The Process of Reflection
14 they find the truth about their learning. They examine their learning whether it
meets their learning needs which lead them to take on the responsibility of the truth they have found.
Self-awareness is one of the important components of Emotional Intelligence. Lier 1996 describes self-awareness as knowing what you are doing
and why. In this research, self-awareness deals with knowing and examining what we have done in the learning activity. Self-awareness in intelligence is ability to
recognize emotions and sort out feeling, aware of the existence of emotion, know the strengths and the limit of self. Students need self-awareness to develop their
quality of learning process. Personal development starts at a point of self- awareness; in fact, it may as well be the ultimate end Johns, 2005. Self-
awareness makes students understand that they need to change their destructive habits. In addition, students who have good self-awareness will develop
themselves effectively. It is impossible to develop and grow themselves with a lack of self-awareness Johns, 2005.
Besides, Deci 1975 states that the awareness can satisfy the intrinsic need for feelings of competence and self-determination or any of the specific motives
that develop out of the basic motivational propensity and increase the positive affect. Conceptually, the awareness cause the person to establish goals which he
expects will lead to the rewards, intrinsic or extrinsic which lead to satisfaction. According to Brown 2007, when students perform certain activities for internal
interest and satisfaction, it refers to intrinsic motivation.
15 Moreover, Gebhard and Oprandy 1999 explain four avenues to self-
awareness namely problem solving, seeing what happens, seeing what it is, and clarifying feelings. The first avenue is problem solving. Being aware of their
learning, students need to solve problems they face. As an instance, there is a student who gets a bad mark for a particular subject. The student tries to
understand what causes the bad mark. The student finds that he rarely studies the subject. Then he tries to solve the problem by studying more to understand better.
Here, the student changes his behavior and gains awareness of his own learning and practice to solve his problem.
The second avenue is seeing what happens in the learning can be done by trying the opposite to the usual things. For example, a student usually reads the
materials before the class that helps him a lot in his earning. To see what happens in the learning, he needs to do the opposite by coming to class without reading the
materials in advance. Through this, self-awareness can be obtained. The third avenue is seeing what it is. In this avenue, there are two-lane
avenues to obtain the self-awareness. The first is contrasting what we do with what we think we do. To accomplish this, keeping record of what we have done is
needed. Here, students can obtain their self-awareness by writing a reflection. The second lane is considering what we believe in light of what we do. It deals with
finding out whether student’s beliefs match the actual processes or not. For example, a student believes that he has done the best he could in the exam. He
believes that he will get good mark. In fact, he doesn’t get good mark for his exam which is contradictory to his belief. Thus, to get self-awareness of the learning,
16 students can see what the learning is by contrasting what we do with what we
think and considering what we believe in what we do. The last avenue to self-awareness is clarifying the feelings. By exploring
their feelings of the learning, students are able to gain learning awareness. The feelings about thing are able to affect the behavior. Hence, clarifying the
emotional side is needed and reflections are suited to this avenue.