John Dewey, one of my heroes, said that you don’t learn from experience — you learn from thinking about your experience. That’s the idea that What Our Stories Teach Us is based on. Linda K. Shadiow outlines a three-step process of description, interpretation, and analysis. Is this sort of reflection a prerequisite for transformational learning? I believe it might be. She wrote this book for college teachers, but I think that anyone could use this process. It’s harder than you might realize, though — especially when it involves thinking about things that went wrong. You’ve heard of tough love…this is tough learning.
Linda K. Shadiow, What Our Stories Teach Us: A Guide to Critical Reflection for College Faculty (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013), 112.