Beyond Reflective Practice

New Approaches to Professional Lifelong Learning

Helen Bradbury, Nick Frost, Sue Kilminster, Miriam Zukas, Helen Bradbury, Nick Frost, Sue Kilminster, Miriam Zukas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415467926
• eBook ISBN: 9781135218065
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Adult Education

Reflective practice has moved from the margins to the mainstream of professional education. However, in this process, its radical potential has been subsumed by individualistic, rather than situated, understandings of practice. Presenting critical perspectives that challenge the current paradigm, this book aims to move beyond reflective practice. It proposes new conceptualisations and offers fresh approaches relevant across professions. Contributors include both academics and practitioners concerned with the training and development of professionals.

Definitions of reflection (which are often implicit) often focus on the individual's internal thought processes and responsibility for their actions. The individual - what they did/thought/felt – is emphasised with little recognition of context, power dynamics or ideological challenge. This book presents the work of practitioners, educators, academics and researchers who see this as problematic and are moving towards a more critical approach to reflective practice.

With an overview from the editors and fourteen chapters considering new conceptualisations, professional perspectives and new practices, Beyond Reflective Practice examines what new forms of professional reflective practice are emerging. It examines in particular the relationships between reflective practitioners and those upon whom they practise. It looks at the ways in which the world of professional work has changed and the ways in which professional practice needs to change to meet the needs of this new world. It will be relevant for those concerned with initial and ongoing professional learning, both in work and in educational contexts.

Conceptual challenges

Miriam Zukas, Helen Bradbury, Nick Frost and Sue Kilminster

DOI: 10.4324/9780203873175-2

Introduction

This book begins in familiar territory: many have already criticised the concepts of reflection and reflective practice, and the ways in which these concepts have been taken up by initial and continuing professional education. The contributors to the first part of the book collectively outline these main critiques, which are drawn on by many authors in later chapters. The critiques are summarised in the first section below. The authors then utilise a range of theoretical resources in order to explore alternative conceptualisations which either build on reflection and reflective practice and/or offer fresh conceptual tools for understanding professional learning and practice. These new conceptualisations are summarised in the second section below. Finally, in the third section, we summarise the ways in which the authors have expanded the focal points for reflection and reflective practice to take account of more complex contexts for and interpretations of professional learning and practice.

Critique of reflective practice to date

As David Boud outlines in his chapter, notions of reflection and reflective practice were quickly taken up by those involved in professional education from the late 1980s onwards. But Nick Frost suggests that what is striking is that, just as these ideas were gaining in popularity across a range of professions, a number of trends were developing which radically changed the ways in which professionals operated and were regarded in ‘late modernity’. These included globalisation, informationalism and the evolution of a networked society. Whilst these all affect the contexts and conditions for professional practice, a fourth change, the rise of managerialism, risk and the audit society, changed the social contract with professionals, and therefore the ways in which professionals work today.

Whilst the working conditions for professionals have changed, so too have our understandings of reflection and reflective practice. The critiques might be divided into those which deal with the ideas themselves, and those which are concerned with the uses to which reflection and reflective practice have been put, particularly within professional education. Boud summarises those critiques which deal with the ideas themselves as follows. First, some criticise the notion of reflection as unclear and ask if, in the end, it is any different from thinking. Second, what might be called the critical critique asks whether reflection and reflective practice are, in and of themselves, ‘good things’ unless the reflection questions taken-for-granted assumptions and is critical (see Jane Fook's and Linden West's chapters for a development of this critique). Third, the idea of the individual professional, working as a separate being and engaging in individual reflection, is also critiqued. Some argue that professional work is characterised by team working and cross-professional collaboration and that the original notion of reflection does not take sufficient account of groups. However, Fook tempers this critique, arguing that we need to analyse carefully the relationship between the individual professional and the processes leading to changes in practice.

Others have suggested that the problems lie in the ways in which reflection is assumed to happen inside people's heads. Frost believes that some schools of reflective practice have marginalised the wider social context and are therefore what he calls ‘idealist’ in their approach – that is, they have understood reflection as something that happens subjectively in the head of the individual practitioner. Linden West also believes that this is a problem but his critique stems from an argument that many approaches are superficial and formulaic because they omit consideration of the anxieties and defences associated with learning and professional work. Stephen Billett and Jennifer Newton also reject the practitioner's head as the site for learning, arguing that learning arises as part of workplace practice, rather than separate from that practice. In contrast, Fook argues that there is a place for learning which is separate from the workplace – she believes that professionals need to be able to maintain their independence of a specific workplace setting and gives reasons for this such as the need to equip professionals with the ability to make sense of workplace cultures and organisational values.

Notwithstanding the critiques of reflection and reflective practice, contributors also question the ways in which such notions have been put to work in education and in continuing professional development. Boud suggests that one reason for the ready acceptance of these ideas within education lay in the individualised view of learning shared by those responsible for professional education. Like others throughout the book, he questions the assumed relationship between attempts to promote reflection and reflective practice itself, making the point that such interventions are often antithetical when they turn reflective processes into procedures or attempt to assess them. Like all the authors in this first part, he rejects a move on the part of some educators to proceduralise reflection through checklists and recipes of one kind or another. But he does not want to reject the concept altogether: he believes that reflection enables us to engage in making sense of experience in complex situations. However, he recommends a turn to practice, as do Billett and Newton.

Fresh conceptualisations

So far we have considered the general critiques proposed by contributors in this first part of the book. Now we turn to the ways in which each refines reflection and/or reflective practice, sometimes redefining, and sometimes proposing new forms of professional learning and engagement in practice.

West's development is drawn from three empirical studies with professionals where he explored, through a series of interviews over an extended period, what he calls auto/biographical forms of reflexive learning. Recognising that reflective practices may lack a critical edge (see the critique above), West offers the concept of ‘really reflexive practice’ in which ‘criticality can be connected with feeling, self with the other, one biography and another’. The interviews with professionals offered a space for them to combine self-knowledge and critical awareness in more holistic forms of understanding such that they ‘[represented] a meeting point between historical and cultural forces and structuring processes, and struggles for agency, selfhood and integrity in a life’.

Fook's central concept is ‘critical reflection’, and the relationship between individual and social change. She suggests that the analysis of what is meant by ‘critical’ is crucial. For her, there are two aspects: one which focuses on unearthing deeper assumptions in order to bring about transformative change, and the other which is concerned with an analysis of power and power relations. However, unlike some versions of critical reflection (such as Freire's), Fook makes the point that social change has to be understood through individual action – ‘individual experience may be seen as a microcosm of the social’. Thus critical reflection enables her to theorise how professional identity might be transformed and might, in turn, translate into new (or reaffirmed) professional practices.

Billett and Newton move away from all discussion of reflection and reflective practice to invent a new model of ‘learning practice’ to consider professional learning. They propose that we need to focus on learning in practice, rather than learning as an activity which takes place separate from practice. From this perspective, in order to promote learning, we need to consider on the one hand the affordances of the workplace for learning. This might include invitations to participate and to learn through workplace activities and engagement, including close and indirect forms of guidance. On the other hand, it will depend on the quality of an individual professional's participation in work (and learning). If professionals are engaged and learning intentionally, and the workplace provides opportunities to engage in new activities and to refine what has been learnt, with direct sources of knowledge and indirect guidance, then Billett and Newton's learning practice can be said to be operating effectively. In this way, learning and practice are integrated.

Boud too turns to practice in his refinement. He concentrates on the need to respond to a number of aspects of professional practice in the development of the concept of reflection. For example, like West, he recognises that practice is embodied; like Frost, he acknowledges the changing context of professional practice, although he focuses more on its collective nature than does Frost; and like Billett and Newton, he understands practice to be contextualised; but in addition he also recognises a new emphasis on multi-disciplinary/trans-disciplinarity in practice and an emphasis on practice being co-produced with those with whom it is conducted. Taking all this into account, he introduces the notion of ‘productive reflection’ which is organisational rather than individual in intent; collective rather than individual in orientation; generative rather than instrumental in focus; connecting learning and work; involving multiple stakeholders and connecting players; and, most importantly, recognised as an open and unpredictable process which changes over time.

New terrains for reflection and reflective practice

These first five contributions not only suggest fresh or revitalised concepts to move beyond reflective practice. They move away (albeit in different directions) from the image of the professional as a decontextualised, asocial, rational and autonomous professional being to much more complex understandings of professional learning and practice. West challenges the process of reflection as an individualised activity by suggesting that the research process itself might afford new spaces for auto/biographical exploration and understanding. His psychodynamic perspective confronts assumptions about the rational professional, inviting deeper and more extended exploration than is usually understood by reflection. Fook insists on considering the individual in a social context, rather than as somehow independent of biographical and social concerns. Frost also resituates the professional, this time in a fast-moving social world in which issues of diversity, challenges to professional knowledge, and rapidly changing organisational practices and values all demand ongoing learning on the part of the professional.

Billett and Newton assert the interdependence between the individual and their workplaces both in terms of learning and in changing practice. They do not believe that reflection is sufficient to understand ‘learning practice’. Nor do they believe that the workplace activities and settings should take priority. Instead, they make the case for an interdependent relationship. And in this turn to practice, Boud reminds us of other aspects which we need to take into account if we are to understand professional learning: team-based and/or collective approaches to work; relationships with clients and others with whom we co-produce our professional practice; and embodied practice itself, which has so often been neglected in favour of the isolated mind.

Chapter 1 Professionalism and social change

The implications of social change for the ‘reflective practitioner’

Nick Frost

DOI: 10.4324/9780203873175-3

Introduction

This chapter aims to provide a wider social and political context for the chapters that follow. It argues that the space in which the modern professional both ‘practises’ and ‘reflects’ has been fundamentally restructured over the last thirty years, a period sometimes referred to as ‘late modernity’ (Parton 2006). The chapter outlines some of the important social changes that have taken place and analyses the implications for critical reflection in the late-modern era. The chapter draws on the experience of the ‘human-service’ professions in particular, although it is suggested that the analysis has implications throughout a wider range of professional work.

First of all it needs to be established that the environment in which the modern professional operates has of late been subject to rapid, persistent and fundamental change. It is argued here that as we live through the late-modern era we can reflect on four major forms of change in the wider social environment. These changes are identified as: globalisation, informationalism, networking and managerialism.

Once the case has been made that these trends are significant, it will be argued that social change has fundamental significance for the reflective professional practitioner. It will be argued that some schools of ‘reflective practice’ have become idealist in their approach. By this we mean that they have seen reflection as something that happens subjectively in the head of the individual practitioner, and thus the role of the wider social environment is underplayed. In contrast we argue here for a realist view of critical reflection – that is, that it should be grounded in the material social reality of professional practice.

Four major forms of social change

Initially the paper argues the case for the significance of wider social change for our understanding of professionalism.

Globalisation

Worldwide developments, often identified by the shorthand of globalisation, have had a profound impact on forms of culture, identity, economy and governance in late-modern societies. Giddens defines these changes as follows.

Globalisation can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa. This is a dialectical process because such local happenings may move in an obverse direction from the very distanciated relations that shape them. Local transformation is as much a part of globalisation as the lateral extension of social connections across time and space.

(1991: 64)

These widespread social changes help to redefine the nature of professionalism as the professions confront changes arising from globalisation. As Giddens points out, time and space have been compressed in the period of globalisation. Thus we can communicate across the globe in real time, retrieve information from almost everywhere in the world and we may confront issues and challenges from many cultures within even one small neighbourhood of one city (Castells 1996).

Professionals therefore have to hold a worldwide reference point – we have to utilise the web, we may travel to conferences all over the world and we may have to understand cultures from diverse corners of the globe. As a consequence, quite literally, the space for reflection has been restructured and is global, diverse, changing and complex. This implies that reflection is a form of practice based in material reality – not simply an idealist form of reflection that simply goes on ‘within the head’ of the individual professional.

Informationalism

Perhaps the most profound change that has had an impact on contemporary professional practice has been the explosion in the availability and dissemination of information. Castells refers to contemporary society as an information society, where informationalism is: ‘the attribute of a specific form of social organisation in which information generation, processing, and transmission become the fundamental sources of productivity and power’ (Castells 1996: 21n).

The modern professional is surrounded by information – there has been an explosion in web-based information, professional journals, broadcast and printed information. Government, particularly in the UK, has been ‘hyper-active’ in producing new policy initiatives and guidance (see Fawcett et al. 2004). Handling the volume of information is a major challenge to the modern professional. As a result it becomes very difficult to feel comfortable with one's own sense of ‘expertise’, as there is always a new book we have not read, or a research report with which we are not really familiar. A recent Google search of ‘reflective practice’, for example, comes up with over half a million hits. We have to sift a wide range of diverse...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Introduction and overview
• Part I Conceptual challenges
• Part II Professional perspectives
• Part III New practices
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index