CRITICAL REFLECTION
Adults shape their understanding of new situations by looking through the lens of tacit, often unconscious belief systems that Mezirow (1991, 1995, 1997) calls meaning perspectives (or more recently, habits of mind) and meaning schemas (or more recently, points of view).
Mezirow defines meaning perspectives as follows:... a general frame of reference, set of schemas, worldview, or personal paradigm. A meaning perspective involves a set of psychocultural assumptions, for the most part culturally assimilated but including intentionally learned theories, that serve as one of three sets of codes significantly shaping sensation and delimiting perception and cognition: Sociolinguistic (e.g., social norms, cultural and language codes, ideologies, theories), psychological (e.g., repressed parental prohibitions which continue to block ways of feeling and acting, personality traits) and epistemic (e.g., learning, cognitive and intelligence styles, sensory learning preferences, focus on wholes or parts). (Mezirow, 1995, p. 42. Italics added.)
Meaning perspectives are broad, guiding frames of mind that influence the development of more focused meaning schemas. Meaning schemas are “the specific set of beliefs, knowledge, judgment, attitude, and feeling which shape a particular interpretation, as when we think of an Irishman, a cathedral, a grandmother, or a conservative or when we express a point of view, an ideal or a way of acting” (Mezirow, 1995, p. 43).
Meaning perspectives or schemas are the containers that shape our experiences. These containers are taken for granted and therefore are hard to see, let alone question. That is why it is so difficult, for example, for a White person to see the ways in which she is racist or a male to understand how his actions could be seen as sexist. In addition, through this questioning a person also challenges the basic assumptions of one’s group and culture. Mezirow’s work points to the need for critical reflection, but he does not give us much practical advice about how to probe deeply into assumptions. Action Science provides these tools.