CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF REFLECTION IN THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE

Abstract

The article presents the results of an analysis of scientific sources that have defined conceptual approaches to the study of reflection. The relevance of the research has been determined by the growing need of modern individuals to comprehend their own experiences, actions, and values under conditions of social instability and military challenges, which has increased the significance of reflection as a universal mechanism of self-knowledge, self-regulation, and holistic understanding of life experience. The evolution of views on this phenomenon has been shown – from philosophical interpretation as a means of self-knowledge and spiritual growth to psychological understanding as an internal mechanism of self-regulation, self-analysis, and awareness of one’s own actions. The psychological content of reflection has been shown to encompass a wide range of characteristics and manifestations, permeating all spheres of mental activity and determining the diversity of its scientific interpretations and research approaches. Reflection has been found to integrate purposefulness and goal-setting, the ability to anticipate results, choose means and methods of action, predict changes in conditions and one’s own behavior, plan and program activity over time, and include control, self-control, and correction that ensure the coordination of real results with set goals. The main contemporary directions of studying the phenomenon of reflection – cooperative, communicative, personal, intellectual, existential, and cultural – have been identified, and their main characteristics and functions have been revealed. Based on the generalization of scientific approaches to its study, reflection has been characterized as a complex process that involves going beyond habitual modes of thinking and immediate reality in order to reinterpret a problem situation from a new, higher standpoint. It has been shown that reflection is directed toward development, change, and productive thinking that opposes the reproduction of learned actions, and presupposes an individual’s ability to explain their own activity and thinking in terms of their internal formation and dynamic development. It has been concluded that, within the contemporary scientific discourse, reflection is regarded as a metaquality and meta-process that ensure the development of self-consciousness, critical thinking, creativity, and conscious self-development of personality.