The Effects of Rationale Awareness on Individual Reflection Processes in Virtual Group Activities

Reflection is an important part of professional work. Researchers and education practitioners have explored various ways of promoting the reflective thinking process towards educating reflective practitioners. Although group work and group learning activities have become increasingly important in modern society and education systems, an insufficient amount of effort has been put towards cultivating reflective thinking processes in the group setting. In addressing this research gap, they examined one reflection technique, namely, the technique of documenting and sharing rationales, in a virtual workspace for group learning. The authors studied the impact of this technique on the group activities through an exploratory classroom study focusing on the effects of one’s awareness of the others’ rationales, i.e., rationale awareness. In this paper, they reported the findings about the effects of rationale awareness on individual reflection processes in the activities. The authors’ findings suggest that when rationales are articulated and shared in such an explicit manner (e.g., having a dedicated group space to present shared rationales), the development of individual members’ reasoning skills seems to be very much influenced by the other members’ capability or willingness to reason.