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Critical Reflection for Public Life: HowReflective Practice Helps StudentsBecome Politically EngagedAlma G. Blount aa Duke UniversityPublished online: 22 Sep 2006.

To cite this article: Alma G. Blount (2006) Critical Reflection for Public Life: How Reflective PracticeHelps Students Become Politically Engaged, Journal of Political Science Education, 2:3, 271-283

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Critical Reflection for Public Life: How ReflectivePractice Helps Students Become Politically Engaged

ALMA G. BLOUNT

Duke University

Keywords critical reflection, leadership, political engagement

As faculty director of an undergraduate leadership program that is part of the publicpolicy studies department at Duke University, I have been developing a pedagogythat introduces students to difficult social issues through community-basedinternships, and asks them to imagine what kind of leadership it would take toaddress those issues effectively. This article presents our analytic framework forcritical reflection and describes how it supports political engagement and leadershipdevelopment.

Our hypothesis is that students can learn about complex social systems, policychange, and leadership through a reflective practice that combines experience withacademic study. As they develop their knowledge of ‘‘how things work,’’ and simul-taneously refine their sense of civic agency, students become politically engaged.

In preparation for a longitudinal study, we recently conducted a comprehensiveprogram review in order to elaborate our pedagogy for political engagement, and torefine outcome goals for students.

The critical reflection process follows three distinct, developmental sequences inthe acquisition of knowledge and skills for public service. The sequence includes per-sonal, interpersonal, and public leadership dimensions. Writing assignments linkedto specific experiential learning and academic tasks help students progressivelydevelop a sense of political agency.

What is Critical Reflection?

Critical reflection is a crucial leadership skill. It is an art to be immersed in an experi-ence—fully attentive to the intensity and complexity of the moment—and at thesame time see the larger context of the work and one’s options for effective action.Critical reflection is the ability to develop a reflective stance in the midst of action. Itis what we call ‘‘balcony-dance floor work,’’1 because it requires being in the middleof demanding, perhaps confusing, experiences with groups (on the dance floor) whileat the same time stepping back to see the larger patterns and dynamics of the groupexperience (going to the balcony). Balcony-dance floor work helps you make sense ofthe mess, so you can strategize skillfully about where you and your group can gofrom here.

Address correspondence to Alma G. Blount, Hart Leadership Program, Terry StanfordInstitute of Public Policy, Box 90248, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708-0248. E-mail:blt@duke.edu

Journal of Political Science Education, 2:271–283, 2006Copyright # 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1551-2169DOI: 10.1080/15512160600840533

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Critical reflection is not about distancing yourself from experience, but ratherabout cultivating an attentive awareness of your current circumstances. It is anapproach for being more grounded in the here and now and has strong utilitarianfunctions as a diagnostic and intervention tool for problem-solving work in organi-zations, institutions, and social systems. It expands your capacity to be fully involvedin the action as you simultaneously analyze how your own behavior and that ofothers impacts the social environment. You refine your ability to see the current situ-ation clearly, and thus you develop a richer assessment of its demands and choices.Sharpening this skill is imperative when your goal is policy change that requires pub-lic leadership and collective action. It helps you make wiser, more strategically savvydecisions about future interventions, and thereby it allows you and your group todevelop your capacity for successful problem-solving work.

Critical reflection is a relational process. It involves faculty=student, supervisor=student, and student=student exchanges. It provides a means for students to grapplewith the social realities they see in their internships. Structured reflection helps themexamine how some conditions may be connected to racial, educational, or economicinequalities. The reflective process itself gives students a space to realize and toexplore their responsibilities for being ‘‘border crossers.’’2 No matter what theirown class backgrounds may be, college students represent a privileged sector ofsociety. As their eyes are opened to the realities of human suffering, students simul-taneously must examine their own positions in society, determine what it means inrelation to their community experiences and make connections between the immedi-ate experience of service and broader political and policy issues.

Because this is hard work, reflective practice calls for solitude as well as com-pany, self-reflection as well as mentoring. Critical reflection becomes a crucible forstudents to explore the complexities of social problems and to address the questionof what can be done to change problematic conditions.

Developmental Stages of Reflective Practice

The personal dimension of critical reflection centers on developing a reflectivestance. Students realize this outcome goal when they learn to write concretely by tell-ing specific, vivid stories about people and events. An important part of this task islearning to write from strong emotion. We paraphrase a quotation from the Frenchwriter Colette, ‘‘Look hard at what you like. But be careful, and look even harder atwhat you don’t like.’’ We urge students not to avoid the difficult feelings stirred upby their internship experiences, but rather to see them as rich resources for theirlearning.

Reflection at the personal level requires paying attention to social interactionsand noticing the threads between one’s actions and reactions in group conversationsand experiences. It helps one develop a heightened curiosity about how groupswork and an interest in understanding the roles one tends to play—both positiveand negative—in group dynamics.

Outcome goals for the interpersonal dimension include synthesizing essentialthemes from complex ideas and concepts; developing a viewpoint about politicalissues; and learning how to communicate one’s viewpoint to others—including ques-tions, concerns, and insights—in a public setting.

Reflection at the interpersonal level requires following complicated discussions andinteractions. It helps one locate the issue or problem at hand in its systemic context.

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It is helpful in tracking fast-paced dynamics in organizations and in developing theskill of strategic questioning. Interpersonal reflection shows one that group work pre-sents constant challenges as well as rewards, and that maximizing group effectivenessmeans becoming adept at managing the learning process in a group.

Finally, outcome goals for the public leadership dimension include developingproblem-framing, problem analysis, and policy design skills. Reflection at the publicleadership level requires testing one’s ideas with peers, and ‘‘going public,’’ being ableto frame complex social issues, and one’s policy analysis and recommendationsabout them, in public discussions.

Critical Reflection, Public Problem-Solving Work, and Leadership

In terms of public policy, I see critical reflection as a personal practice that helps onebuild confidence for public life. In our leadership program, we call it ‘‘cultivatingcourage for the tough questions.’’ Field-based internships allow students to see thehuman face of social and political issues. With the stories of specific people as thestarting point, students can explore the complicated systemic issues—the larger con-texts—from which the social issues emerged. Then the operative questions becomethese: What needs to change in order to make progress on this problem? What arethe most effective leverage points in the organization or system for making thesechanges? Who needs to be involved in the problem-solving process? How does onecall attention to the key issues?

Inevitably, these are questions of politics and leadership. The natural pro-gression of questions moves from ‘‘what’’ to ‘‘why’’ to ‘‘how.’’ When students havea chance to explore the ‘‘how’’ questions, they learn that designing policy optionsraises complicated questions of values and politics. As they wrestle with these ques-tions among their peers, their interest in politics is heightened. The need for politicalengagement becomes obvious, and students begin to imagine how they mightbecome involved in systemic=structural change processes down the road. One stu-dent described how this approach to problem analysis led him to think in terms ofstructural change and politics.

It’s hard to articulate, but it has to do with changing our approach toproblems. The causes aren’t always external; sometimes the structuresset up by society to remedy the issue are imperfect and inefficient. Some-times they fail to solve the issue, but instead prolong and reinforce it, as isthe case sometimes with homelessness. The idea of structural change is apowerful one, and has let me to the idea that altering the organizationcan change the problem significantly. That’s where social attitudes andpolitical will come into play, since having an identified problem and aproposed solution are never enough. Especially when dealing with socialissues on the scale that we’ve discussed, solutions are incomplete unlessthey involve society.

(Student worked with a health-care outreach program for the homelessin Albuquerque.)

Successful public leadership calls for diagnosing multifaceted problems in institu-tions and social systems, designing strategic interventions, making midcoursecorrections, and continually planning next steps. The work necessitates a kind of

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reflection-in-action that enhances a group’s problem-solving ability, or whatleadership expert Ronald Heifetz calls a group’s ‘‘adaptive capacity.’’ Ellen Schall,dean of New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service calls thisaspect of leadership development ‘‘learning to love the swamp.’’

Swamp problems are important, difficult problems that cannot be solved bytechnical means alone. Although many public service problems are located in theswamp, the norm in professional schools is to emphasize ‘‘high ground’’ problem-solving approaches that utilize rigorous analysis and established techniques forproblem assessment and policy design. But the real world, including the world ofprofessional practice, is often characterized by rapid change, uncertainty, and valuedifferences that thwart our efforts to concisely label and to tackle problems.

Schall argues that effective public leadership means learning to manage inthe ‘‘indeterminate zones’’ where no clear formulas exist for how to approach,much less solve, swamp problems. A different kind of experiential learning isrequired that incorporates both high ground and swamp learning. Problem-solvingwork must incorporate diverse—even competing—perspectives, encourage improvis-ation, and reinforce the group’s purpose as literally to learn its way through theproblem. If public leaders must master both high ground and swamp approaches,mastery means developing an instinctive understanding of when and how to useeach approach in the most strategically effective manner for addressing the policyproblem at hand.

In the context of swamp learning, leadership is the activity of getting groups toface systemic problems that lack clear-cut answers. Learning is required to define theproblems, to develop solutions, and to implement them. Helping a group clarify itsvalues, and ‘‘learn how to learn’’ is a core political strategy for dealing with complexpolicy issues. Heifetz calls such problems ‘‘adaptive challenges.’’ To make progresson the problem, the members of the community themselves must adjust habits, beha-viors, and values that have obstructed their advancement in the past. This involvesaddressing conflicts and learning how to see and work with value differences in thegroup as keys to problem solving. Adaptive challenges require a collective learningprocess. To exercise leadership is to raise the tough questions within the group insuch a way that the group becomes mobilized for action.

Reflective Practice in an Undergraduate Leadership Program

Our leadership development approach for students at Duke includes three inter-twined components: a high quality, community-based immersion experience, a rigor-ous process of critical reflection that combines experiential learning with academicstudy, and ‘‘going public’’—a commitment on the part of the student to test whathe or she is learning by bringing the work to a larger audience.

Service Opportunities in Leadership draws a mix of freshmen, sophomores, andjuniors from a range of majors. In the past decade, students have served organiza-tions in Central America, Eastern Europe, Southern Africa, as well as Albuquerque,Charlotte, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, and several towns in the MississippiDelta.

In Service Opportunities in Leadership, or ‘‘SOL,’’ setting up local, national,and international field experiences for students is a labor intensive process. We beginwith our network of community partners. After discussions with supervisors andstudents, we design nine-week internship placements that combine direct service

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experience with writing assignments and an optional field-based research project. Wedraft a memorandum of understanding with the host organization and a learningcontract with the student.

In the preparation course we introduce students to cross-cultural questions andconcerns, and we teach them reflective writing skills. We ask them to investigate theprimary social issue affecting the population served by their host organization. Wehold a three-day, intensive team-building and training retreat for students the weekbefore they begin their internships.

Before students start their summer internships, they may make a commitment toundertaking a community-based research (CBR) project for their community part-ner. In 2004, two-thirds of the students completed the additional summer researchproject. In preparation, students participate in a series of research methods trainingworkshops and apply to Duke’s Institutional Review Board for permission to con-duct human subjects research. At their placement sites, they collaborate with theirhost organizations to identify community needs that would benefit from study. Theydraft research questions, determine methods for addressing those questions, collectand analyze their data and present their findings to their community partners.Throughout the summer they submit weekly updates to faculty and reflect on theintellectual, ethical, and civic issues raised by their research experiences. At theend of their placements, students leave tangible products with their community part-ners such as reports, articles, or project notebooks. Students who choose the CBRoption are part of a campus-wide research service-learning (RSL) initiative at Dukecalled Scholarship with a Civic Mission. The initiative, cofounded by the Hart Lead-ership Program and the Kenan Institute for Ethics, is cosponsored by the Dean ofTrinity College of Arts and Sciences. We see research service-learning as a promisingpedagogy because we believe it has the potential to make service-learning and civicengagement an organic part of Duke’s research mission, not peripheral or antitheti-cal to it. By combining the strengths of service-learning and research, research ser-vice-learning can serve multiple goals. For additional details, please see ourproject website at http:==www.rslduke.mc.duke.edu.

SOL is structured to help students develop progressively deeper understandingsof the social issues they encountered in their summer experiences. In the follow-upcourse they explore concepts of democratic participation, local and national politics,policy design, and leadership. They receive training in electronic database researchskills before beginning their social issue research projects in the fall, and they submitweekly drafts of their research papers to the instructor for detailed feedback. Stu-dents who completed community-based research projects during their internshipshave the option of further developing their research interests from the summer withtheir social issue investigation in the fall.

In the fall course, students produce a research portfolio with six componentparts. One component is an essay on the social issue related to the summer place-ment, in which students explore what they have learned from their research andfrom first-hand experience. Another is an interview with a practitioner workingon the front lines of the issue. Students explore the practitioner’s perspectives,comparing and contrasting them with what they have seen or read themselves.Next, students write a policy memo, in which they consider several options andmake a case for which approach is the most viable. Finally, they submit a sum-mary analysis, which provides specific suggestions for fostering the leadershipnecessary to implement their policy recommendations. Students present their social

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issue research to the class for extensive critique before submitting the finalportfolio for a grade.

Also in the follow-up course, we encourage students to bring their questions, dis-coveries, and action plans to wider audiences. This year, for example, a SOL studentdescribed his research project on gun control and youth access to firearms duringParents Weekend. Three students who had conducted community-based researchprojects in South Africa over the summer presented their work to an interdisciplin-ary group of scholars whose research focuses on South Africa.

The following table illustrates the critical reflection sequence of assignments andoutcome goals for students.

The Personal Dimension of Reflective Practice: The ‘‘Letter Home’’

The personal dimension of critical reflection in SOL is structured around ‘‘LettersHome’’ during the summer internship. The letters become a meaning-making toolfor students as they sort through what that they are seeing, hearing, and learningfrom their experiences. The assignment gives students their first opportunity todevelop a ‘‘balcony-dance floor’’ perspective.

For students accustomed to working with abstract ideas and principles in theiracademic work, it can be challenging to write specific stories about people and incidentsfrom daily life. We insist that they craft sentences that are vivid, immediate, and clear.We ask them ‘‘to show, not tell.’’ The writing coach has to work with the students forseveral weeks before they develop a basic proficiency in writing concretely.

Table 1. Critical reflection developmental sequence

Developmental stageCritical reflection

assignment Outcome goals

Personal ‘‘Letter Home’’ . develop a reflective stance. learn to write concretely. learn to write from strong

emotionInterpersonal Point-of-View Essay . synthesize essential themes from

complex ideas. develop a viewpoint about

political issues. develop a distinct voice. communicate one’s viewpoint

to others in a public setting.. learn how to engage others—with

different viewpoints—indiscussion, dialogue and debate

Public leadership Policy Memo—LeadershipAnalysis

. develop problem-framing,problem analysis, and policydesign skills

. analyze leadership options forcreating structural changes in thesocial or political system

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The best letters provide colorful detail and bring us into the student’s world insuch a way that we see it through his or her eyes. The discipline of writing the lettershelps students begin to understand their own strengths and limitations as volunteersand to situate their efforts within a larger context. In other words, the letter homefunctions as a starting point ‘‘reality check’’ for the political development of stu-dents. Each letter documents community life, but it also chronicles a student’sown relationship to the community, and the meaning-making process he or shebegins during the internship experience.

One student rewrote a letter several times to simplify and to refine a descriptionof a health-care provider whom she greatly admired.

She often has a funny story to share even when the topic is depressing.She told me about waking up one morning feeling a cool breeze cominginto her room. To her amazement, the door to her refrigerator was open.She concluded that someone must have been in her house (located in oneof the slum shack areas known as townships) during the night, eaten herfood, and stolen something. As she told this story, the high and lowintonation of her voice and her dramatic hand movements made theimages come alive. Suddenly, she let out a shrill cry that probably wokeup all the patients saying she could have been attacked or raped of some-thing even worse. However, she just smiled and exclaimed ‘‘ . . . Man whatcan one do, but continue living . . . I can’t always be scared.’’ This isBuyiswa [the woman’s name].

(Student worked with the South Africa Red Cross in Cape Town.)

At the end of the summer, with permission, we choose one letter from each studentto include in a booklet called ‘‘Telling the Story.’’ In the fall we distribute copies ofthe booklet to the returning interns on the first day of class.

Learning to write from strong emotion is a key aspect of learning to write con-cretely. SOL students work with organizations that are on the front lines of difficultsocial issues, and the life circumstances of the clients they serve are often disturbing.Many students come to us with idealized notions of what it will be like to work inservice agencies. In the internship they may discover that agency staff are underre-sourced, the work environment dysfunctional, or the supervisor edgy because ofthe relentless stresses of providing service in a minimal resource=maximum demandenvironment.

Sometimes students have great affection for the members of their living group(the other ‘‘SOLsters’’) at the beginning of the summer, only to find out that theirhousemates are untidy or have irritating personal habits. In other words, life hap-pens. The letters home encourage the full mix of stories about life. The centerpieceis the internship, but we make it clear that the living situation is also an essential partof the learning process.

Through their work students are exposed to an intensified version of life. Theyare young. Some have had protected upbringings. Many have never previously seenthe harsh social realities they now see day in and day out. We want them to writefrom the truth of their experiences and to develop an authentic voice, not to writeto please us, which is what most of them are programmed to do only too well bythe time they reach Duke and join our program. Learning how to locate what theyactually feel, even if it is complicated and murky, and then to write directly from

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‘‘the hard place’’ can be difficult, but when students get the knack of it, the writingbecomes powerful and clear.

I tell students to think of their reflective writing as private work that points to apublic purpose. Eventually I want them to learn how to communicate their experi-ences to larger audiences. Learning how to trust your own voice and to speak fromthe truth of what you see and experience without sugar coating it is integral to theleadership development process.

Most of our students are 18- to 20-years old. Many tell us they had never rea-lized they had unique voices, nor had they known what we meant by the term‘‘voice’’ when we instructed them in the preparation course and retreat. But overthe summer as they continue to write, the students start to see what we mean.In the follow-up course I build upon the process of developing voice when Iintroduce the weekly point-of-view essay.

The Interpersonal Dimension of Reflective Practice: The Point-of-View Essay

The purpose of the weekly point-of-view essay in the fall course is for students toclarify their thinking after having read a diverse set of essays and articles aboutthe ‘‘theme of the week.’’ Themes in the fall 2004 course included:

. Democracy 101: The 2004 Presidential election and the youth vote ‘‘wild card’’

. Navigating our way through a polarized political landscape: The liberal andconservative viewpoints

. Building power at the base: Organizing across race, class, religious, and politicaldifferences in local communities

. Leadership and adaptive change: The art of helping groups face difficult problemswithin complex systems

. Systemic leadership failures and strategies for change: A case study of 9=11

. The inner work of leadership

Each week I chose one or two essays to read to the class. The students do not knowin advance which essay I will choose. The reading then becomes the launching padfor discussing the theme of the week. If the student’s essay is strong, he or she hassynthesized the readings well, found something distinctive and original to contributeand has framed the essay so that it is engaging and thought provoking, the conver-sation in class takes off. The energy of the essay and subsequent discussion becomesimmediately apparent to the students, and they start to pay close attention to thecraft of framing a good discussion.

For example, the following is an excerpt from a student’s essay about The RightNation, which we read as we tracked the presidential campaigns a few weeks beforethe 2004 elections. The essay provoked a heated discussion in class.

In Right Nation, Mickelthwaite and Woolridge argue that conservativepower in America is not only on the rise, but that social, economic,and political trends point to the further entrenchment of conservativepower in the American landscape. Conservatives are fighting a battleon their own battleground, and this advantage is overwhelming the liber-als. The question one comes away with is not, ‘‘How can liberals defeatconservative America?’’ The puzzle is more basic and less drawn on partylines and a question that both conservatives and liberals should be asking

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themselves. Given the trend conservatives have been heading toward, andtheir subtle balance between the various forces behind the movement, isthe Right Nation what is right for America? Is it what is best for theAmerican people? If one looks at it with the objectivity infused into thediscussion by the authors, one cannot help but come to the conclusionthat the conservative movement not only best represents America, but,inasmuch as one can qualify this, is good for America.

(Student worked with an immigrant rights organization in Chicago.)

Although students write the essay from a personal viewpoint, the explicit purpose ofthe writing is to generate a spirited public discussion. As the semester progresses, I useour class discussions to teach the students about the leadership art of ‘‘holding agroup,’’ a facilitation skill that requires refining one’s own point of view, while atthe same time welcoming and engaging a plurality of viewpoints in a fast-paced dis-cussion. This skill becomes especially critical when one disagrees strongly with othersor needs to challenge the assumptions of others. In other words, holding a grouphelps us face differences that otherwise might become sources of antagonism and dis-engagement. When we hold a group well, a diversity of perspectives becomes an assetin the learning process and sets the stage for effective problem-solving work.

The Public Leadership Dimension of Reflective Practice: The Policy Memo andLeadership Analysis Paper

In our training seminar for students, as we prepare them for their summer intern-ships, I ask them to examine their own definition and assumptions about the word‘‘leadership,’’ because how we define leadership sets up expectations for how weengage in problem-solving work together. Then we revisit the ‘‘adaptive leadership’’framework, to which students were introduced in the preparation course. If adaptivechallenges—swamp problems—are systemic and cannot be solved by a quick fixremedy, we cannot expect the person(s) in charge to have the answer, either. I tellthe students that their work for the summer is to take a good close look at the dif-ficult social issues their community partners are facing and to begin to form ananalysis of what they are seeing. What do they—the students—see as the adaptivechallenges? What do they think needs to change within the institution or communityin order to accelerate progress on the problem? What needs to change outside theinstitution? What are the political issues connected to making these changes?Who, if anyone, is sticking his or her neck out to raise the difficult questions andkeep attention focused on the real issues?

I caution the students to remember that they are—at best—merely well-intentioned, short-term visitors to their community organizations. They are luckyto be there, and they are there primarily to learn. If they keep their eyes open, therewill be a great deal for them to observe about social issues, how organizations work,how change processes are linked to power and politics and leadership. I tell them ifthey come back to me at the end of the summer confused and a bit bewilderedbecause very little turned out they way they thought it would, I will say to them,‘‘Great. I celebrate your confusion. Now let’s get down to business and see if wecan learn something together about how to create structural change.’’

At that point in the training session the students look at me with puzzled expres-sions. Then I send them off, and from there the program incorporates a series of

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reflection-in-action exercises to help them grapple with what confronts them in thefield. When they return to class in the fall, they are primed to delve into an extensivestudy of the social issue they encountered over the summer and to explore conceptsof politics, leadership, and policy change.

My professional work has shown me that policy design is increasingly cross-sectoral—requiring collaboration between the for-profit, nonprofit, and public sec-tors of society. The policy definition that students learn is broad. Policy is a formalor informal agreement about how institutions or communities will address sharedproblems or achieve common goals. As students apply the rudiments of policyanalysis, I ask them to consider how the community affected by the problemcan be actively involved in its solution. The key words I highlight in the definitionare: ‘‘agreement,’’ ‘‘institution or community,’’ ‘‘shared problems,’’ and ‘‘commongoals.’’

The policy memo uses a classic five-part format. It includes an overview, prob-lem statement, criteria, options, and recommendations. Each year since we beganrequiring policy memos, we have become more savvy about how to provide trainingand feedback to students. The memo format has become more demanding, but ourinstructions have also included more succinct guidelines. The beauty of the memo isthat it forces students to think clearly about systemic change issues before they beginto write. As a result, they begin to see how their policy analysis can and should leadto their leadership recommendations for systemic change.

Past policy memos have had titles such as, ‘‘How to Reduce Firearm-InducedDomestic Homicide;’’ ‘‘The Need for Expanded Educational Options for LimitedEnglish Proficient Students;’’ ‘‘Fighting Juvenile Delinquency Through TargetedEarly Intervention;’’ and ‘‘Creating an Accessible Antiretroviral Treatment Strategyfor Pregnant Women in South Africa Through the Public Health System.’’

Students draft the leadership analysis paper after they have written the policymemo. These final two sections of the research portfolio become the backbone ofthe research project because they are the assignments that help students integratewhat they have been learning throughout the semester.

The policy memo and leadership analysis sections of the portfolio underscore theimportance of group learning. To draft effective papers, students need to tap into thebrainpower of their peers. Peer groups are organized thematically so that studentscan exchange and critique each other’s drafts. In the final weeks of the semester, stu-dents present their research to the entire group for feedback on specific questions ofanalysis and organization.

The fall course readings and lectures incorporate themes of public problem-solving work and leadership influenced by what I have learned over the years aboutboth adaptive leadership and community organizing.

My analysis of grassroots politics has largely been shaped by volunteer workand study of the national community organizing network called the IndustrialAreas Foundation (IAF).3 I share with students a definition for politics that Ilearned years ago from Gerald Taylor, a veteran organizer who is on the nationalstaff and is also southeast regional director for the IAF. ‘‘Politics is the activity inwhich different self-interests within a given unit of rule struggle, negotiate, reachagreements, and seek a sharing of power and authority.’’ As I present this defi-nition, I again highlight key words, and invite students to reflect on and test themeaning of the words as they proceed with their social issue research. Themes fromthis unit of the class include:

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. Understanding self-interest, value differences, conflict, deliberation, compromise.

. Seeing the public dimension of what may seem to be merely private issues.

. Understanding power: what it is, how it works, what a ‘‘power analysis’’ is.

. Building a vital political culture.

At this point the teaching goal is to integrate what we have learned about policy andpolitics with the analytic framework for leadership. I ask students to consider fourquestions (influenced by the leadership framework of Ronald Heifetz) as we applythe principles of adaptive leadership to a case study in class:

1. What is the adaptive challenge?2. How would you focus attention on the central issue(s)?3. What is your strategy for holding the group (institution=social system) in the

learning process?4. How would you ‘‘give the work back’’ to people?

Last fall we read the 9=11 Commission report and used the findings as a case studyfor the adaptive leadership analysis. The report showed a high level of dysfunctionacross the government. In terms of intelligence information, the FBI did not knowwhat it had. The CIA and FBI did not communicate as well as they could have.The State Department had little connection with the other key players. The Depart-ment of Defense was looking outward, not inward. There was a mismatch betweenthe systems we had in place and the remedies we took on 9=11 and its immediateaftermath. We had 15 intelligence agencies that were not communicating well witheach other. Everyone pointed fingers at everyone else. The one defense effort thatworked was a group of unarmed citizens on Flight 93 who improvised.

The general findings of the report state that across the government there werefailures of imagination, policy, capabilities, and management. The recommendationssection asks the question, ‘‘What should Americans expect from their government?’’The answer is realistic objectives, clear guidance, and effective organization. How dowe get these responses? Adaptive challenge. How do we get the Department ofDefense and the Department of Homeland Security talking to each other? Anotheradaptive challenge. What kind of leadership do we need? Leadership with thecapacity to see the whole, that can provide insight about how to use our tools effec-tively and has the courage not to be constrained by turf battles and politics. Yetanother adaptive challenge, but this time perhaps the central one.

As the case study continued, we saw layer after layer of adaptive challenges. Forexample, the report itself did not fully address the question of the president’s role,and the leadership needed by the executive office and Congress to oversee nationalintelligence. The point of doing the case study analysis, though, was to show studentshow to apply the leadership framework to important, immediate, real public issuesthat do not have clear cut, fail-safe answers. And yet there are=were leverage pointsfor action, and the system could be mobilized to move in the right direction. Howwould the students recommend that we proceed? Of course the students could offerno conclusive answers, only hypotheses and hunches. But as we finished the two-week case study, every student in the class, and the instructor, had become deeplyengaged in the analytical process. The value of the exercise lay not only in testingthe systemic analysis but also in creating a highly charged, productive group-learningexperience. In the class discussions, the diversity of viewpoints quickly became thecore asset for problem analysis.

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After analyzing the 9=11 report, several students told me they avidly followedthe news of the intelligence reform process in Congress and the nomination of thenational intelligence director with an ‘‘adaptive leadership’’ lens.

Lessons Learned about Teaching Critical Reflection

1. The centerpiece of the learning is a high-quality, community-based immersionexperience, framed by academic study before and after the experience. Compellingfield-based experiences become the raw material for critical reflection about ahost of personal, interpersonal, and public leadership issues.

2. It is helpful to foster a strong peer learning environment from the beginning of thecritical reflection process. Students can then become central resources to eachother, creating a group level of reflective practice.

3. Continual and consistent mentoring is an indispensable dimension of reflectivepractice. We have found it valuable to give oral and written feedback to studentsat frequent intervals, whether the student is in the field or on campus. Becausementoring can be time and labor intensive, faculty and program staff need tobe deliberate about carving adequate time for it into their schedules.

4. It is crucial to offer students a leadership framework for analyzing complex, sys-temic problems in social and political structures. We have found it effective tointroduce a leadership framework to students before their field-based experiences,but to wait until students complete their community assignments and return toclass to apply the framework to test cases. At that point students have more ofa context for investigating the principles. Case studies from current events canbe useful for teaching the framework to the entire class. Then students are in aposition to apply the analysis individually to their social issue topics.

Conducting our program review has confirmed my sense that it is not easy to teach,learn, or practice the skills of critical reflection. But it is inspiring to see what hap-pens when students are ‘‘switched on’’ to politics and begin to realize, as one studentsaid, ‘‘to engage with the world is to be political.’’

When students are ready to plunge into the learning process, it does not takelong for them to grasp the integral role reflective practice can and should play ineffective public life. Over time, as they complete their internships and discover a lar-ger context for understanding the social issues they encountered, they becomeincreasingly interested in politics and political participation. They begin to realizethat a personal life is not enough and that developing a public self is an imperativeonce we see how we are connected and interdependent with others in this world.They see possibilities for working in communities and creating new conversationsabout the issues that affect our lives. First and foremost, they discover somethingfresh about democracy and understand they have the opportunity to make theirown, unique contributions to our ongoing democratic experiment.

As I continue my work, it never fails to astonish me, year after year, howintensely formative these community-based experiences can be for college students.I will close with a quote from a student’s personal essay about the meaning of serviceand leadership.

My path in life is far from determined, but I know that I want to live mylife by certain principles. First, I want to be an active member of society

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who is not willing simply to ‘‘put up with’’ problems and injustices in mycommunity. I am not one to demonstrate in the streets, but I am one whowould write a strongly worded and carefully reasoned letter to the editoror to an elected representative—and that is no less a form of social action.I feel more comfortable working within the system than outside it. I alsoknow that working within the system often can lead to greater resultsthan agitating from outside, something that many activists do not realizeor want to accept.

Second, I want to take time to reflect. Reflection is recognizing howthings got to be the way they are. It is analyzing what worked and whatdidn’t, and it leads to adaptation for the future.

Finally, I want to keep one principle at the forefront: leadership isservice. Service is linked to social responsibility, and social responsibilityis, for me, the ultimate drive for leadership. Remembering these interre-lationships can help keep me grounded through all my pursuits.

(Student worked with a child advocacy agency in Chicago.)

Notes

1. The balcony-dance floor metaphor is foundational to the teachings of Ronald A.Heifetz, cofounder of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School of Governmentat Harvard University. I had the good fortune of studying with Heifetz for several yearsin graduate school, and his work continues to be a strong influence in my own evolvingleadership pedagogy.

2. Marshall Ganz, Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government,introduces his students to their roles as ‘‘border crossers’’ in his popular class called, ‘‘Organiz-ing People, Power and Change.’’

3. Three books I would recommend about the work of the IAF are: Going Public, byMichael Gecan; Roots for Radicals, by Edward T. Chambers and Michael A. Cowan; andUpon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church, by Samuel C. Freedman.

References

Heifetz, Ronald A. 1994. Leadership Without Easy Answers. Cambridge: The Belknap Press ofHarvard University Press.

Heifetz, Ronald A. and Linsky, Martin. 2003. Leadership on the Line. Boston: HarvardBusiness School Press.

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks. 2004. The 9=11 Commission Report: Final Reportof the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York:W.W. Norton.

Schall, Ellen. 1995. ‘‘Learning to Love the Swamp.’’ Journal of Policy Analysis and Manage-ment 14(2): 202–220.

Themba, Makini. 1999. Making Policy, Making Change: How Communities are Taking Lawinto Their Own Hands. Oakland, California: Chardon Press, p. 3.

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