FIFTH EDITION

Reflective
Practice
Writing and Professional Development

GILLIE BOLTON WITH

RUSSELL DELDERFIELD

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 SAGE Publications Ltd  Gillie Bolton and Russell Delderfield 2018
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 Dedicated to all who heal, care and educate.
Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
(Albert Einstein)
Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like
books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the
answers, which cannot be given to you. Live the questions now.
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

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00_Bolton_Prelims.indd 6 1/18/2018 10:10:01 AM
 Contents

About the Authors xi

Foreword, by Stephen Brookfield xii
Preface to the Fifth Edition xv
Acknowledgements xviii
New to this Edition xx
Key Terms (Glossary) xxi
Online Resources xxiv

1 Reflective Practice: an Introduction 1

Donald Schön’s Swampy Lowlands 3
Seeking a Route 6
Reflection-In- and On-Practice: Our Map for the
Swampy Lowlands 8
Reflection and Reflexivity: Demystification 9
Reflective Practice: a Political and Social Responsibility 13
Valuing diversity 16
Making Sense of Experience 16
Blocks and Limitations to Reflection 19
Understanding the Name: Reflective Practice 21

2 Values and Principles of Reflective Practice 25

What Are Ethical Values? 26
Values and Principles of Reflective Practice 29

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 viii  Reflective practice

Certain Uncertainty; Serious Playfulness; Unquestioning

Questioning 29
Ethical Relationships 33
Ethics and Students 33
Ethics and Clients etc. 34
Challenging Emotions 35
Reflective Awareness: Responsibility, Authority
and Boundaries 39
Mindfulness 40
Forgiveness 41
Risk and Safety 42
Safety, Risk and Boundaries on a Master’s Course 43
Focus on Reflection 46

  3 Theories and Contexts of Reflective Practice 51

Theories, Frameworks, Models of Reflection: Explanations 52
Altering Critical Perception 53
Single and Double Loops 55
Cycles and Spirals 56
Structured Questions 59
Hierarchical and Transformative Models 59
Theories, Frameworks, Models of Reflection: Application 60
Contexts of Reflective Practice 62
Personal Development Plans and Portfolios (PDP) 62
E-portfolios 63
Video 66
Action Learning or Research 67
Methods from the Arts and Other Media 68
Developmental Processes Involving Reflective Practice:
Supervision 70
Mentoring 71
Co-peer Mentoring 73
Paying Attention 75

  4 The Power of Narrative 78

Reflective Practice Narratives 80
Narratives of Practice 83
Autobiographical Reflective Stories 85
Our Storied Nature 88
The Relationship Between Life-as-Lived and Narrative 91
From Uncritical Storymaking to Critical Reflective Narratives 92

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 Contents  ix

 5 Perspective 97
Perspective and Reflective Practice 97
The Narrator 100
Omniscient, Reliable and Unreliable Narrators 101
Ghosts and Shadows from the Past 103
Perspective and Truth; Fact and Fiction 104
Clients’ Confidentiality and Privacy 107
Using Genre to Develop Perspective 108
Fantasy, Folk Tale, Fable, Myth 109
Writing for Children 111
Parody 113
Poetry 114

  6 The Power of Metaphor 121

What Is Metaphor? 124
Metaphor at Work 125
Using Metaphor to Develop Reflection and Reflexivity 128
Image and Reflection 133

  7 Writing as Reflection 135

Writing to Learn 138
The Discipline of Writing 140
Finding the Writer’s Voice 142
Writing about Events, or Abstract Musing 144
Perception and Questioning 147
Reading and Sharing Writing 150
Silence 153
Reflective Writing and Artistry 154
Writing: an Ancient Power 154

  8 How to Do Reflective and Reflexive Writing 157

Introduction to Writing First Draft Reflections 157
Trust the Writing Hand 157
Suspend Your Disbelief 158
How to Start: the Five Stages 159
Stage 1: The Six-minute Write 159
Stage 2: The Incident, Narrative, Story 161
Stage 3: Read and Respond 165
Stage 4: Sharing Writing with a Peer(s) 168
Stage 5: Developing Writing 171

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 x  Reflective practice

Reflective Writing for Assignments 174

Developing the Five Stages 176
Lists 176
Unsent Letters 176
Dialogue to Develop Aspects of Ourselves 177
Internal Mentor 177
Internal Saboteur 179
Writer’s Block 180

  9 Reflective Practice Journals 183

Logs, Diaries and Journals 186
The Reflective Practice Journal: an Explanation 188
Reflective Practice Journals and Ethical Values 190
The Thing 191
Types of Writing 192
How to Write: the Four Stages 193
When, Where, For and with Whom to Write a Journal 198
Journals as a Course Element 200
Modelling Critical Reflexivity 203

10 Assessment and Evaluation 205

Assessment of Reflective Practice Journals 207
Assessment: Queries, Problems and Pitfalls 208
Issues with Grading Reflective and Reflexive Writing 210
Assessment Solutions 211
Evaluation 214

11 Reflective Writing and Team Development 219

The Growth of a Team 221
Some Boundaries 222
More Stories: Evaluation 223
More Team-Building Stories 224

12 Reflection on Reflection 231

References 240
Index 263

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 1
Reflective Practice:
an Introduction

Reflective practice is introduced and described, its social and political

responsibility outlined. Donald Schön’s theory that reflection-in-, and
on-action are essential to inform us how to work in conditions of
uncertainty is outlined. Reflection and reflexivity, common blocks to
them, and how to discover just what each practitioner needs to reflect
upon, are defined and explained.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest;

second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the
bitterest. (Confucius, quoted in Hinett, 2002, p. v)

There are in our existence spots of time /… whence … our minds

Are nourished and invisibly repaired; /… Such moments
Are scattered everywhere. (Wordsworth, [1880] 2004, p. 208)

How can we develop the practitioner from the practice? (GB)

How can we know the dancer from the dance? (Yeats, 1962, p. 128)

Reflective practice is a state of mind, an ongoing attitude to life and work,

the pearl grit in the oyster of practice and education; danger lies in it being
a separate curriculum element with a set of exercises. Brookfield calls it

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 2  Reflective practice

‘a reflexive habit … second nature’ (2009). It enables us to make illuminative

sense of where we are in our own practice, and our relation to our profes-
sion and our institution: we don’t travel far with it. Yet it makes the difference
between 20 years of experience and merely one year of experience repeated
20 times (Beaty, 1997, p. 8).
Reflective practice can enable (future) professionals to learn from experi-
ence about: themselves; their studies, their work; the way they relate to
home and work, significant others and wider society and culture; the way
social and cultural structures (e.g. institutions) are formed and control us.
Indeed, having the ability to reflect is a key element of employability in
today’s professions (Wharton, 2017). Professionals face complex and unpre-
dictable situations; they need complex and diverse reflective and reflexive
processes. Engaging in these critically will be reflected in the quality of their
work or studies (see Whelan and Gent, 2013). It brings greater unity and
wholeness of experience to the practitioner and greater empathy between
them and their client. Job satisfaction will increase, and work-related stress
decrease (Alarcon and Lyons, 2011).

Perhaps the most accessible form of freedom, the most subjectively enjoyed,
and the most useful to human society consists of being good at your job and
therefore taking pleasure in doing it – I really believe that to live happily you
have to have something to do, but it shouldn’t be too easy, or else something
to wish for, but not just any old wish; something there’s a hope of achieving.
(Levi, 1988, p. 139)
If it wasn’t for reflective practice, [stuff] would undoubtedly go around and
around in my mind.
It is much more helpful to get it out of my head and onto the paper and look
back.
I feel I can genuinely ask my clients, ‘unpick unpick unpick, cry, open up’…
because I have done it, I know what I am asking you to do is really difficult,
but I also know that it is a really helpful.
You relate the clinical work to the theory in reflective practice, and that gives
you that 360° knowing, ‘now I understand what the book is talking about’.
(Reflective practitioners quoted in Collins, 2013, pp. 54, 83, 84, 88)

Reflective practice can give strategies to bring things out into the open,
and frame appropriate and searching questions never asked before. It can
provide relatively safe and confidential ways to explore and express expe-
riences otherwise difficult or impossible to communicate. It can challenge
assumptions, ideological illusions, damaging social and cultural biases,
inequalities; and it questions personal behaviours that perhaps silence the

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    3

voices of others or otherwise marginalise them. This book consistently

enables enquiry into:

• what we know and wish or need to explore further

• what we know but do not know we know
• what we do not know and want to know
• what we think, feel, believe, value, understand about our role and
boundaries
• how our actions match up with what we believe
• how to value and take into account personal feelings.

Practitioners explore and experiment with difficult areas of experience,

such as:

• how to perceive from others’ perspective

• how to value others’ perspective, however different they are from us
• what we can change in our context; how to work with what we cannot
change
• how others perceive us, and their feelings and thoughts about events,
and our actions
• why we become stressed, and its impact on life and practice
• how to counteract seemingly given social, cultural and political structures.

We know a great deal more than we are aware, absorbing information

unwittingly. We have challenging material shoved into boxes mentally
labelled do not open. We have not celebrated and learned from positive
experiences (Ghaye, 2011).

Donald Schön’s Swampy Lowlands

Schön (1987) described professional practice as being in a flat place where
we can’t see very far. Everyone would love to work on a high place from
which all the near valleys and far hills are in view. Everyday life, work and
learning rarely have signposts, definitive maps, or friendly police to help
with directions. The teacher in the classroom, clinician in the consulting
room, healthcare professional with a patient, social worker in the client’s
home, lawyer with a tricky issue, member of the clergy, or the police
officer themselves, relies on knowledge, skills and experience, and what
they can glean quickly from immediate sources. Each one is rarely certain
what is needed now. We cannot stand outside ourselves and our work
(from the cliff), in order to be objective and clear. We work and learn in

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 4  Reflective practice

the ‘swampy lowlands’ (Schön, 1987) by trial and error, learning from our
mistakes. Everyone gets it wrong sometimes and has to live and work with
the consequences.
Reflective practice makes maps. Everyone needs thorough methods to
sort through and learn from muddles, uncertainties, unclarities, mistakes
and anxieties. All need to perceive hitherto unnoticed issues, which will
otherwise cause greater and greater problems. How do we know which
way to go, to avoid sinking into Schön’s bog? How do we know which
unclear path to take at a junction as they all seem to lead further into the
swamp?
I remind us of Schön’s powerful image because we cannot climb out of
the lowland, but do the best we can down here. There often seems no clear
reason for choosing this path through tussocks or that one over a muddy
stream. What and who can we trust here? That bright green grass looks
inviting, but I sink up to my knees in water. What is my compass?
We do have compasses and maps: Schön (in Argyris and Schön, 1974)
called them our theories-in-use, which he said we develop within our
practice as ‘a conversation with the situation’ (Schön, 1983, p. 76). But
these maps are indistinct because they are tacitly rather than consciously
used: our actions are governed by habitual patterns and ways of being.
We use our theories-in-use unwittingly. If I were questioned about an
action I would respond with espoused theory which I have thought out,
but is possibly at variance with what I actually do.
So to develop my practice, gain greater effectiveness, I need to observe and
understand my theories-in-use, what I actually do, alongside my espoused
theories, what I believe I do. And as far as is practically possible I need to
bring these into congruence (close to being the same thing). What equipment
can I rely upon in this foggy swamp? Where, when and how do I begin?
I begin with reflective practice. We really are thrown onto our own
resources in the everyday work and study environment, and have to trust
what equipment we have: reflective practice can provide the very best.
Schön said the process of trial and error and learning from mistakes is art-
istry. The reliable map and accurate compass are reflection and reflexivity.
Schön gave us the swamp image because he knew that all education
requires entering a place of not-knowing, of having to ask significant ques-
tions to find out. The traveller on the educative journey through difficult
terrain has to trust their few pieces of equipment. They might have helpers
along the way, but no definitive guide. Being guided with certainty through
the swamp would not be educative.
We learn by doing, through the very struggle to make our own judge-
ments, not by being told where, when and how to turn, who to trust and

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    5

what is the correct path. The reflective educative process is one of each
individual constantly asking why of everything, from the individual case to
the running of the whole organisation. Albert Einstein ([1929] 2002) was
successful partly because he doggedly and constantly asked questions
with seemingly obvious answers. Childlike, he asked why?, how?, what?,
rather than accepting givens or assumptions. He had the confidence to
stay with and be open to: ‘love[ing] the questions themselves like locked
rooms’, and certainly ‘liv[ing] the questions’ (Rilke, [1934] 1993, p. 35).
There are no single answers to ‘How could I have done better?’ Yet more
questions arise instead, such as ‘If I had done this, which I think would
have been better, what would the patient/doctor have felt?’ Answers tend
to put a stop to the enquiring process; more and more pertinent questions
take us deeper (see David et  al., 2013). As Master’s student Ann com-
mented: ‘No wonder it all takes so much time!’ Exploring issues in depth
and width can take time. Though enlightenment can arrive after 15 minutes’
writing, as you might discover here.
Now might be a good time to check out what reflective practice writing
is. You can find a quick summary in the online resources.
Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bolton5e.

Write to Learn
You may have noticed this in the Preface of the book. Each chapter
includes Write to Learn. These exercises can take very different
lengths of time. Some are very affirming, some challenging; all result in
positive writing. Each can be done individually or by a facilitated
group: many are useful for initial group forming. See Chapter 8 for
more advice on starting writing. For now:

•• This is unplanned, off-the-top-of-the-head writing; try to allow

yourself to write anything.
•• Whatever you write will be right; there is no critic, red pen poised.
•• All that matters here is the writing’s content; if you need to adjust
grammar and so on, you can – later.
•• Ignore the Inner Saboteur who niggles about proper form and
grammar, or says your writing is rubbish.
•• This writing is private, belongs to the writer, who will be its first
reader.
(Continued)

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 6  Reflective practice

•• No one else need ever read it, unless the writer decides to share
it with trusted confidential other(s).
•• Before doing any of the exercises here, or in other chapters, do a
six-minute-write about anything to limber up before starting (see
Chapter 8).
•• Reread all the writing with care and attention before reading it out
to anyone.
•• Writing can then be shared fruitfully with another or a group, if this
seems appropriate.

Advice for facilitators

It helps the process if:

•• each writer reads silently back to themselves before reading to a

group or partner
•• each person knows at the start they will be invited to read out
•• everyone is offered the option of not reading if it feels inappropriate
•• you know that many exercises occasion laughter, some tears: both
are fine
•• a facilitator gives instructions in numbered order
•• participants finish writing each section before hearing the next
•• minimal explanations are given: people usually ‘play the game’ if
they trust the facilitator.

Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bolton5e for more tips and resources

Try this next exercise to get you started.

1.1 Names
1. Write anything about your name: memories, impressions, likes,
hates, what people have said, your nicknames over the years:
anything.
2. Write a selection of names you might have preferred to your own.
3. Write a letter to yourself from one of these chosen names.

Seeking a Route
Route-finding equipment or information can only help when the traveller
knows their destination. One cannot find the solution without having
identified the problem accurately and precisely. This is the conundrum of

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    7

reflective practice. We want to become good experienced practitioners.

But to do this, we have to discover which specific areas of practice we
need to improve, and why. We find out by exploring, experimenting and
discovering, with uncertainty as the central paradox. Dewey (1933a) said
doubt and uncertainty is an essential element of effective reflection.
Focusing upon personal beliefs, theories, values-in-use, and reflecting
upon them, is tricky. So much we have always thought or believed is taken
for granted – ‘everyone in my workplace thinks this way’. The very struc-
ture of language creates assumptions about things being immutable: this is
how they are. Yet we have only to widen our perspective to perceive that
other cultures do it differently, believe differently.
We all know colleagues who cannot say ‘I don’t know’, believing they
act the ‘right way’. Their effectiveness is severely diminished by their
inflexible need to be right. Schön called these people Technical
Rationalists, who assume they work on the cliff-top where they see widely
and can know what’s going on, what the outcomes will be and that eve-
ryone agrees with them (or should do). We neither respect them nor trust
their judgement, knowing (even if they do not) that they are indeed in the
lowlands with us.
Reflective practice helps us accept uncertainty which is the route to
effective learning and professional artistry. It enables us to say ‘I don’t
know what’s going on here, and I want to find out’. We find what kind of
practitioner we are, and connect ourselves with our practitioner-selves
(Brookfield, 2017). All this gives confidence and strength to:

• let go of certainty, in a safe enough environment

• look for direction without knowing where we need to go
• begin to act without knowing how.

This essential uncertainty is hard for many; practice and organisational

contexts influence the effectiveness of reflection (Wilson, 2013). I found
some senior practitioners heavily defended, using self-protective reason-
ing as proof against uncertainty and doubt. Their sense of themselves in
their role was paradoxically too uncertain for them to lay it open to
doubt and enquiry. This uncertainty is also difficult for students. ‘Pre-
service teachers want answers and methods. They want to be certain, to
know: but certainty does not generate the flexibly enquiring attitude
required by learning. In [professional] education, working towards habits
of uncertainty and puzzlement is need[ed] … [In fact] certainty goes
down as experiential knowledge goes up …’ (Phillion and Connelly,
2004, p. 468).

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 8  Reflective practice

Our technologically and digitally based culture has not valued reflection
and still less reflexivity, where market place, machine and computer meta-
phors are paramount. They have been ghettoised as soft and fluffy (feminine),
a waste of valuable professional time, because they are unmalleable by mas-
culine processes of commodification, nor can they be reduced to component
mechanical parts, or tested by tick boxes. Reflection and reflexivity are
sophisticated human processes, requiring sophisticated educative support:

The goal of education, if we are to survive, is the facilitation of change and

learning. The only person who is educated is the person who has learned
how to learn; the person who has learned how to adapt and change; the
person who has realised that no knowledge is secure, that only the process
of seeking knowledge gives a basis for security. Changingness, a reliance on
process rather than on static knowledge, is the only thing that makes any
sense as a goal for education. (Rogers, 1969, p. 152)

Reflective practice can increase:

• acceptance of, and confidence with, the essential complexity, uncer-

tainty and perspectival nature of professional life
• reflexive critique of personal values, ethics, prejudices, boundaries,
assumptions about roles and identity, decision-making processes,
taken-for-granted structures
• reflexive critique of professional environments and workplaces
• awareness of diversity, and struggle against misuse of institutional
power and managerialism
• willingness to explore the interrelatedness of the professional and the
personal
• sensitive, fruitful review of ‘forgotten’ areas of practice
• analysis of hesitations, skill and knowledge gaps
• respect for, and trust in, others’ and own feelings and emotions
• development of observation and communication abilities
• constructive awareness of collegial relationships
• relief of stress by facing problematic or painful episodes
• identification of learning needs
• communication of experience and expertise with a wide range of
colleagues.

Reflection-In- and On-Practice: Our Map for

the Swampy Lowlands
Schön divided reflective practice into reflection-in-action and reflection-
on-action.

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    9

Reflection-in-action is the hovering hawk in the mind, enabling us to

bring remembered skills, experience and knowledge into play at the right
time. We have to act immediately and cannot normally say to a student
(patient/client/parishioner etc.) ‘sorry but I’ve got to stop and think how to
do this’. The hawk enables us to draw on our theory and knowledge in use
as we go along. With more experience, we have more to draw upon;
reflection-in-action can work more swiftly to bring appropriate values,
knowledge, skill or theory into use.
Experienced practice relies on reflection-in-action, rather than working
from automatic assumptions. This latter can lead to actions at variance with
our own espoused values, and even those of the profession. Copley (2011),
a police trainer, highlights police value assumptions about race, in, for
example, the Stephen Lawrence case. Actions based on skilful, experienced
assessment, including awareness of appropriate values, might lead to com-
pletely different policing outcomes.
Reflection-on-action is reflection after the event, and increases the
effectiveness of reflection-in-action. The artistry of practice is when our
knowledge, skill and theory base becomes:

• large and diverse appropriate to our practice

• more and more available when needed.

Reflection and Reflexivity: Demystification

Reflection and reflexivity are the essential elements of reflective practice.
Perceiving the difference makes it less of an ‘ill-defined process’. (Bleakley,
1999, p. 317)

Reflection is in-depth review of events, either alone – say, in a journal –

or with critical support with a supervisor or group. The reflector
attempts to work out what happened, what they thought or felt about
it, who was involved, when and where, what these others might have
experienced and thought and felt about it from their own perspective.
Most significantly, the reflector considers WHY?, and studies significant
theory and texts from the wider sphere. It is to bring experiences into
focus from as many angles as possible: people, place, relationships, tim-
ing, chronology, causality, connections, the social and political context,
and so on. Seemingly innocent details might prove to be key; seemingly
vital details may be irrelevant. Reflection might prove something thought
to be vital to be insignificant, or lead to insight about something unno-
ticed at the time, pinpointing perhaps when the seemingly innocent
detail was missed.

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 10  Reflective practice

Reflexivity is finding strategies to question our own attitudes, theories-

in-use, values, assumptions, prejudices and habitual actions; to understand
our complex roles in relation to others. It develops responsible and ethical
action, such as becoming aware of how much our ways of being are cultur-
ally determined; other peoples have very different expectations and norms
(Bager-Charleson, 2010). To be reflexive is to examine, for example, the
limits of our knowledge, of how our own behaviour plays into organisa-
tional structures counter to our own personal and professional values, and
why such practices might marginalise groups or exclude individuals. It is
questioning how congruent our actions are with our espoused values and
theories (e.g. about religion or gender).
Thus, we recognise we are active in shaping our surroundings, ways of
relating to others and communicating. We begin asking critical questions,
rather than merely accepting or reacting; we help review and revise ethical
ways of being and relating (Cunliffe, 2009b). Reflexivity means we might
point out inconsistencies (e.g. between espoused and values-in-action) in
political, social or cultural structures (e.g. my employing organisation).
To be reflexive involves thinking from within experiences, or as the
Oxford English Dictionary puts it, ‘turned or reflected back upon the mind
itself’, and ‘the effect of the personality on what is being investigated’. This
is complex artistry, working out how our presence influences knowledge
and actions. Reflexivity involves innovative dynamic methods, rather than
coming from reflex, ‘an action performed independently of the will, as an
automatic response to a stimulus’ (OED). A reflexive-minded practitioner
might ask themselves:

• Why did this pass me by?

• What were my assumptions which made me not notice?
• What are the organisational etc. pressures or ideologies which obstructed
my perception?
• How and in what way were my actions perceived by others?

Such deep questioning can enable development, much more than problem-
solving questions such as ‘what happened?’, ‘what did I think and feel
about it?’, ‘how can I do it better next time?’
Reflexivity is the near-impossible adventure of making aspects of the self
strange: attempting to stand back from belief and value systems and
observe habitual ways of thinking and relating to others, structures of
understanding ourselves, our relationship to the world, and the way we are
experienced and perceived by others and their assumptions about the way
that the world impinges upon them. Questioning assumptions is a struggle

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    11

against a sense of immutability – ‘it’s just how things are’, or ‘it’s common
sense’ – so significant it’s ‘like laying down charges of psychological dyna-
mite … educators who foster transformative learning are rather like
psychological and cultural demolition experts’ (Brookfield, 1990, p. 178).
Looking at ourselves thus can feel ‘embarrassing’ (Bager-Charleson, 2010,
p. x); it requires bravery in staying with uncertainty, finding out others’
perceptions, flexibility to change deeply held ways of being, and willing-
ness to be noticed (perhaps as ‘whistle-blowers’, Hargreaves and Page,
2013, p. 160) – all of which are highly responsible social and political
activities.
Strategies are required, such as internal dialogue, and the support of
trusted others such as supervisor or peer-reader of an account. Hibbert
(2012) describes effective teaching methods for developing reflexivity from
reflection, and Hanson (2013) explores deepening pedagogical practices
around critical reflection and reflexivity.
Reflective practice enables us to wonder at our own world, work,
course, and indeed ourselves, because ‘problems do not present them-
selves to the practitioner as givens … he must make sense of an uncertain
situation that initially makes no sense’ (Schön, 1983, p. 40). It is looking at
everyday taken-for-granteds, perceiving them as (possibly shockingly)
unfamiliar and open to change. It ‘is designed to facilitate identification,
examination, and modification of the theories-in-use that shape behaviour,
[a process of professional development which] requires change in deeply
held action theories’ (Osterman and Kottkamp, 2004, pp. 13–14). Such deep
change can involve ‘loss … of an element that made a part of what you
were’ (Roffey-Barentsen and Malthouse, 2013, p. 20). Reflective practice
helps us to meet this in the spirit of discovery rather than defensively
(Schön, 1987) in and about our workplace (Matsuo, 2012).
Many writing suggestions begin with one of the querying words, or tin-
openers. Between them they can set us off on a journey of asking more and
more significant questions.

I keep six honest serving men

(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who. (Kipling, 1902, p. 83)

These servants have served me well for years, too. As well as starting
reflective and reflexive questions, they also can create checklists for plan-
ning and writing, helping ensure we have covered everything. Eimear

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 12  Reflective practice

Allen (see example in Chapter 3) said ‘I think it is a method which will

help me explore future problems I might face in reflective writing by chal-
lenging them with these questions’.
Here is a seemingly simple, obvious reflection, yet its significance to
Kirsten Jack’s practice was profound: ‘it was a very big and complex thing
and I still feel that I was coming to terms with it only years later. It didn’t
have a “start” and “finish”. Maybe the initial understanding of what was
going on was there, but the actual thinking and feeling processes contin-
ued and might never end.’

The man in the green pyjamas

A first-year student nurse on my first hospital placement, I met ‘Harry’
who was confused and trying to get out of bed to go home. Unable to
eat, he repeatedly tried to pull out his naso-gastric tube, making his
nose bleed, so the registered nurses decided to bandage his hands.
I found the image of this agitated man extremely distressing. Tall and
thin, in ill-fitting green pyjamas with frequently exposed genitalia, he
had lost his dignity. I felt very sad and helpless to do anything to assist,
apart from speaking to him quietly and soothingly.
I could not get Harry out of my mind and spent the night crying, feel-
ing a grief I had not felt for a long time. I realised that Harry reminded
me of my own father who had died when I was ten. The same build
as Harry, my dad died in the same hospital in circumstances which
remained a mystery to me. My sadness was for my dad; I was grieving
as a daughter, not as Harry’s nurse.
Through reflection I was able to make sense of my feelings of fear, anx-
iety and real heartbreak, and come to an understanding of how my grief
as a daughter differed to that of student nurse. The reflective process
led to emotional awareness and the beginning of my journey to manage
my feelings, so that they did not overwhelm me when in practice. My
emotions had been tangled; reflection helped me to unravel my grief, so
that I could continue to nurse Harry without feeling overwhelmed.
Kirsten Jack

Many professionals never realise certain individuals distress them because

they remind them of someone else in their life. Kirsten asked the critical
question, why did this man so distress her? She wasn’t satisfied with: it’s a

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    13

very sad case, of course I’m distressed. I myself took years to learn that I
responded defensively and weakly to bullying male senior colleagues
because they reminded me of my brother. My career would have been
immeasurably enhanced if I could have learned this as early as Kirsten’s
reflection began to help her. Like Kirsten, I bear burdens of past events
which colour how I perceive the present. We all ‘relive’ (Bruce, 2013) past
emotions in present events, processes called projection or transference in
psychology (Humphrey, 2011). Reflective practice can significantly prevent
these inhibiting or skewing our present abilities and empathy. Understanding
these past experiences can enhance present practice. Reflection upon my
past experience enables me to offer better support to those who are bul-
lied, as well as help bullies tackle their essential weakness. And Dr Mark
Purvis was able to treat extremely sick children once he had reflected upon
his little brother’s death (Chapter 2).

Reflective Practice: a Political and Social

Responsibility
There is much in life we are genuinely not in control of, such as birth,
death, illness, accidents, and obeying the law of the land. We may not
even fully control our feelings and thoughts; we are surely responsible
for our actions. Reflective practitioners take their share of responsibility
for the political, social and cultural situations within which they live,
learn and work, as well as for their own actions and values. We can’t
say: ‘I did that because my senior instructed me to’, ‘it was in the pro-
tocol’, ‘everyone does that!’, or even ‘oh, I’ve never thought about why,
or if I should’.
Questioning and changing work or study assumptions and attitudes is
demanding. Our professional and personal roles, values and everyday
actions are embedded in complex and volatile structures. Power is subtle
and slippery; its location is often different from how it appears. Reflective
practice for genuine development involves each individual:

• recognising, taking authority over and responsibility for their own per-
sonal and professional actions, identity, values, feelings
• contesting lack of diversity, imbalance of power, the way managerialism
can block development
• asking questions and being willing to stay with uncertainty, unpredict-
ability, doubt. This is the only way to discover our assumptions and do
something about them.

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 14  Reflective practice

Reflective practice can enable discovery of who and what we are, why we
act as we do, and how we can be much more effective. The educative
process is perceiving and developing our own searching questions, rather
than responding to given questions. The search for solutions, leading to yet
more pertinent questions and more learning, leads to unsettling uncer-
tainty: the foundation of all education. In learning and understanding about
human rights, for example, law students need to learn ‘not only the practice
of law. Rather … the practice of people, their lives and the values, needs,
beliefs that people hold and wish to protect, or promote, or advocate’
(Williams, 2002, p. 134).
The route is through spirited enquiry leading to constructive develop-
mental change and personal and professional integrity based on deep
understandings. Despite questioning all assumptions and strongly held
beliefs, the process is self-affirming and illuminative: people only learn and
develop when happy and benefiting personally.
The reflective/reflexive attitude is similar to Winnicott’s (1965) creative
transitional space (or play space [1971]), the realm of the artist. The transi-
tional space is part way between our inner psychological experience and
culture outside the self: a place of exploration just beyond the boundaries.
Because it is betwixt and between, that which is created comes from both
the artist’s private self (or psyche) as well as from culture. It fosters activities
that are not tidy and safe (it wouldn’t be artistic if it was). So it is likely to
come up with dynamic possibilities, and startling solutions.
Being able to enter the transitional (play) space with the wisdom of the
child, being able to venture outside the firmly boundaried inner self into a
place of exploration and letting go of assumptions and certainties to
develop new ways of being and understanding, can ultimately enable us to
relate to others in non-judgemental, unprejudiced ways.
Reflective practice can sometimes fall into the trap of becoming only
confession. ‘Confession’ can be a conforming mechanism, despite sounding
liberating, freeing from a burden of doubt, guilt and anxiety (Bleakley,
2000b). Confession has a seductive quality because it passes responsibility
to others.
The desire is strong to confess and tell, like the ancient mariner
(Coleridge, [1834] 1978). Nias and Aspinwall (1992) noted with surprise that
all their research interviewees were keen to tell their autobiographies.
People always are, but they do not want their confessions questioned: this
is the role of reflective practice.
Reflective practice is more than an examination of personal experience,
it is located in the political and social structures which increasingly hedge
professionals (Goodson, 2004). The right of professionals in the West to

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    15

moral and professional judgements is eroded; they are being reduced to

technicians, their skills to mere technical competencies. Yet they are also
increasingly under pressure to have ‘strong and stable personalities and to
be able to tolerate complexity’, and they are ‘pushed destructively and dis-
tortingly by obsessive goals and targets in a masculine culture of
assertiveness and competitiveness’ (Garvey et al., 2014, pp. 112, 249). They
are also pushed to work according to a scientifically derived evidence base.
‘Since the seventeenth century, Western science has excluded certain
expressive modes from its legitimate repertoire: rhetoric (in the name of
“plain” transparent signification), fiction (in the name of fact), and subjec-
tivity (in the name of objectivity). The qualities eliminated from science
were localised in the category of “literature”’ (Clifford, 1986, p. 102).
The assumption that an objective view of the world is ‘grown-up’, that
we should shed our subjective view along with sand and water play, is
being questioned (see also Sacks, 1985, pp. 1–21). ‘We are impoverished if
out of touch with any part of ourselves. The dominant culture is scientific,
but the scientist who concentrates on this side of themselves exclusively is
as impoverished as the musician or writer who concentrates only on the
artistic’ (Paul Robertson, director, Medici String Quartet, 1999).
Goodson creates a distinction between life stories and life history. The
latter is the former plus appropriate and challenging data from a wide
range of sources, and evidence of vital discussion with colleagues. ‘The life
history pushes the question of whether private issues are also public mat-
ters. The life story individualises and personalises; the life history
contextualises and politicises’ (1998, p. 11).
An ethnographer can no longer stand on a mountain top to map author-
itatively (Clifford, 1986). Clinicians cannot confidently diagnose and dictate
from an objective professional or scientific standpoint; teachers do not
know answers; lawyers do not necessarily know what is right and what
wrong. The enmeshment of culture and environment is total: no one is
objective. Ideal professionals, gathering data on which to base their peda-
gogy, diagnosis or care, are like social anthropologists. Successful
ethnographers create a ‘thick description’: a web of ‘sort of piled-up struc-
tures of inference and implication through which the ethnographer is
continually trying to pick his way’ (Geertz, [1973] 1993, p. 7).
A critical reflective practitioner attempts to understand the heart of their
practice. Understandings gained in this way, however, are always partial;
the deeper the enquiry, the enquirer realises the less they know and under-
stand: the more you know, the more you know you do not know.
A supported process, such as recommended in this book, which encour-
ages doubt and uncertainty, paradoxically gives practitioners strength in the

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 16  Reflective practice

face of such contradictory expectations and attempts to control. Where

enquiry into practice is undertaken alongside open discussions with peers
on pertinent issues, an examination of texts from the larger field of work
and politics, and discussions with colleagues from outside practitioners’ own
milieu, reflective practice can then be critical: a life-changing enquiry into
the assumptions that underpin our practice, rather than mere confession.
Training and education curricula need shaking up, and more enquiry-
based reflective methods introduced. Curriculum is Latin for racecourse
(Rome’s oval Piazza Navona was one): perhaps we need to progress
from chasing each other and ourselves round a set track. ‘Unearthing and
questioning assumptions is often risky’ (Brookfield, 2013, p. 23): let’s take
the risk.

Valuing diversity
Reflection and reflexivity support appreciation of diversity, which ‘should
be engraved on every teacher’s heart’ (Brookfield, 1990). Theories, values
and practices vary between cultures, affecting how clients and others
respond to professionals and their practice. For example, the West has a
strong ethic of individualism, deriving from ancient Greece, which is very
different from Eastern (particularly Chinese and Japanese) understandings
of the self. Eastern thinking discourages abstraction (unlike Western), and
focuses upon social harmony and a sense of constant change (Sellars,
2017). Culture is an iceberg: we are aware of differences, but they are even
greater and more significant than they appear (Sellars, 2017).
An awareness of how groups can be marginalised or individuals
excluded (Cunliffe, 2009a), of inclusivity and empathetic supportiveness
with regard to, for example, non-traditional students and widening access
and participation, are essential elements. Wright’s (2005) study found
reflective journals written in English, despite this not being their writers’
mother tongue; their learning from the process would have been negated:
this should not happen. Collins et  al. (2010) developed a strategy for
enhancing multicultural elements in reflective practice in counselling.

Making Sense of Experience

A closely observed event (Wordsworth’s ‘spot of time’), written about, rigor-
ously reflected upon, discussed critically and re-explored through further
writings can stand metonymically for that professional’s practice. Stories
and poems are slices, metonymically revealing the rest of practice.

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    17

Knowing what incident to reflect upon is not straightforward. Significant

issues become elusive, and can become like looking for Piglet: ‘It was still
snowing as [Pooh Bear] stumped over the white forest track, and he
expected to find Piglet warming his toes in front of the fire, but to his sur-
prise he found that the door was open, and the more he looked inside the
more Piglet wasn’t there’ (Milne, [1928] 1958, p. 163). Only with the courage
to stop looking and trust the reflective and reflexive processes, will we
begin to perceive what needs tackling. Mark Purvis (The Death of Simon,
see Chapter 2) did not seek consciously for his ‘critical’ incident: he put his
hand on the page and started writing.
Writings often focus on seemingly unimportant incidents. The ‘right’ one
might be a seemingly simple daily habitual action, or incidents ignored
because they are problematic, often for unexamined reasons, or those
which have been ‘forgotten’ or unconsidered (because they appear not to
belong in the realm of practice but in personal life). ‘Critical’ incidents,
described by Brookfield (1990, p. 84) as ‘vividly remembered events’, such
as giving the wrong vaccine because they had been stored higgledy-piggledy
in the fridge, will inevitably be examined. Events we ‘forget’ are often those
needing reflection, and can give rise to the deepest reflexivity: ‘we need to
attend to the untold’ (Sharkey, 2004). ‘A passionate, almost religious belief ...
is that it is in the negligible that the considerable is to be found … The
unconsidered is deeply considerable’ (Miller, 2009, p. 12). A human resource
development exercise is writing what you do not remember ( Joy-Matthews
et al., 2004). Plato, who said ‘the life without examination is no life’ (Plato,
2000, p. 315), reckoned education is finding pathways to what we do not
know we know.
A critical incident is an incident we are critical about. We do need to be
critical about incidents. Kevin Marsden wrote a special-school experience:

Malcolm was struggling to recognise sets of two in number work, and

sat slumped on an elbow.
I had one of those ‘bright ideas’ teachers tend to get. Let’s make it
more practical. ‘Malcolm, look at Darren. How many eyes has he got?’
Malcolm looked at Darren. Pointing with his finger he slowly counted
in his deep voice, ‘One … two.’
‘Good, well done,’ I said. ‘Now look at Debbie, how many eyes has
she got?’
(Continued)

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 18  Reflective practice

Pointing carefully again Malcolm intoned slowly, ‘One … two.’

‘That’s great, Malcolm, now look at Tony, count his eyes.’
‘One … two.’ Let’s take this a step further, I said smugly to myself.
‘Now Malcolm, look at Matthew. Without counting can you tell me
how many eyes he has got?’
Malcolm looked at me as if I had gone mad. ‘OK that’s fine, Malcolm,
count them like you did the others.’
Relieved, he slowly repeated: ‘One … two.’
There is a magical moment in teaching, when the penny drops, the
light goes on, the doors open. Success is achieved. I was starting to
worry. We weren’t getting there!
‘Malcolm, how many eyes has Naheeda got?’ Malcolm counted
slowly, as if it was the first pair of eyes he had ever seen.
‘Good, you’re doing really well.’
We carried on round the class. Eager faces looked up to have their
eyes counted. I was growing desperate as we ran out of children. Was I
leading Malcolm on an educational wild-goose chase? Were we pursu-
ing an idea that was not yet ready to be caught?
The last pair of eyes was counted. ‘One … two.’ There was only me
left. ‘Malcolm,’ I said, trying to hide my desperation, ‘How many eyes
have I got?’ Malcolm studied my face carefully. He looked long and
hard at my eyes. I waited expectantly in the silence. His brow furrowed.
Finally he spoke.
‘Take your glasses off.’
Kevin Marsden

Kevin read this to his established sub-group of five Master’s in Education

teachers. They trusted and felt confidence and respect for each other’s pro-
fessional abilities and views. Kevin was able to share his frustrations and
sense of failure; the group learned about the methods, joys and problems
of special-school teaching. They were able to explore the probability that
Malcolm had had a different understanding of his task than did Kevin.
Possibly Malcolm thought he was to count the eyes, rather than ‘guess’ how
many each had. To do this he would have had to ask for spectacles to be
removed so he could see clearly. The situation of a mismatch between a
teacher’s intentions and a child’s understanding must happen so often. In
order to gain a grasp of what might be going on, Kevin had to examine
and question his assumptions.

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    19

Write to Learn
Part of professional development can be about studying in order to
enter a chosen profession. Different courses that use reflective prac-
tice often ask you to reflect on an incident to show how it influenced
your experience and professional understanding. Begin with some
broad reflection using the following prompts.

1.2 Milestones A
[1] List the milestones of your life; do it quickly without thinking much.
[2] Delete or add, clarify or expand the list as you wish.
[3] Add some divergent things (e.g. when you first really knew you had
met someone that would change your life).
[4] Choose one. Write a short piece about it and what it meant to you.
If you wish, continue and write about others.

Now, let’s apply this with a slightly narrower focus.

1.3 Milestones B
1. List the milestones of your job or training so far; again, do it quickly
without thinking much.
2. Delete or add, clarify or expand the list as you wish.
3. Aim for further divergence – create some sub-items within the list
(e.g. what impact receiving your assessments/appraisal result has
had/will have).
4. Choose one milestone. Write a short piece about it. What observa-
tions can you make about your experience so far? What made you
select this specific milestone to write about? What have you learnt
from the milestone once it is given more attention?

Blocks and Limitations to Reflection

• Inexperience at imagining another’s experience
• Not knowing how to create a dynamic reflective narrative (see Chapter 4)
• Fearing incompetence, fearing ridicule
• Tiredness/overwork/lack of time/too many other things to do
• Lack of motivation
• Seeing it just as a way of passing the exam
• Too painful and revealing.

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 20  Reflective practice

Reflection and reflexivity are essential for responsible and ethical practice,
yet there are arguments against it. Some consider it challenges position or
status in organisations where professionals are expected to do as they are
told: managerialism is a significant block (Heel et  al., 2006; Redmond,
2006); some that it is a luxury within packed curricula taught by demoti-
vated, over-stretched tutors who use risk-averse and evidence-based
approaches fostering disengagement and negativity (Munro, 2010).
Yet the busier we are, the more vital reflection and reflexivity are to
prevent us missing significant issues and making mistakes (Hedberg, 2009),
and losing authority by becoming uncritically conformist. Reflection is per-
sonally demanding, and needs to be undertaken at the individual’s own
pace and to their taste (Smith, 2011).
Without confident, experienced support (Chi, 2013; Standal and Moe,
2013) and advice, such as provided by this book, practitioners may experi-
ence feelings of helplessness, frustration and eventual burnout (Gray, 2007),
anxiety and antagonism (Livtack et al., 2010), resistance (Bulpitt and Martin,
2005), blocking negativity (Hobbs, 2007; Smith, 2011), or feel ‘angry, chal-
lenged, threatened, demoralized, shocked, and put off by the leap into the
unknown’ (Trelfa, 2005, p. 208; emphasis in the original), focus merely on
technical skills merely to meet academic requirements (Collins, 2013), or
write abstractly rather than about specific experiences. Inamdar and Roldan
(2013) tell us that ‘the ability to face, frame, and build solutions to ambigu-
ous, highly uncertain situations is [essential] in rapidly evolving and
globalizing business settings … Yet our findings showed that reflection is the
least taught skill in business schools … and the most challenging for stu-
dents’ (p. 766). Tutors focus upon the least challenging and easiest to teach.
Dialogue with students to ascertain feelings and needs could lead to
more informed tuition (Schmidt and Adkins, 2012). Creating an educative
environment where practitioners and students challenge themselves as
practitioners, the very roots of their practice, and, significantly, critique their
organisations, can be complex and perplexing. Instruction resulting in
neatly written competencies is less demanding and easer to mark, but is
not reflective practice.
A paradox is that organisations or courses require reflective practice as
curricula or professional development elements. Since the very nature of
reflective practice is essentially personally, politically and socially unset-
tling, it does not allow anything to be taken for granted; everything has to
be questioned. Enquiry-based education, education for creativity, innova-
tiveness, adaptability, is education for instability.
Smooth-running social, political and professional systems run on the well-
oiled cogs of stories we construct, and connive at being constructed around

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    21

us. Welcoming of diversity can be mere window-dressing. Effective reflective

practice and reflexivity are transgressive of stable and controlling orders;
they lead cogs to decide to change shape, change place, even reconfigure
whole systems. Change and development take time, energy and commit-
ment. Critical reflective practice leading to dynamic change is the result of
tough practitioner (or student) exploration and self-examination.

Understanding the Name: Reflective Practice

A mirror reflection is merely the image of an object directly in front of it,
faithfully reproduced back to front. What is the reflection of shit? Shit. The
word reflection has static connotations, meaning ‘the action of turning
[back] or fixing the thoughts on some subject’ (OED).
A mirror image suggests me out there practising in the big world, and
reflected me in my head, an unhelpful opposing duality: this as opposed to
that, in and out, here and there:

You must first forsake the dualities of: self and others, interior and exterior,
small and large, good and bad, delusion and enlightenment, life and death,
being and nothingness. (Tsai Chi Chung, 1994, p. 95)

Reflective practice is purposeful, not the musing one slips into while driv-
ing home, or rumination which can suppress emotions and create
distressing yet absorbing negative thoughts (Fogel, 2009), leading to
depression, anxiety, hostility and vulnerability. ‘It’s easy to end up thinking
and thinking and ruminating but not getting anywhere’ (cited in Claire
Collins, 2013, p. 72, emphasis in the original; see also Farber, 2005).
Rumination is a sheep or goat chewing smelly cud. Lindsay Buckell (see
Chapter 7) sent me a cartoon of a sheep, nose to nose with her mirrored
reflection and meadow, saying: ‘I’m sure the grass is greener in the mirror,
but whenever I try to reach it, this ugly ewe bars the way and butts me on
the nose.’ The ‘ugly ewe’ is of course herself reflected. We need intensive
explorative and expressive methods in order not just to be confronted by
our own ‘ugly ewe’.
We need to throw out a sense that reflection is merely self-indulgent.
Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection: this is self-indulgence.
Reflective practice is not narcissistic because rather than falling in love with
our own beauty, we bravely face the discomfort and uncertainty of attempt-
ing to perceive how things are. We seek to uncover dark corners by asking
difficult questions. We reflect in order to try to perceive ourselves with
others’ eyes (employers, clients, colleagues), to gain a clearer picture.

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 22  Reflective practice

Perhaps this approach should be called flexive. Flexion means ‘alteration,

change, modification’, and ‘a bend, curve, and a joint’ (OED).
Let me explain with another picture. In London’s Covent Garden Opera
House, we share the magic of world-class performance in the crimson and
gold auditorium. We cannot part the red curtain, however, and go onto the
stage and beyond. Yet there are acres and acres of stage, rehearsal space,
offices, canteens, costume and set stores, etc. Fabulous opera and ballet
could not take place without this invisible space and activity. We live our
lives in the auditorium of our minds – excitingly and dramatically playing
different characters (parent, colleague, lecturer, lover …) – but without
realising what’s beyond the curtain. Reflective practice writing enables
exploration of areas we didn’t know we knew, had forgotten, never both-
ered to develop, never really noticed, etc. Beyond the curtain we remove
our masks and props and become vulnerable and uncertain. This is educa-
tion and learning.
Being reflectively aware is like Einstein’s ‘appreciation of the mysterious
[which] is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art
and true science’ (1973, p. 80), and Socrates’ ‘wonder is the beginning of
wisdom’, because wonder is an open, enquiring state of mind when any-
thing might be possible, when startling inspiration appears as a result of no
cognitive logical thought. The sculptor Juan Muñoz spoke of an aim of his
art ‘to make [viewers] trust for a second that what he wishes to believe is
true. And maybe you can spin that into another reality and make him won-
der.’ This reality spinning can involve imaginatively entering others’
consciousness, empathetically and ethically:

There would seem to be a need for some special intuitive faculty which
allows me to range beyond my own sense-data, transport myself into your
emotional innards and empathise with what you are feeling. This is known
as the imagination. It makes up for our natural state of isolation from one
another [each in their own separate auditorium]. The moral and the aesthetic
[imaginative] lie close together, since to be moral is to be able to feel what
others are feeling. (Eagleton, 2008a, p. 19)

Reflective practice is here seen as complex, fascinating and unstraightfor-

ward as life and practice itself.
‘Reflection is the central dynamic in intentional learning, problem-solving
and validity testing through rational discourse’ (Mezirow, 1981, p. 4); but
there is more than just the ‘rational’. We can be enabled to reflect beyond
Mezirow’s ‘rational’ using the methods outlined in the following chapters.
First, to develop our understanding of reflective practice, we consider some
of its vital foundations.

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 Reflective practice: an introduction    23

Read to Learn

Bruce, L. (2013) Reflective Practice for Social Workers. Maidenhead:

Open University Press.
The first four chapters are a thorough, wise study of what reflective
practice is and should be, and analysis of such issues as emotional
intelligence, and what it is to be a professional. I recommend them to
all readers, not just social work practitioners and students.
Fook, J. (2016) Social Work: A Critical Approach to Practice. 3rd edn.
London: Sage.
Jan Fook is a reliable, lucid guide to critical postmodern, poststruc-
turalist practice. This book concerns social work, but I heartily
recommend readers to turn to her for her wisdom, depth of research,
and clarity.
Scaife, J. (2010) Supervising the Reflective Practitioner. Hove: Routledge.
Joyce Scaife is a reliable, intelligent and critically informed guide to
reflective practice and supervision, both theory and practice. She
clarifies and enlightens some of the dense issues with cartoons and
light verse. I recommend this book to a wider readership than Scaife’s
field of psychology.
Timmins, F. (2015) A–Z of Reflective Practice. London: Palgrave.
As an introductory text, this book is invaluable in getting to grips with
the language and concepts within reflective practice. Keep it to hand to
look up items that might appear in lectures or professional training.

Write to Learn
Now that we’ve reached the end of the chapter, there’s no need to wait
until later to get writing reflectively. These activities aim to make you
think and write – there’s no pressure yet to apply reflection to particu-
lar ‘problems’. Rather than tackling all of them, choose one and see
what happens when you use writing to access thinking.
(Continued)

01_Bolton_Ch-01.indd 23 1/18/2018 10:09:57 AM

 24  Reflective practice

1.4 Insights
1. Quickly write a list of 20 words or phrases about your work or studies.
2. Allow yourself to write anything; everything is relevant, even the
seemingly insignificant.
3. Reread: underline words or phrases that seem to stick out.
4. Choose one. Write it at the top of a fresh page. Write anything that
occurs to you about it.
5. NOBODY else need read this ever, so allow yourself to write
anything.
6. You might write a poem, or an account remembering a particular
occasion, or muse ramblingly. Whatever you write will be right.
7. Choose another word from your list, if you wish, and continue writing.
8. Add to your list if more occur to you.

1.5 Significant clothes

1. Describe in detail favourite work clothes, including features such
as mends.
2. Describe acquiring these clothes (was any part a gift?).
3. How do these clothes make you feel?
4. Describe your least favourite work clothes.
5. When do you wear these and why? Why do you dislike them?
6. Tell the detailed story of an occasion when you wore them.

1.6 A spot of time (Wordsworth: see beginning of this

chapter)
1. Jot down a very quick list of occasions when you felt nourished,
content, affirmed.
2. Choose one, write about it with as much detail as you can remember.
3. Give it a title as if it were a film; write the brief paragraph of film
advertising blurb.
4. Read it back to yourself with care, adding or altering positively.
5. Write about another one if you have time.

Visit https://study.sagepub.com/bolton5e for additional useful resources,

including writing examples, exercises and videos.

01_Bolton_Ch-01.indd 24 1/18/2018 10:09:57 AM