across the globe does have a powerful effect over time. And it is particularly satisfying watching Steve Reicher, now at St Andrews, commenting influentially on many of today’s political issues. Many of you will have seen his work on government responses to COVID-19 as part of the behavioural science advisory committee to what we call ‘the other SAGE’ and latterly independent SAGE.

But the moment that struck me most forcibly was after the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests, one of which was the pulling down of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol — the same city where the St Paul’s riots occurred 40 years before. Steve commented on how this event did not trigger riots this time around. And he gave particular credit to Chief Constable Andy Marsh, suggesting that if he had been there in 1980 there wouldn’t have been riots. But the police have evolved in their training and tactics since then in part thanks to social scientists like Steve and his PhD students, now professors themselves in UK universities and often advising police on their responses to handling protests to avoid them turning into riots. The key point being to see crowds not as mad or bad but as highly minded and acting with reasons, and in contexts partly shaped by how the police themselves intervene. 3 Here’s a representative article urging shifts in the police’s construals of crowds at the time of the poll tax riots:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199807/08)28:4%3C509::AID-EJSP877%3E3.0.CO;2-C Social science imagination in action! I don’t know if Steve’s, his colleagues’ and others’ impact has been obliterated through incorporation, but I can see the link through time.

This is just one example. Play it out over the various domains I described earlier and you might see why I’m incredibly grateful to the social scientists present and past who through their work have shaped and framed my way of thinking and a stance toward the world which I believe would, in countless ways, be much poorer for its absence.

Ziyad Marar

Ziyad Marar is an author and president of global publishing at SAGE Publishing. His books include Judged: The Value of Being Misunderstood (Bloomsbury, 2018), Intimacy: Understanding the Subtle Power of Human Connection (Acumen Publishing, 2012), Deception (Acumen Publishing, 2008), and The Happiness Paradox (Reaktion Books 2003). He tweets @ZiyadMarar.

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This is interesting, and thought-provoking reading; I am reading it as part of the content for my MA in Creative Writing at Kingston School of Art. I am interested in your example of the ‘fundamental attribution error’ where we instantly ‘frame’ someone in a negative light in traffic, and your exposition on how this feeds through into many other examples. I think it is a shame though that you framed this as ‘imagined’, and that the imagination is often blamed for instances like this. As elucidated in A Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), you will note that it is the …  Read more »

The most unkind remark made about the social sciences is that they are fuzzy science. Here in this article Ziyad Marar correctly explains that they are complex. And that they are infinitely worth pursueing. However, as Jordan Peterson and from a slightly different angle Douglas Murray might argue, there is a danger today that in this field the academic world has shifted so much to the left that University students are being misled in believing dismantelling statues for “righteous causes” is something brave and praiseworthy. I feel sure Mr. Marar would not be amongst those encouraging them, realising that different …  Read more »

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• Impact metrics
• Early Career
• In Memorium
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• Science communication
• Can We Trust the World Health Organization with So Much Power?
• Melissa Kearney on Marriage and Children
• True Crime: Insight Into The Human Fascination With The Who-Done-It

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Assignments

• Annotated Bibliography
• Analyzing a Scholarly Journal Article
• Group Presentations
• Dealing with Nervousness
• Using Visual Aids
• Grading Someone Else's Paper
• Types of Structured Group Activities
• Group Project Survival Skills
• Leading a Class Discussion
• Multiple Book Review Essay
• Reviewing Collected Works
• Writing a Case Analysis Paper
• Writing a Case Study
• About Informed Consent
• Writing Field Notes
• Writing a Policy Memo
• Writing a Reflective Paper
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Generative AI and Writing
• Acknowledgments

Reflective writing is a process of identifying, questioning, and critically evaluating course-based learning opportunities, integrated with your own observations, experiences, impressions, beliefs, assumptions, or biases, and which describes how this process stimulated new or creative understanding about the content of the course.

A reflective paper describes and explains in an introspective, first person narrative, your reactions and feelings about either a specific element of the class [e.g., a required reading; a film shown in class] or more generally how you experienced learning throughout the course. Reflective writing assignments can be in the form of a single paper, essays, portfolios, journals, diaries, or blogs. In some cases, your professor may include a reflective writing assignment as a way to obtain student feedback that helps improve the course, either in the moment or for when the class is taught again.

How to Write a Reflection Paper . Academic Skills, Trent University; Writing a Reflection Paper . Writing Center, Lewis University; Critical Reflection . Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo; Tsingos-Lucas et al. "Using Reflective Writing as a Predictor of Academic Success in Different Assessment Formats." American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 81 (2017): Article 8.

Benefits of Reflective Writing Assignments

As the term implies, a reflective paper involves looking inward at oneself in contemplating and bringing meaning to the relationship between course content and the acquisition of new knowledge . Educational research [Bolton, 2010; Ryan, 2011; Tsingos-Lucas et al., 2017] demonstrates that assigning reflective writing tasks enhances learning because it challenges students to confront their own assumptions, biases, and belief systems around what is being taught in class and, in so doing, stimulate student’s decisions, actions, attitudes, and understanding about themselves as learners and in relation to having mastery over their learning. Reflection assignments are also an opportunity to write in a first person narrative about elements of the course, such as the required readings, separate from the exegetic and analytical prose of academic research papers.

Reflection writing often serves multiple purposes simultaneously. In no particular order, here are some of reasons why professors assign reflection papers:

• Enhances learning from previous knowledge and experience in order to improve future decision-making and reasoning in practice . Reflective writing in the applied social sciences enhances decision-making skills and academic performance in ways that can inform professional practice. The act of reflective writing creates self-awareness and understanding of others. This is particularly important in clinical and service-oriented professional settings.
• Allows students to make sense of classroom content and overall learning experiences in relation to oneself, others, and the conditions that shaped the content and classroom experiences . Reflective writing places you within the course content in ways that can deepen your understanding of the material. Because reflective thinking can help reveal hidden biases, it can help you critically interrogate moments when you do not like or agree with discussions, readings, or other aspects of the course.
• Increases awareness of one’s cognitive abilities and the evidence for these attributes . Reflective writing can break down personal doubts about yourself as a learner and highlight specific abilities that may have been hidden or suppressed due to prior assumptions about the strength of your academic abilities [e.g., reading comprehension; problem-solving skills]. Reflective writing, therefore, can have a positive affective [i.e., emotional] impact on your sense of self-worth.
• Applying theoretical knowledge and frameworks to real experiences . Reflective writing can help build a bridge of relevancy between theoretical knowledge and the real world. In so doing, this form of writing can lead to a better understanding of underlying theories and their analytical properties applied to professional practice.
• Reveals shortcomings that the reader will identify . Evidence suggests that reflective writing can uncover your own shortcomings as a learner, thereby, creating opportunities to anticipate the responses of your professor may have about the quality of your coursework. This can be particularly productive if the reflective paper is written before final submission of an assignment.
• Helps students identify their tacit [a.k.a., implicit] knowledge and possible gaps in that knowledge . Tacit knowledge refers to ways of knowing rooted in lived experience, insight, and intuition rather than formal, codified, categorical, or explicit knowledge. In so doing, reflective writing can stimulate students to question their beliefs about a research problem or an element of the course content beyond positivist modes of understanding and representation.
• Encourages students to actively monitor their learning processes over a period of time . On-going reflective writing in journals or blogs, for example, can help you maintain or adapt learning strategies in other contexts. The regular, purposeful act of reflection can facilitate continuous deep thinking about the course content as it evolves and changes throughout the term. This, in turn, can increase your overall confidence as a learner.
• Relates a student’s personal experience to a wider perspective . Reflection papers can help you see the big picture associated with the content of a course by forcing you to think about the connections between scholarly content and your lived experiences outside of school. It can provide a macro-level understanding of one’s own experiences in relation to the specifics of what is being taught.
• If reflective writing is shared, students can exchange stories about their learning experiences, thereby, creating an opportunity to reevaluate their original assumptions or perspectives . In most cases, reflective writing is only viewed by your professor in order to ensure candid feedback from students. However, occasionally, reflective writing is shared and openly discussed in class. During these discussions, new or different perspectives and alternative approaches to solving problems can be generated that would otherwise be hidden. Sharing student's reflections can also reveal collective patterns of thought and emotions about a particular element of the course.

Bolton, Gillie. Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development . London: Sage, 2010; Chang, Bo. "Reflection in Learning." Online Learning 23 (2019), 95-110; Cavilla, Derek. "The Effects of Student Reflection on Academic Performance and Motivation." Sage Open 7 (July-September 2017): 1–13; Culbert, Patrick. “Better Teaching? You Can Write On It “ Liberal Education (February 2022); McCabe, Gavin and Tobias Thejll-Madsen. The Reflection Toolkit . University of Edinburgh; The Purpose of Reflection . Introductory Composition at Purdue University; Practice-based and Reflective Learning . Study Advice Study Guides, University of Reading; Ryan, Mary. "Improving Reflective Writing in Higher Education: A Social Semiotic Perspective." Teaching in Higher Education 16 (2011): 99-111; Tsingos-Lucas et al. "Using Reflective Writing as a Predictor of Academic Success in Different Assessment Formats." American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 81 (2017): Article 8; What Benefits Might Reflective Writing Have for My Students? Writing Across the Curriculum Clearinghouse; Rykkje, Linda. "The Tacit Care Knowledge in Reflective Writing: A Practical Wisdom." International Practice Development Journal 7 (September 2017): Article 5; Using Reflective Writing to Deepen Student Learning . Center for Writing, University of Minnesota.

How to Approach Writing a Reflection Paper

Thinking About Reflective Thinking

Educational theorists have developed numerous models of reflective thinking that your professor may use to frame a reflective writing assignment. These models can help you systematically interpret your learning experiences, thereby ensuring that you ask the right questions and have a clear understanding of what should be covered. A model can also represent the overall structure of a reflective paper. Each model establishes a different approach to reflection and will require you to think about your writing differently. If you are unclear how to fit your writing within a particular reflective model, seek clarification from your professor. There are generally two types of reflective writing assignments, each approached in slightly different ways.

1.  Reflective Thinking about Course Readings

This type of reflective writing focuses on thoughtfully thinking about the course readings that underpin how most students acquire new knowledge and understanding about the subject of a course. Reflecting on course readings is often assigned in freshmen-level, interdisciplinary courses where the required readings examine topics viewed from multiple perspectives and, as such, provide different ways of analyzing a topic, issue, event, or phenomenon. The purpose of reflective thinking about course readings in the social and behavioral sciences is to elicit your opinions, beliefs, and feelings about the research and its significance. This type of writing can provide an opportunity to break down key assumptions you may have and, in so doing, reveal potential biases in how you interpret the scholarship.

If you are assigned to reflect on course readings, consider the following methods of analysis as prompts that can help you get started :

• Examine carefully the main introductory elements of the reading, including the purpose of the study, the theoretical framework being used to test assumptions, and the research questions being addressed. Think about what ideas stood out to you. Why did they? Were these ideas new to you or familiar in some way based on your own lived experiences or prior knowledge?
• Develop your ideas around the readings by asking yourself, what do I know about this topic? Where does my existing knowledge about this topic come from? What are the observations or experiences in my life that influence my understanding of the topic? Do I agree or disagree with the main arguments, recommended course of actions, or conclusions made by the author(s)? Why do I feel this way and what is the basis of these feelings?
• Make connections between the text and your own beliefs, opinions, or feelings by considering questions like, how do the readings reinforce my existing ideas or assumptions? How the readings challenge these ideas or assumptions? How does this text help me to better understand this topic or research in ways that motivate me to learn more about this area of study?

2.  Reflective Thinking about Course Experiences

This type of reflective writing asks you to critically reflect on locating yourself at the conceptual intersection of theory and practice. The purpose of experiential reflection is to evaluate theories or disciplinary-based analytical models based on your introspective assessment of the relationship between hypothetical thinking and practical reality; it offers a way to consider how your own knowledge and skills fit within professional practice. This type of writing also provides an opportunity to evaluate your decisions and actions, as well as how you managed your subsequent successes and failures, within a specific theoretical framework. As a result, abstract concepts can crystallize and become more relevant to you when considered within your own experiences. This can help you formulate plans for self-improvement as you learn.

If you are assigned to reflect on your experiences, consider the following questions as prompts to help you get started :

• Contextualize your reflection in relation to the overarching purpose of the course by asking yourself, what did you hope to learn from this course? What were the learning objectives for the course and how did I fit within each of them? How did these goals relate to the main themes or concepts of the course?
• Analyze how you experienced the course by asking yourself, what did I learn from this experience? What did I learn about myself? About working in this area of research and study? About how the course relates to my place in society? What assumptions about the course were supported or refuted?
• Think introspectively about the ways you experienced learning during the course by asking yourself, did your learning experiences align with the goals or concepts of the course? Why or why do you not feel this way? What was successful and why do you believe this? What would you do differently and why is this important? How will you prepare for a future experience in this area of study?

NOTE: If you are assigned to write a journal or other type of on-going reflection exercise, a helpful approach is to reflect on your reflections by re-reading what you have already written. In other words, review your previous entries as a way to contextualize your feelings, opinions, or beliefs regarding your overall learning experiences. Over time, this can also help reveal hidden patterns or themes related to how you processed your learning experiences. Consider concluding your reflective journal with a summary of how you felt about your learning experiences at critical junctures throughout the course, then use these to write about how you grew as a student learner and how the act of reflecting helped you gain new understanding about the subject of the course and its content.

ANOTHER NOTE: Regardless of whether you write a reflection paper or a journal, do not focus your writing on the past. The act of reflection is intended to think introspectively about previous learning experiences. However, reflective thinking should document the ways in which you progressed in obtaining new insights and understandings about your growth as a learner that can be carried forward in subsequent coursework or in future professional practice. Your writing should reflect a furtherance of increasing personal autonomy and confidence gained from understanding more about yourself as a learner.

Structure and Writing Style

There are no strict academic rules for writing a reflective paper. Reflective writing may be assigned in any class taught in the social and behavioral sciences and, therefore, requirements for the assignment can vary depending on disciplinary-based models of inquiry and learning. The organization of content can also depend on what your professor wants you to write about or based on the type of reflective model used to frame the writing assignment. Despite these possible variations, below is a basic approach to organizing and writing a good reflective paper, followed by a list of problems to avoid.

Pre-flection

In most cases, it's helpful to begin by thinking about your learning experiences and outline what you want to focus on before you begin to write the paper. This can help you organize your thoughts around what was most important to you and what experiences [good or bad] had the most impact on your learning. As described by the University of Waterloo Writing and Communication Centre, preparing to write a reflective paper involves a process of self-analysis that can help organize your thoughts around significant moments of in-class knowledge discovery.

• Using a thesis statement as a guide, note what experiences or course content stood out to you , then place these within the context of your observations, reactions, feelings, and opinions. This will help you develop a rough outline of key moments during the course that reflect your growth as a learner. To identify these moments, pose these questions to yourself: What happened? What was my reaction? What were my expectations and how were they different from what transpired? What did I learn?
• Critically think about your learning experiences and the course content . This will help you develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding about why these moments were significant or relevant to you. Use the ideas you formulated during the first stage of reflecting to help you think through these moments from both an academic and personal perspective. From an academic perspective, contemplate how the experience enhanced your understanding of a concept, theory, or skill. Ask yourself, did the experience confirm my previous understanding or challenge it in some way. As a result, did this highlight strengths or gaps in your current knowledge? From a personal perspective, think introspectively about why these experiences mattered, if previous expectations or assumptions were confirmed or refuted, and if this surprised, confused, or unnerved you in some way.
• Analyze how these experiences and your reactions to them will shape your future thinking and behavior . Reflection implies looking back, but the most important act of reflective writing is considering how beliefs, assumptions, opinions, and feelings were transformed in ways that better prepare you as a learner in the future. Note how this reflective analysis can lead to actions you will take as a result of your experiences, what you will do differently, and how you will apply what you learned in other courses or in professional practice.

Basic Structure and Writing Style

Reflective Background and Context

The first part of your reflection paper should briefly provide background and context in relation to the content or experiences that stood out to you. Highlight the settings, summarize the key readings, or narrate the experiences in relation to the course objectives. Provide background that sets the stage for your reflection. You do not need to go into great detail, but you should provide enough information for the reader to understand what sources of learning you are writing about [e.g., course readings, field experience, guest lecture, class discussions] and why they were important. This section should end with an explanatory thesis statement that expresses the central ideas of your paper and what you want the readers to know, believe, or understand after they finish reading your paper.

Reflective Interpretation

Drawing from your reflective analysis, this is where you can be personal, critical, and creative in expressing how you felt about the course content and learning experiences and how they influenced or altered your feelings, beliefs, assumptions, or biases about the subject of the course. This section is also where you explore the meaning of these experiences in the context of the course and how you gained an awareness of the connections between these moments and your own prior knowledge.

Guided by your thesis statement, a helpful approach is to interpret your learning throughout the course with a series of specific examples drawn from the course content and your learning experiences. These examples should be arranged in sequential order that illustrate your growth as a learner. Reflecting on each example can be done by: 1)  introducing a theme or moment that was meaningful to you, 2) describing your previous position about the learning moment and what you thought about it, 3) explaining how your perspective was challenged and/or changed and why, and 4) introspectively stating your current or new feelings, opinions, or beliefs about that experience in class.

It is important to include specific examples drawn from the course and placed within the context of your assumptions, thoughts, opinions, and feelings. A reflective narrative without specific examples does not provide an effective way for the reader to understand the relationship between the course content and how you grew as a learner.

Reflective Conclusions

The conclusion of your reflective paper should provide a summary of your thoughts, feelings, or opinions regarding what you learned about yourself as a result of taking the course. Here are several ways you can frame your conclusions based on the examples you interpreted and reflected on what they meant to you. Each example would need to be tied to the basic theme [thesis statement] of your reflective background section.

• Your reflective conclusions can be described in relation to any expectations you had before taking the class [e.g., “I expected the readings to not be relevant to my own experiences growing up in a rural community, but the research actually helped me see that the challenges of developing my identity as a child of immigrants was not that unusual...”].
• Your reflective conclusions can explain how what you learned about yourself will change your actions in the future [e.g., “During a discussion in class about the challenges of helping homeless people, I realized that many of these people hate living on the street but lack the ability to see a way out. This made me realize that I wanted to take more classes in psychology...”].
• Your reflective conclusions can describe major insights you experienced a critical junctures during the course and how these moments enhanced how you see yourself as a student learner [e.g., "The guest speaker from the Head Start program made me realize why I wanted to pursue a career in elementary education..."].
• Your reflective conclusions can reconfigure or reframe how you will approach professional practice and your understanding of your future career aspirations [e.g.,, "The course changed my perceptions about seeking a career in business finance because it made me realize I want to be more engaged in customer service..."]
• Your reflective conclusions can explore any learning you derived from the act of reflecting itself [e.g., “Reflecting on the course readings that described how minority students perceive campus activities helped me identify my own biases about the benefits of those activities in acclimating to campus life...”].

NOTE: The length of a reflective paper in the social sciences is usually less than a traditional research paper. However, don’t assume that writing a reflective paper is easier than writing a research paper. A well-conceived critical reflection paper often requires as much time and effort as a research paper because you must purposeful engage in thinking about your learning in ways that you may not be comfortable with or used to. This is particular true while preparing to write because reflective papers are not as structured as a traditional research paper and, therefore, you have to think deliberately about how you want to organize the paper and what elements of the course you want to reflect upon.

ANOTHER NOTE: Do not limit yourself to using only text in reflecting on your learning. If you believe it would be helpful, consider using creative modes of thought or expression such as, illustrations, photographs, or material objects that reflects an experience related to the subject of the course that was important to you [e.g., like a ticket stub to a renowned speaker on campus]. Whatever non-textual element you include, be sure to describe the object's relevance to your personal relationship to the course content.

Problems to Avoid

A reflective paper is not a “mind dump” . Reflective papers document your personal and emotional experiences and, therefore, they do not conform to rigid structures, or schema, to organize information. However, the paper should not be a disjointed, stream-of-consciousness narrative. Reflective papers are still academic pieces of writing that require organized thought, that use academic language and tone , and that apply intellectually-driven critical thinking to the course content and your learning experiences and their significance.

A reflective paper is not a research paper . If you are asked to reflect on a course reading, the reflection will obviously include some description of the research. However, the goal of reflective writing is not to present extraneous ideas to the reader or to "educate" them about the course. The goal is to share a story about your relationship with the learning objectives of the course. Therefore, unlike research papers, you are expected to write from a first person point of view which includes an introspective examination of your own opinions, feelings, and personal assumptions.

A reflection paper is not a book review . Descriptions of the course readings using your own words is not a reflective paper. Reflective writing should focus on how you understood the implications of and were challenged by the course in relation to your own lived experiences or personal assumptions, combined with explanations of how you grew as a student learner based on this internal dialogue. Remember that you are the central object of the paper, not the research materials.

A reflective paper is not an all-inclusive meditation. Do not try to cover everything. The scope of your paper should be well-defined and limited to your specific opinions, feelings, and beliefs about what you determine to be the most significant content of the course and in relation to the learning that took place. Reflections should be detailed enough to covey what you think is important, but your thoughts should be expressed concisely and coherently [as is true for any academic writing assignment].

Critical Reflection . Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo; Critical Reflection: Journals, Opinions, & Reactions . University Writing Center, Texas A&M University; Connor-Greene, Patricia A. “Making Connections: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Journal Writing in Enhancing Student Learning.” Teaching of Psychology 27 (2000): 44-46; Good vs. Bad Reflection Papers , Franklin University; Dyment, Janet E. and Timothy S. O’Connell. "The Quality of Reflection in Student Journals: A Review of Limiting and Enabling Factors." Innovative Higher Education 35 (2010): 233-244: How to Write a Reflection Paper . Academic Skills, Trent University; Amelia TaraJane House. Reflection Paper . Cordia Harrington Center for Excellence, University of Arkansas; Ramlal, Alana, and Désirée S. Augustin. “Engaging Students in Reflective Writing: An Action Research Project.” Educational Action Research 28 (2020): 518-533; Writing a Reflection Paper . Writing Center, Lewis University; McGuire, Lisa, Kathy Lay, and Jon Peters. “Pedagogy of Reflective Writing in Professional Education.” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2009): 93-107; Critical Reflection . Writing and Communication Centre, University of Waterloo; How Do I Write Reflectively? Academic Skills Toolkit, University of New South Wales Sydney; Reflective Writing . Skills@Library. University of Leeds; Walling, Anne, Johanna Shapiro, and Terry Ast. “What Makes a Good Reflective Paper?” Family Medicine 45 (2013): 7-12; Williams, Kate, Mary Woolliams, and Jane Spiro. Reflective Writing . 2nd edition. London: Red Globe Press, 2020; Yeh, Hui-Chin, Shih-hsien Yang, Jo Shan Fu, and Yen-Chen Shih. “Developing College Students’ Critical Thinking through Reflective Writing.” Higher Education Research and Development (2022): 1-16.

Writing Tip

Focus on Reflecting, Not on Describing

Minimal time and effort should be spent describing the course content you are asked to reflect upon. The purpose of a reflection assignment is to introspectively contemplate your reactions to and feeling about an element of the course. D eflecting the focus away from your own feelings by concentrating on describing the course content can happen particularly if "talking about yourself" [i.e., reflecting] makes you uncomfortable or it is intimidating. However, the intent of reflective writing is to overcome these inhibitions so as to maximize the benefits of introspectively assessing your learning experiences. Keep in mind that, if it is relevant, your feelings of discomfort could be a part of how you critically reflect on any challenges you had during the course [e.g., you realize this discomfort inhibited your willingness to ask questions during class, it fed into your propensity to procrastinate, or it made it difficult participating in groups].

Writing a Reflection Paper . Writing Center, Lewis University; Reflection Paper . Cordia Harrington Center for Excellence, University of Arkansas.

Another Writing Tip

Helpful Videos about Reflective Writing

These two short videos succinctly describe how to approach a reflective writing assignment. They are produced by the Academic Skills department at the University of Melbourne and the Skills Team of the University of Hull, respectively.

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Oxford University Press's Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Some very short reflections on social psychology

Social Psychology: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday , subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS , and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook . This series is also available online , and you can recommend it to your local librarian .

• By Richard J. Crisp
• August 11 th 2016

For as long as I can remember, I’ve never been able to understand the ‘logic’ of prejudice: how anyone could justify the derogation of others simply on the basis of their culture, gender, religion, or race. Of course, the causes of prejudice are many and varied, and we need contributions from many different disciplines – history, politics, economics – to fully understand what they are, and how they can be addressed. For me, however, there was always something deep in the human psyche that cut to the heart of prejudice. As well as the systemic (economic), structural (organisational) and social (policy) factors, there seemed to be something that linked all three; something that shapes how we perceive these external forces; something that determines whether we react to them with tolerance or intolerance. It turns out that the study of how we understand, and react, to these social forces, is precisely what social psychology is about.

So I leapt in to the field. In my early explorations, it didn’t take long for me to stumble upon Henri Tajfel’s famous ‘ minimal group paradigm ’ (MGP) studies, conducted in the 1970s. Tafjel was driven by that same desire to understand the nature of prejudice. His MGP was an experimental ‘game’ that revealed the utter irrationality of prejudice. In the MGP there was no possible gain for people to favour their own group: everyone was anonymous, and the identities involved were explicitly artificial and meaningless. Nonetheless, under these most minimal of social conditions (i.e., the simple division of people in to “us” and “them”) people still showed prejudice.

What emerged from these studies was a whole area of psychology that revealed the motives and processes that drive peoples’ prejudices. Discovering that it was a basic tendency to categorize that lies at the heart of prejudice had huge implications. It meant that to tackle prejudice we have to not only address the social, the economic and the political: we also need to tackle the psychological.

Armed with this insight I set off on (what became) a 20-year quest to develop an educational and training initiative to tackle the cognitive foundations of prejudice. The result was ‘Imagined Intergroup Contact’, a mental simulation technique that models interactions between people from different cultures and groups. The reasoning was that in the absence of actual contact, people might imagine that encounters with other groups would be negative – and develop negative stereotypes accordingly. If that is the case, then perhaps we can reverse this idea by getting people to imagine the opposite – positive outgroup encounters. Early results supported the idea that simply imagining contact could be useful as a way of reducing prejudice, and promoting an interest in engaging positively with other groups. There have now been well over 100 studies of imagined contact, involving thousands of participants. These studies have found the approach to be effective in tackling prejudice against a whole range of groups, including those formed on the basis of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality.

It meant that to tackle prejudice we have to not only address the social, the economic and the political: we also need to tackle the psychological.

The technique has been hugely successful at promoting more positive group-based interactions, reducing prejudice, and empowering individuals with confidence and self-efficacy. It’s such a simple idea, but one with so much power and potential. To see it grow from a flash of inspiration to a research programme to a multi-lab global endeavour is immensely rewarding. Most importantly, I passionately believe imagined contact has the power to change peoples’ lives for the better. Seeing a scientific advance like this begin to be adopted in education and industry gives a real and important sense of meaning to what we do.

And the future? What’s so exciting about research is you really don’t know what’s around the corner – there are so many possibilities. I do strongly believe there is a need for us to better connect basic science with application, to build stronger pathways to impact, and harness scientific advances to effect real and positive change in the societies in which we live. It’s also true that research in all areas is increasingly multi-disciplinary. I think this trend will continue; for me this means an exciting, closer integration between psychological, economic, and social policy approaches. For Imagined Contact research, this can only be a good thing. Cross-fertilization of ideas will help us build a better picture of the processes that lead to the formation of prejudiced attitudes, and through this understanding, will help us develop new interventions to tackle this most pressing of social problems.

Inter-disciplinarily, however, does not mean, and should not mean, complexity. Complexity can be beguiling – a complex idea, one that is difficult to understand, can seem correct precisely because it is difficult to understand. Getting people to believe that a simple idea is sometimes the best idea can be a challenge. But if developing Imagined Contact has taught me anything it’s that sometimes the simplest ideas can be the most powerful.

Finally, none of us must be afraid to suggest new ideas, even if they go against received wisdom. All science needs new perspectives, and this is what makes working in these areas so thrilling and rewarding. Sometimes you’ll be wrong, sometimes you’ll be half right … but perhaps sometimes you’ll have something that no-one else has ever thought of before. Whatever your discipline and whatever your field, your ideas could well be the next big thing.

Featured image credit: Crowd by tinabold. CC0 public domain via Pixabay .

Richard J. Crisp is a professor, writer, scientist, and teacher who has held a lifelong fascination with what makes people "tick". He fell in love with social psychology while studying at the University of Oxford. He is Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Richard is the 50 th Anniversary Chair in Behavioural Science at Aston University and author of Social Psychology: A Very Short Introduction .

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Thanks for an interesting perspective, and best wishes for your research. One thing that feeds prejudice is propaganda, which is used to manipulate people and gain power. There are lots of examples in politics at present. I always wonder why propaganda works – why do people want to believe negative things about ‘others’? Do you have any insights?

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Examples of Reflective Writing

Types of reflective writing assignments.

A journal  requires you to write weekly entries throughout a semester. May require you to base your reflection on course content.

A learning diary is similar to a journal, but may require group participation. The diary then becomes a place for you to communicate in writing with other group members.

A logbook is often used in disciplines based on experimental work, such as science. You note down or 'log' what you have done. A log gives you an accurate record of a process and helps you reflect on past actions and make better decisions for future actions.

A reflective note is often used in law. A reflective note encourages you to think about your personal reaction to a legal issue raised in a course.

An essay diary  can take the form of an annotated bibliography (where you examine sources of evidence you might include in your essay) and a critique (where you reflect on your own writing and research processes).

a peer review  usually involves students showing their work to their peers for feedback.

A self-assessment task  requires you to comment on your own work.

Some examples of reflective writing

Social science fieldwork report (methods section), engineering design report, learning journal (weekly reflection).

Brookfield, S 1987, Developing critical thinkers: challenging adults to explore alternative ways of thinking and acting , Open University Press, Milton Keynes.

Mezirow, J 1990, Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: a guide to transformative and emancipatory learning , Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Schön, DA 1987, Educating the reflective practitioner , Jossey-Bass. San Francisco.

We thank the students who permitted us to feature examples of their writing.

Prepared by Academic Skills, UNSW. This guide may be distributed or adapted for educational purposes. Full and proper acknowledgement is required. 

Essay and assignment writing guide

• Essay writing basics
• Essay and assignment planning
• Answering assignment questions
• Editing checklist
• Writing a critical review
• Annotated bibliography
• How do I write reflectively?
• Examples of reflective writing
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What lessons can political science classes borrow from the humanities? This paper presents the results of a multi-year study on teaching about Asia as part of a general education program. Given the challenges of meeting common learning outcomes while also teaching discipline-specific lessons, political science courses often underperformed in assessments when compared to benchmark expectations. While our initial conclusion—that a greater focus on multimodal assignments would promote deeper learning and reflection—proved unfounded, explicitly emphasizing students’ reflection on their own process of democratic engagement, in comparison to that of their counterparts in Asia, did seem to address the shortcomings of the previous approaches by giving students context and guidance in their understanding of how democracy works at home and abroad. Data from reflective essays, collected over two years, provide evidence for this finding.

Reflection, Democracy, Humanities, Social Science, Art, Politics

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“[F]olks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree. Now, nothing wrong with an art history degree—I love art history…. So I don’t want to get a bunch of emails from everybody.” —Barack Obama, remarks to GE Energy Waukesha Gas Engines Facility, Waukesha, Wisconsin, 30 January 2014

“It’s not just about looking at pretty pictures…. We ask hard questions of our students about the images and artifacts we show them. How can one painting or one small object conjure up a bygone culture or an entire political system? And these observational and interpretive skills can then be used by our students across the disciplines.” —Dr. Ann Collins Johns, describing her email response to President Obama’s comments about art history

Introduction

As the world has grown more connected over the last few decades, university professors have developed an increasing number of courses on both the social and political characteristics of different regions of the globe. Humanities departments offer courses on the religion and art of different groups, while political science professors teach about geo-strategic implications and the development of domestic institutions. These simultaneous efforts to develop an appreciation of culture while learning about political actors have increased in recent years—with particular attention given to Asia. Policymakers and businesses desire students who have broad knowledge of the region, though this fact contrasts with calls for more “practical” majors tied to vocational training and job placement made by no less than the former President of the United States ( Obama 2014 ).

Young adults, themselves, have developed greater curiosity about Asia. The share of students studying there, in comparison to other regions, has increased from 6.8 percent in 2001 to roughly 12 percent in 2014 ( Institute of International Education 2016 ). However, as much as individuals possess an interest in Asia, many obstacles limit a comprehensive understanding of the peoples, societies, and governments of the region.

This paper presents the results of a multi-year study on the use of reflection to teach about Asia to undergraduates at a southeastern liberal arts college. Students took courses in a general education program that encouraged them to learn about a “complex and changing world” in order to assess their competence in understanding and appreciating other cultures. Courses for this program were drawn from many different disciplines, including the Humanities and the Natural and Social Sciences. Some of these classes included content from specific regions of the world, including the History of Asian Art and Politics in China. Each course culminated in a reflective essay, graded by a team of faculty along a rubric following a common prompt to measure analysis, reflection, and cultural literacy. 1

Scores on these reflective essays varied dramatically from discipline to discipline. Students in Humanities courses appeared to score consistently higher than those in Natural and Social Science classes. In the case of the Asia-themed courses, students learned about the cultural practices of the peoples of Asia, generally, and of China, specifically, from the perspectives of art history and political science. However, students in the political science courses scored lower than the benchmark in the assessment. The lesson learned from this discrepancy was that political science courses on Asia should borrow lessons from the humanities, particularly in the use of multimodal assignments. Given the broadly similar context of processes, history, and institutions across Asia, it would be straightforward to add lessons on, for example, propaganda posters, to complement the study of democratic political processes and forms of accountability. An initial effort was made to incorporate these assignments into a subsequent version of the political science classes.

Despite these efforts, the disparities in scores still appeared; students in art history courses consistently scored higher for reflection, analysis, and cultural understanding than students in political science courses. As a result, a new approach was taken. Rather than focusing on the content of art history in Asia (propaganda posters, religion), professors made an effort instead to focus on pedagogy. For example, students in art history courses were assigned tasks of creating sculptures and designing “sacred spaces,” but, most importantly, were also asked to reflect on the how and why of their compositions. Reflection, it turned out, resulted in deeper understanding than knowledge or creation alone.

This insight guided further alterations to the Politics in China and Politics in East Asia courses. Students were still taught about culture but were more directly asked about their process of learning. In one example, students were asked to reflect on what democracy meant to them before a “virtual exchange” with students in Hong Kong. Afterward, students would reflect, again, on democracy and how their views were reinforced, or altered, based on the readings and interactions with the Hong Kong students.

Using quantitative data and qualitative discussions of pedagogy, it appears that there are lessons for political science to borrow from art history, but these are not as simple as adding a reading, a project, or even a multimodal assignment. Instead, students gain greater insights into the culture and politics of Asia when asked to reflect on their learning at discrete points in the term and to draw their connections together in a summative assessment.

The Use of Reflection in Learning about Asia

A multitude of approaches to engaging cultures from around the world in ways not previously imagined have been made possible by the advancement of twenty-first century technology and communications ( Pawlowski 2008 ). Asia, in particular, poses a problem to learners in the face of these increased connections. Students often have little connection to the continent and few examples of experiences with the cultures of Asia in their everyday lives ( Bahree 1986 ). Teachers themselves are often unfamiliar with the subject matter given the time, distance, and expense of traveling to Asia for first-hand experience ( Bahree, 31–32 ). In addition, the wide disparities in wealth and political freedoms across the region may make discussions of certain issues, such as democracy and human rights, uncomfortable for students. Furthermore, the heterogenous cultures of the region make isolating one particular topic or subject for study difficult. Interdisciplinary studies may best capture an understanding of the beliefs and behaviors of the peoples of Asia as completely as possible within an academic framework, though such an integrative approach is often met with resistance from administrators (40). It is left, then, to the teacher to make contacts with colleagues across Asia to help build authentic experiences to give students the proper context for their coursework without treating the study of Asia as a “problem” ( Bahree, 34 ).

Given the unique challenges that the study of Asia presents for educators, it makes sense to draw on the lessons of reflective learning to support students’ understanding of cultures not their own, though this approach, too, is fraught with challenges. For one thing, the presentation of issues and topics about Asia by non-Asian teachers can run the risk of misunderstanding cultural differences and reinforcing stereotypes ( Webb 2001 ), and teachers of all backgrounds walk a fine line in guiding students through sensitive topics while also not betraying too much of their own personal views. Indeed, the act of apparent impartiality on the part of the professor may produce an interest in viewpoints a student might not otherwise have considered ( Hanson 1996 ). Reflecting on what one learns and integrating it into an ever-evolving worldview takes time, but is a crucial element for students in these courses.

Barrett ( 2005 ) and Schön ( 1983 ) advocate a reflective pedagogy and offer a path forward, but not without obstacles. On the one hand, the personalization of learning may afford a student the opportunity to shield himself in the face of different opinions, working at cross-purposes with the goals of global learning classes. On the other hand, the ability to offer students multiple viewpoints across a series of multimodal assignments can foster the critical thinking and creativity that may make them more receptive to lessons about other cultures ( Parkes, et al 2013 ; Ramirez and Sanborn 2015 ).

Teaching about Asian Politics in the Core Curriculum

The study of comparative politics is often approached from three distinct dimensions: rational, structural, and cultural ( Lichbach and Zuckerman 2009 ). Subscribers to the rational approach assume that individuals are utility-maximizers who continuously weigh the costs and benefits of their actions. One famous example of the rational approach is voting behavior. Democratic citizens attend the polls on election day when their opportunity cost is low and their chance of affecting the outcome of the election is high ( Downs 1957 ).

Scholars who assume a structural approach observe the pervasive influence of formal governmental institutions and societal constructs on the behavior of individuals. Citizens are not utility-maximizers so much as conditioned and incentivized by the rules and norms that govern their everyday lives. A classic, modern example of the structural approach is Acemoglu et al’s ( 2000 ) work on the influence of colonial rule. Colonizers set up “extractive” institutions in areas where they themselves would not settle; a notable example would be of the Spanish in South America. This explains the robustness of accountable governments in moderate climates.

In contrast, a cultural approach to comparative politics focuses on the norms and practices of particular communities. Defining what constitutes a “unit” of culture remains difficult, however. Famously, Huntington ( 1993 ) named nine civilizations: Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Japanese, Latin American, Orthodox, Sinic, sub-Saharan African, and Western. Other scholars note the variety of cultures within a given country or area, and the lack of comparability across these groups.

Professors who teach on comparative politics sometimes struggle to instruct students while employing these research frames, particularly in the study of democracy. A student may read a narrative on student protests in China one day and another piece on how local governance is often stifled by the bureaucratic norms and incentives that guide the behavior of government officials the next. Mixing lessons of culture with discussions of more technical analyses can prove confusing for students who are just learning about the country, without years of context that professors develop in conducting their research.

Further complicating matters is that the lessons of cultural practices and government institutions do not necessarily complement one another within this structural, rational, and cultural framework. A professor who teaches a course that includes a discussion on the politics of Japan must educate students not only on the Liberal Democratic Party and its near-continuous rule, but also on electoral politics and the absence, until recently, of meaningful party competition. In addition, many students who are not majoring in politics, or who have only recently begun their coursework, will not be familiar with parliamentary systems and how they differ from presidential systems, or how the transition from a single, non-transferable vote electoral system to a mixed-member majoritarian electoral system has reduced the fractionalization of the party system and changed the goals of koenkai , or candidate support organizations. Given that all this is crucial, though not exhaustive, information about governments in Asia, there is limited time to cover topics that set the choice of government or behavior of officials within a cultural context. Further complicating matters is that professors who teach on the comparative politics of East Asia sometimes attempt to apply lessons from the Japanese case to other countries in the region, such as Taiwan and South Korea. Simply put, there is not enough time to provide a thorough education on the processes and institutions of government while simultaneously placing those structures appropriately within the history and culture of a given country.

In the Politics in East Asia class referenced in this essay, four topics connect student learning across the region: Democracy and Governance, Security, Globalization and Culture, and Economics. Country-specifc lessons are followed by comparisons across countries. For example, students are presented data on the support for democracy in each of the states listed above, then note consistencies in the results across the region. Questions are often technical in nature. For example, is democracy supported to great degree? Yes. Is democracy development preferred to economic development? No.

In the Politics in China class, topics vary while the frame of reference, China, remains consistent. Students learn about social movements and the internal dynamics of student groups. They also learn about issues concerning the effectiveness of village elections and the challenges that authoritarian bureaucracies pose to the implementation of policies. As in the Politics in East Asia class, students are given lessons on culture and society, most recently through the book Dreaming in Chinese by Deborah Fallows , but also on pressing topics such as foreign policy, the environment, and economic growth. These lessons are necessary for a more complete understanding of China but require an approach to pedagogy that provides students a structure for how to evaluate the intersection of politics, economics, and culture.

An Evolution in Teaching about Asia

When Politics in East Asia was first included as a part of the general education program in 2011, the format of the assignments was largely essay-based. Students submitted responses to questions posed by the professor in the form of short papers. In an attempt to better prepare students to write their end-of-term reflective essay embedded within the required electronic portfolio, students were asked to blog about their thoughts on readings, class discussions, and current events. However, these assignments did not promote the deep learning and reflection about another culture that was intended of general education classes designed to promote familiarity with other cultures. As part of the assessment feedback loop, a team of faculty raters from across campus graded randomly-drawn reflective essays from all classes included in the general education program using a common rubric (detailed later and included in the appendix). The scores for the Asia politics class fell below benchmark, and it became clear that changes were needed to more effectively educate students about the practices and components of the civilizations and cultures of the world.

In the later iterations of the Politics in East Asia class, and in a new Politics in China class, a different approach was taken. With the help and guidance of the many humanities professors on campus, including those from the English, History, and Modern Language departments, assignments were adjusted to pique student interest and provide an opportunity for creative expression. For example, students were asked to complete creative projects rather than essay responses (Figure 1 ). These small assignments offered students a means to express their knowledge in as open-ended a venue as possible. Creative projects varied, ranging from propaganda posters for individual countries to platforms for “new” political parties. Students were also asked to file daily journals on the readings—300-word responses that detailed their thoughts. These journal entries did not need to be reflective; the intent of the assignment was to provide students the ability to discuss parts of the reading that most interested them to the degree and extent they felt comfortable. At the end of the semester, students still submitted a reflective essay following the common prompt for all classes included in the civilizations and cultures initiative.

Creative Project Prompt.

Initial Analysis

To determine the success of these assignments in promoting cultural understanding, reflective essays were scored by a process borrowed from the civilizations and cultures assessment developed for the college’s core curriculum. The prompt for the assignment asked students to complete this reflection on their work by the end of the semester using guidance provided from a core curriculum oversight committee. This guidance included prompts and an evolving rubric, which was used in the rating of the essays in this paper and is included in the appendix.

For the purposes of this analysis, essays were drawn from four classes—two political science courses (Politics in East Asia and Politics in China), and, for comparison, two humanities courses (History of Asian Art: India, China, and Japan, and Chinese Art & Culture). For many of these classes, all essays were reviewed. In the case of the Politics in China course, where multiple sections were taught at once, essays were drawn randomly to replicate the smaller representation of essays from the other classes. 2

Two raters graded all of these essays, assigning a score from 1 to 5 for each of three categories: Cultural Understanding, Artifact Analysis, and Reflection on Learning. These scores were combined into an individual rating out of 15 points. If the two raters deviated in their rating by more than three points, the essay was reviewed again. 3

One note of caution: As this study was conducted, the rubric that guided the rating of the essays along the specific culture scale was edited to focus less on “distinctiveness” and more on an understanding of cultural components of broader communities; one can see the difference between the two scales in the appendix. As students in 2013 completed these essays with different guidance on the culture scale than the student in 2014 and 2015, the scores may be difficult to compare. Therefore, we focus our analysis on the reflection scale. Full scoring for each scale is presented in the appendix.

In Table 1 , one can see the disparity in scores between the essays graded in 2013. Art history essays received an average score of 7 (out of 10) points. For context, the benchmark score for essays submitted as part of the general education program described above was a total of 18 out of 30 points, or 6 points on each of the three scales. By contrast, essays drawn from the 2013 politics classes scored consistently below benchmark. While there was some variance in scores for the Politics in China essays (standard deviation equal to 2), both sets of scores were significantly below expectations.

Reflection Scores for Art History and Political Science Reflective Essays, 2013.

In other words, despite efforts to mimic the humanities through the use of multimodal assignments, the scores for student performance still underperformed expectations in 2013. This proved puzzling, as the benefits of multimodal assignments produced in a digital space for “digital natives” had been touted extensively by educational administrators and scholars ( Oblinger and Oblinger 2005 ; Prensky 2009 ). These twenty-first century students, it was assumed, possessed possessed the facility to embrace technology and explore lessons from class in ways that even most professors might not readily intuit. For the political science classes, students were only ever given opportunities to express their viewpoints in written essays and tests, and so it was hoped that the chance to complete assignments with alternative media would tap into forms of expression with which these digital natives could innovatively demonstrate the knowledge they had developed in the course. That did not turn out to be the case.

Upon reflection, the limitations of the newer assignments became apparent. While students enjoyed the freedom of the creative projects, they focused less on the personal nature of the project and their connection to course lessons and more on creativity for creativity’s sake. One student, for example, pasted the pictures of several professors into a propaganda poster and offered only a tenuous connection to the course materials. Ideally, students would justify their work by making clear to which ideas from class they are referring. Without more directed guidance, student posters seemed unfocused, potentially hampering the retention of the lessons from the course and undermining the intent of the general education program.

To remedy this problem and encourage the reflection and deep learning that would give students a greater appreciation for the cultures of Asia, assignments were revised so that they resembled the humanities model less in type and more in structure. Students were given prompts that asked them not only to compose an assignment, but also to think, explicitly, about their process as they did so. In this way, political science courses that covered similar parts of the world began to borrow from art history courses, and, as seen in Table 1 , produce higher levels of reflections from students. As Ramirez and Sanborn ( 2015 ) note, the teaching of art history allows for the exploration of complex topics and concepts through the use of metaphor and free expression: “Students not only develop the ability to engage with a work of art but also think about how their own responses, through various assignments and media, inform its meaning” (141). Furthermore, assignments were structured to allow students freedom of expression while encouraging them to connect their work to the academic lessons in class:

At the end of each unit, students completed assignments that asked them to summarize an object or image of their choice. These assignments allow for a variety of methods for students to demonstrate their learning, both visually and textually. For example, for the Role-Playing Sculpture Project, students put themselves in the context of an ancient sculptor and created an art object and a context for that object that connects with what they’ve learned about India, China, or Japan. For the Sacred Space Design Project, students used both critical and creative thinking to synthesize elements of two Asian religions studied in designing a physical space where practitioners of those faiths could cooperatively worship…. In analyzing the reflective essays, artifacts, and reflective tags from student eportfolios, the types of assignments and classroom activities that seemed to elicit the most reflection and deep understanding were hands-on, specific, artistic practices that seemed to create authentic, active learning through inquiry and reflection; while a student can demonstrate an understanding of religious concepts through research papers, a more flexible skill-set is necessary for the creative thinking required to design a physical space for practitioners of various religions to worship (142).

Modifications and Subsequent Analysis

Following the lessons gleaned from the art history courses included in this study, an effort was made to focus on the process of a student’s role in government. In this way, students could observe the structural, cultural, and rational motivations for the actions of citizens in Asia by thinking about their own inspirations for those same actions. Students would be challenged, “to think, read and write critically,” as Dr. Johns described to President Obama, based upon the pedagogy of reflection so prevalent in the study of art history ( Mueller 2014 ). Assignments focused less on exploring the digital space for its own sake and more on the observation and self-awareness of process—in particular, the processes and activities in which the democratic citizen participates.

For example, during the Fall 2014 semester, students in the Politics in East Asia class engaged in a long-term project to evaluate their own democratic citizenship in comparison to the beliefs of individuals in Asia, particularly in Hong Kong. Students were first asked to post a response to a blog, responding to the following prompt: “Reflect on your own experiences with democracy in the United States, think on how it works, strengths and weaknesses, etc. but center around your own thoughts.” At the same time, students engaged in lessons on mixed-member electoral systems, democratic movements, and public opinion on liberal values and democratic institutions, including readings and class discussions. This segment of the course culminated in a “virtual exchange” between American and Hong Kong students, in which the students exchanged questions, comments, and thoughts about the nature of democratic citizenship through a Skype feed for roughly one hour. This exercise was centered on an informal Model United Nations–type seminar, where American students provided background on the hypothetical views of the Occupy Central movement in the U.S., P.R.C., and Japan, allowing Hong Kong students a chance to contextualize the movement across the major powers of Asia.

Afterward, the American students were asked to reflect on democracy as before, only now they were asked to do so as a citizen of East Asia. They did not have to base their views solely on the virtual exchange and could think more broadly, considering the course readings and class discussions on countries such as Japan and South Korea (though most did mention Hong Kong). Subsequently, students were asked to re-read their blogs and trace what was different between their views of democracy in the first post and the views they gained about East Asian democracy by the second.

This same procedure was largely followed in a Spring 2015 Politics in China course, centered around another virtual exchange. This time, students were given a more formal structure for their participation, focusing on the concept of accountability (Figure 2 ). Again, students debated and engaged with one another in ways they had not done in previous versions of the course.

Politics in China Virtual Exchange 2015: Before and After.

To determine if there were any changes in scores given this approach, summative reflective essays drawn from these two courses were graded as described earlier; the average scores for these assignments are presented in Table 2 . In contrast to the previous iterations of the Politics in East Asia and Politics in China classes, scores were significantly higher after the addition of assignments that promoted reflection and student consideration of his/her own role in the democratic process. Both sets of scores exceeded the general education program benchmark, almost equaling those of the art history courses. These scores were also significantly higher than the ratings for the 2013 classes, with a p-value below .05, despite the small sample size.

Reflection Scores for Political Science Reflective Essays, 2014–2015.

Note: difference of means significance test reported in final column in comparison to essays from 2013 iterations of the same class.

“I was making a point about the jobs market, not the value of art history. As it so happens, art history was one of my favorite subjects in high school, and it has helped me take in a great deal of joy in my life that I might otherwise have missed.” Barack Obama, in response to Dr. Ann Collins Johns

As any regular reader of the Chronicle of Higher Education knows, the Humanities have come under repeated fire from policymakers and administrators alike. This essay attempts to explain the use of the lessons from these courses in not only developing an appreciation for the arts, but in assisting scholars from departments outside the Humanities as they teach complex lessons about the world. The data analysis above illustrates that the adoption of reflective practices, embedded implicitly and explicitly in art history courses, can produce greater reflection and deeper learning in students in classes where these practices are not common.

There are, of course, a number of other explanations for the rise in student essay scores. First, the political science courses had been through several revisions, and the professor could make adjustments in later sections after learning what had worked (and not worked) in earlier sections. In addition, the nature of the guidance provided to students was more strict in later courses. Students reflected more often because they were instructed to do so quite deliberately.

At the same time, the students’ response to this increased attention to reflection and democratic process often produced insightful and self-aware comments on the nature of government and how it varied across the world. As one student noted in a reflective essay,

In the first part [of the course] I saw freedoms as the most vital part to living in a democracy and living my life. By looking at East Asia through a different lens I saw that I am not the only one who enjoys these freedoms but some have to continue to fight for theirs while I do not…. They felt as if they were being denied something I held most dear and the cultural gap began to fade away.

These efforts to improve student education about Asia, particularly using democracy as a thematic concept, have the potential to give students an entrée to a foreign world through a common frame of reference through the use of reflection and an awareness of process.

Additional Files

The Additional files for this article can be found as follows:

AN 2017 Data Replication Files. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/ane.246.s1

Revised C&C Rubric. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/ane.246.s2

Spring 2013 Syllabus. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16995/ane.246.s3

• The essays included in the analysis were submitted for this assessment. However, only a handful were selected for inclusion in this program; the essays below were graded by two faculty members as detailed in the analysis section. [ ^ ]
• For example, two sections of Politics in China were taught during the Spring 2015 semester, with 15 students in each section. Essays were drawn by listing the essays in alphabetical order for each section and taking every other student’s essay. [ ^ ]
• For the initial 67 essays drawn from classes in 2013, scores differed by more than 3 points seven times (10.5 percent). For the 2014 Politics in East Asia essays, no essays varied by more than three points, while for the 2015 Politics in China essays, four essays needed re-scoring. [ ^ ]

Acknowledgements

This work was completed, in part, through the generous support of a Faculty Development Leave by the VMI Dean’s Office and Faculty Development Committee.

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Author Information

Howard Sanborn is Associate Professor of International Studies and Political Science at the Virginia Military Institute, where he teaches courses on democracy and the comparative politics of East Asia. He has published his research in a number of journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, and the Asian Journal of Comparative Politics. He served as Director of the VMI ePortfolio Project from 2012–2014.

Jenny Ramirez is an Adjunct Professor of Art History at James Madison University and Mary Baldwin University. She teaches introductory art history and art appreciation classes as well as upper-level courses in Asian art, photography, nineteenth-century art, and East-West interactions in art. She has published several chapters and essays on women and art, as well as on pedagogy and global learning.

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Welcome to the Essay World

Essay # 3 Reflection

Reflection Paper for Subculture Research Essay: Young People’s Investment Awareness in the Digital Era

                In this paper, I researched the young investor subculture. As I said in my paper, before, people only considered putting their money in the bank to earn interest for “investment”. However, because of the popularity of mobile platforms, young adults have raised awareness to invest in these user-friendly platforms.

Learning Outcomes:

                In my first draft, I didn’t have a clear stance on what am I writing for young investors. However, with the process of critical thinking, class discussion, and peer review, I decided that I am going to argue that young adults should start investing when they’re young but with a judicious perspective/mindset. At the end of this essay, I elaborated my argument to young adults should be alert to the inciteful information during our investments.

Rhetorical Situation:

                In considering my rhetorical situation, my audiences are my peers and my professor who are interested in the young investor subculture and what alternate young people’s investing decisions. Therefore, in my writing, I informed the different factors of why young people liked to use online platforms (or why these factors encouraged young people to invest)

                In terms of my writing purpose, I want my readers to understand young people’s position and power in the investment field, so my readers can get a sense of why young people also played a significant role in the market asides from the experienced Wall Street investors. Additionally to that, for my readers who are doing investment or will have an investment plan in the future, this essay might again remind them to be alert to the false info (that other people posted to confuse them to make the inappropriate investing decisions). 

                To incorporates my context, I first included some statistics to show my audience what were some spending habits of young people. As the statistics showed that young people would spend 94.6% of their money mostly on necessities and entertainment, it led to the idea that they might not have enough budget for investment. Nevertheless, I argued that investment in a person’s early stage of life is still necessary and I also encouraged my readers to do so. And in my last subsection, I also included a real-life example that demonstrated the pros and cons of online investment by following the up-to-date info on social media in order to deliver my purpose and message (e.g. increase vigilance to information) to my audience.

Final Thoughts:

                Overall, I enjoyed researching the young investor subculture. As a young retail investor, my investing decisions sometimes easily get affected by the news or my friends. I have friends who also do investment. Many times, they provide suggestions on what stocks should we purchase and I would just follow their purchase. However, I should be more mindful of the investment decisions I am making and be aware of my financial management. Therefore, I think this research process is informative and beneficial.

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Texas Launches AI Grader for Student Essay Tests But Insists It's Not Like ChatGPT

K ids in Texas are taking state-mandated standardized tests this week to measure their proficiency in reading, writing, science, and social studies. But those tests aren’t going to necessarily be graded by human teachers anymore. In fact, the Texas Education Agency will deploy a new “automated scoring engine” for open-ended questions on the tests. And the state hopes to save millions with the new program.

The technology, which has been dubbed an “auto scoring engine” (ASE) by the Texas Education Agency, uses natural language processing to grade student essays, according to the Texas Tribune . After the initial grading by the AI model, roughly 25% of test responses will be sent back to human graders for review, according to the San Antonio Report news outlet.

Texas expects to save somewhere between $15-20 million with the new AI tool, mostly because fewer human graders will need to be hired through a third-party contracting agency. Previously, about 6,000 graders were needed, but that’s being cut down to about 2,000, according to the Texas Tribune.

A presentation published on the Texas Education Agency’s website appears to show that tests of the new system revealed humans and the automated system gave comparable scores to most kids. But a lot of questions remain about how the tech works exactly and what company may have helped the state develop the software. Two education companies, Cambium and Pearson, are mentioned as contractors at the Texas Education Agency’s site but the agency didn’t respond to questions emailed Tuesday.

The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) was first introduced in 2011 but redesigned in 2023 to include more open-ended essay-style questions. Previously, the test contained many more questions in the multiple choice format which, of course, was also graded by computerized tools. The big difference is that scoring a bubble sheet is different from scoring a written response, something computers have more difficulty understanding.

In a sign of potentially just how toxic AI tools have become in mainstream tech discourse, the Texas Education Agency has apparently been quick to shoot down any comparisons to generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT , according to the Texas Tribune. And the PowerPoint presentation on the Texas Education Agency’s site appears to confirm that unease with comparisons to anything like ChatGPT.

“This kind of technology is different from AI in that AI is a computer using progressive learning algorithms to adapt, allowing the data to do the programming and essentially teaching itself,” the presentation explains. “Instead, the automated scoring engine is a closed database with student response data accessible only by TEA and, with strict contractual privacy control, its assessment contractors, Cambium and Pearson.”

Any family who’s upset with their child’s grade can request that a human take another look at the test, according to the San Antonio Report . But it’ll set you back $50.

For the latest news, Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .

• Solar Eclipse 2024

What the World Has Learned From Past Eclipses

C louds scudded over the small volcanic island of Principe, off the western coast of Africa, on the afternoon of May 29, 1919. Arthur Eddington, director of the Cambridge Observatory in the U.K., waited for the Sun to emerge. The remains of a morning thunderstorm could ruin everything.

The island was about to experience the rare and overwhelming sight of a total solar eclipse. For six minutes, the longest eclipse since 1416, the Moon would completely block the face of the Sun, pulling a curtain of darkness over a thin stripe of Earth. Eddington traveled into the eclipse path to try and prove one of the most consequential ideas of his age: Albert Einstein’s new theory of general relativity.

Eddington, a physicist, was one of the few people at the time who understood the theory, which Einstein proposed in 1915. But many other scientists were stymied by the bizarre idea that gravity is not a mutual attraction, but a warping of spacetime. Light itself would be subject to this warping, too. So an eclipse would be the best way to prove whether the theory was true, because with the Sun’s light blocked by the Moon, astronomers would be able to see whether the Sun’s gravity bent the light of distant stars behind it.

Two teams of astronomers boarded ships steaming from Liverpool, England, in March 1919 to watch the eclipse and take the measure of the stars. Eddington and his team went to Principe, and another team led by Frank Dyson of the Greenwich Observatory went to Sobral, Brazil.

Totality, the complete obscuration of the Sun, would be at 2:13 local time in Principe. Moments before the Moon slid in front of the Sun, the clouds finally began breaking up. For a moment, it was totally clear. Eddington and his group hastily captured images of a star cluster found near the Sun that day, called the Hyades, found in the constellation of Taurus. The astronomers were using the best astronomical technology of the time, photographic plates, which are large exposures taken on glass instead of film. Stars appeared on seven of the plates, and solar “prominences,” filaments of gas streaming from the Sun, appeared on others.

Eddington wanted to stay in Principe to measure the Hyades when there was no eclipse, but a ship workers’ strike made him leave early. Later, Eddington and Dyson both compared the glass plates taken during the eclipse to other glass plates captured of the Hyades in a different part of the sky, when there was no eclipse. On the images from Eddington’s and Dyson’s expeditions, the stars were not aligned. The 40-year-old Einstein was right.

“Lights All Askew In the Heavens,” the New York Times proclaimed when the scientific papers were published. The eclipse was the key to the discovery—as so many solar eclipses before and since have illuminated new findings about our universe.

To understand why Eddington and Dyson traveled such distances to watch the eclipse, we need to talk about gravity.

Since at least the days of Isaac Newton, who wrote in 1687, scientists thought gravity was a simple force of mutual attraction. Newton proposed that every object in the universe attracts every other object in the universe, and that the strength of this attraction is related to the size of the objects and the distances among them. This is mostly true, actually, but it’s a little more nuanced than that.

On much larger scales, like among black holes or galaxy clusters, Newtonian gravity falls short. It also can’t accurately account for the movement of large objects that are close together, such as how the orbit of Mercury is affected by its proximity the Sun.

Albert Einstein’s most consequential breakthrough solved these problems. General relativity holds that gravity is not really an invisible force of mutual attraction, but a distortion. Rather than some kind of mutual tug-of-war, large objects like the Sun and other stars respond relative to each other because the space they are in has been altered. Their mass is so great that they bend the fabric of space and time around themselves.

Read More: 10 Surprising Facts About the 2024 Solar Eclipse

This was a weird concept, and many scientists thought Einstein’s ideas and equations were ridiculous. But others thought it sounded reasonable. Einstein and others knew that if the theory was correct, and the fabric of reality is bending around large objects, then light itself would have to follow that bend. The light of a star in the great distance, for instance, would seem to curve around a large object in front of it, nearer to us—like our Sun. But normally, it’s impossible to study stars behind the Sun to measure this effect. Enter an eclipse.

Einstein’s theory gives an equation for how much the Sun’s gravity would displace the images of background stars. Newton’s theory predicts only half that amount of displacement.

Eddington and Dyson measured the Hyades cluster because it contains many stars; the more stars to distort, the better the comparison. Both teams of scientists encountered strange political and natural obstacles in making the discovery, which are chronicled beautifully in the book No Shadow of a Doubt: The 1919 Eclipse That Confirmed Einstein's Theory of Relativity , by the physicist Daniel Kennefick. But the confirmation of Einstein’s ideas was worth it. Eddington said as much in a letter to his mother: “The one good plate that I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein,” he wrote , “and I think I have got a little confirmation from a second plate.”

The Eddington-Dyson experiments were hardly the first time scientists used eclipses to make profound new discoveries. The idea dates to the beginnings of human civilization.

Careful records of lunar and solar eclipses are one of the greatest legacies of ancient Babylon. Astronomers—or astrologers, really, but the goal was the same—were able to predict both lunar and solar eclipses with impressive accuracy. They worked out what we now call the Saros Cycle, a repeating period of 18 years, 11 days, and 8 hours in which eclipses appear to repeat. One Saros cycle is equal to 223 synodic months, which is the time it takes the Moon to return to the same phase as seen from Earth. They also figured out, though may not have understood it completely, the geometry that enables eclipses to happen.

The path we trace around the Sun is called the ecliptic. Our planet’s axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic plane, which is why we have seasons, and why the other celestial bodies seem to cross the same general path in our sky.

As the Moon goes around Earth, it, too, crosses the plane of the ecliptic twice in a year. The ascending node is where the Moon moves into the northern ecliptic. The descending node is where the Moon enters the southern ecliptic. When the Moon crosses a node, a total solar eclipse can happen. Ancient astronomers were aware of these points in the sky, and by the apex of Babylonian civilization, they were very good at predicting when eclipses would occur.

Two and a half millennia later, in 2016, astronomers used these same ancient records to measure the change in the rate at which Earth’s rotation is slowing—which is to say, the amount by which are days are lengthening, over thousands of years.

By the middle of the 19 th century, scientific discoveries came at a frenetic pace, and eclipses powered many of them. In October 1868, two astronomers, Pierre Jules César Janssen and Joseph Norman Lockyer, separately measured the colors of sunlight during a total eclipse. Each found evidence of an unknown element, indicating a new discovery: Helium, named for the Greek god of the Sun. In another eclipse in 1869, astronomers found convincing evidence of another new element, which they nicknamed coronium—before learning a few decades later that it was not a new element, but highly ionized iron, indicating that the Sun’s atmosphere is exceptionally, bizarrely hot. This oddity led to the prediction, in the 1950s, of a continual outflow that we now call the solar wind.

And during solar eclipses between 1878 and 1908, astronomers searched in vain for a proposed extra planet within the orbit of Mercury. Provisionally named Vulcan, this planet was thought to exist because Newtonian gravity could not fully describe Mercury’s strange orbit. The matter of the innermost planet’s path was settled, finally, in 1915, when Einstein used general relativity equations to explain it.

Many eclipse expeditions were intended to learn something new, or to prove an idea right—or wrong. But many of these discoveries have major practical effects on us. Understanding the Sun, and why its atmosphere gets so hot, can help us predict solar outbursts that could disrupt the power grid and communications satellites. Understanding gravity, at all scales, allows us to know and to navigate the cosmos.

GPS satellites, for instance, provide accurate measurements down to inches on Earth. Relativity equations account for the effects of the Earth’s gravity and the distances between the satellites and their receivers on the ground. Special relativity holds that the clocks on satellites, which experience weaker gravity, seem to run slower than clocks under the stronger force of gravity on Earth. From the point of view of the satellite, Earth clocks seem to run faster. We can use different satellites in different positions, and different ground stations, to accurately triangulate our positions on Earth down to inches. Without those calculations, GPS satellites would be far less precise.

This year, scientists fanned out across North America and in the skies above it will continue the legacy of eclipse science. Scientists from NASA and several universities and other research institutions will study Earth’s atmosphere; the Sun’s atmosphere; the Sun’s magnetic fields; and the Sun’s atmospheric outbursts, called coronal mass ejections.

When you look up at the Sun and Moon on the eclipse , the Moon’s day — or just observe its shadow darkening the ground beneath the clouds, which seems more likely — think about all the discoveries still yet waiting to happen, just behind the shadow of the Moon.

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What Solar Eclipse-Gazing Has Looked Like for the Past 2 Centuries

Millions of people on Monday will continue the tradition of experiencing and capturing solar eclipses, a pursuit that has spawned a lot of unusual gear.

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By Sarah Eckinger

• April 8, 2024

For centuries, people have been clamoring to glimpse solar eclipses. From astronomers with custom-built photographic equipment to groups huddled together with special glasses, this spectacle has captivated the human imagination.

Creating a Permanent Record

In 1860, Warren de la Rue captured what many sources describe as the first photograph of a total solar eclipse . He took it in Rivabellosa, Spain, with an instrument known as the Kew Photoheliograph . This combination of a telescope and camera was specifically built to photograph the sun.

Forty years later, Nevil Maskelyne, a magician and an astronomy enthusiast, filmed a total solar eclipse in North Carolina. The footage was lost, however, and only released in 2019 after it was rediscovered in the Royal Astronomical Society’s archives.

Telescopic Vision

For scientists and astronomers, eclipses provide an opportunity not only to view the moon’s umbra and gaze at the sun’s corona, but also to make observations that further their studies. Many observatories, or friendly neighbors with a telescope, also make their instruments available to the public during eclipses.

Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen, Fridtjof Nansen and Sigurd Scott Hansen observing a solar eclipse while on a polar expedition in 1894 .

Women from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and their professor tested out equipment ahead of their eclipse trip (to “catch old Sol in the act,” as the original New York Times article phrased it) to New London, Conn., in 1922.

A group from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania traveled to Yerbaniz, Mexico, in 1923, with telescopes and a 65-foot camera to observe the sun’s corona .

Dr. J.J. Nassau, director of the Warner and Swasey Observatory at Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, prepared to head to Douglas Hill, Maine, to study an eclipse in 1932. An entire freight car was required to transport the institution’s equipment.

Visitors viewed a solar eclipse at an observatory in Berlin in the mid-1930s.

A family set up two telescopes in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1963. The two children placed stones on the base to help steady them.

An astronomer examined equipment for an eclipse in a desert in Mauritania in June 1973. We credit the hot climate for his choice in outfit.

Indirect Light

If you see people on Monday sprinting to your local park clutching pieces of paper, or with a cardboard box of their head, they are probably planning to reflect or project images of the solar eclipse onto a surface.

Cynthia Goulakos demonstrated a safe way to view a solar eclipse , with two pieces of cardboard to create a reflection of the shadowed sun, in Lowell, Mass., in 1970.

Another popular option is to create a pinhole camera. This woman did so in Central Park in 1963 by using a paper cup with a small hole in the bottom and a twin-lens reflex camera.

Amateur astronomers viewed a partial eclipse, projected from a telescope onto a screen, from atop the Empire State Building in 1967 .

Back in Central Park, in 1970, Irving Schwartz and his wife reflected an eclipse onto a piece of paper by holding binoculars on the edge of a garbage basket.

Children in Denver in 1979 used cardboard viewing boxes and pieces of paper with small pinholes to view projections of a partial eclipse.

A crowd gathered around a basin of water dyed with dark ink, waiting for the reflection of a solar eclipse to appear, in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1995.

Staring at the Sun (or, How Not to Burn Your Retinas)

Eclipse-gazers have used different methods to protect their eyes throughout the years, some safer than others .

In 1927, women gathered at a window in a building in London to watch a total eclipse through smoked glass. This was popularized in France in the 1700s , but fell out of favor when physicians began writing papers on children whose vision was damaged.

Another trend was to use a strip of exposed photographic film, as seen below in Sydney, Australia, in 1948 and in Turkana, Kenya, in 1963. This method, which was even suggested by The Times in 1979 , has since been declared unsafe.

Solar eclipse glasses are a popular and safe way to view the event ( if you use models compliant with international safety standards ). Over the years there have been various styles, including these large hand-held options found in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1979.

Parents and children watched a partial eclipse through their eclipse glasses in Tokyo in 1981.

Slimmer, more colorful options were used in Nabusimake, Colombia, in 1998.

In France in 1999.

And in Iran and England in 1999.

And the best way to see the eclipse? With family and friends at a watch party, like this one in Isalo National Park in Madagascar in 2001.

Environmental Science: Advances

2023 outstanding papers published in the environmental science journals of the royal society of chemistry.

a Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, China

b Carnegie Mellon University Department of Chemistry, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

c Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

d Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, UK

e Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal

f Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

g Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

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Z. Cai, N. Donahue, G. Gagnon, K. C. Jones, C. Manaia, E. Sunderland and P. J. Vikesland, Environ. Sci.: Adv. , 2024, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D4VA90010C

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