Organizing Reflection

Through a series of leading-edge contributions from pre-eminent international scholars in the field, Organizing Reflection makes a stimulating and distinctive contribution to the study of reflection. By doing so, it offers the first shift from the individual reflective practitioner to processes of collective and public reflection. The unique and varied contributions focus on the development of notions such as public reflection, collective reflection, and critical reflection. In doing so, they provide critical insights into new thinking and approaches to the role of reflection in organizations, as well as the conceptualization and delivery of learning and change. Organizing Reflection will be of interest to scholars working in business, professional, management and organization studies, to human development academics, and to scholarly practitioners in organizations.

Critical reflection helps professionals to learn directly from their practice experience, so that they can improve their own work in an ongoing and flexible way – something essential in today’s complex and changing organisations. It allows change to be managed in a way which enables individuals to preserve a sense of what is fundamentally important to them as professionals. It is particularly important as it can also help make sense of some fundamental issues, and so also has implications for how we live our lives. However, more systematic research on critical reflection is needed to help us understand what works best for professionals in different settings. This timely work explores how critical reflection is researched, evaluated and used as a research method itself, with the aim of improving how it is taught and practised in a rigorous and transferable way. Developing a more comprehensive and multi-disciplinary view of the current state of critical reflection and the research directions which need to be taken, the book is divided into four parts. It: - Provides an overview of different perspectives on critical reflection and stimulates dialogue between them - Establishes some common platforms from which to develop further research directions - Identifies the major issues in evaluating critical reflection teaching, and main methods for doing so - Contributes to social science methodological innovations by exploring how methods based on critical reflection can be used for researching professional practice - Contains contributions from academics who are internationally known and highly experienced in different aspects of critical reflection. Researching Critical Reflection is an important reference for all students, practitioners, and researchers – including in the areas of education, management, health and social work – who engage with critical reflection to develop their practice.

This book explores concrete examples of different strategies and activities aimed at creating and embedding critically reflective learning and working environments within organisations whose prime function is social care. Critical reflection has long been recommended as a general professional skill and is a core component of the practice capabilities in social work in countries across the Western world. However, despite unequivocal support for it in social work education, sustaining critical reflection within organisations as both an individual and collective practices, supported by organisational cultures, is problematic. With contributions from social work practitioners and educators who have sought to embed critical reflection into broader activities and cultures within their organizations, the book addresses common features of critical reflection, and challenges and benefits in specific case studies. This book will inspire and develop new thinking and vision about being critically reflective in organisations, and facilitate efforts to improve the learning and working experience in addition to that of service quality and delivery. It will be required reading for all undergraduate and postgraduate social work modules focusing on management, leadership organizational change, and professional education.

A critical characteristic of human service organizations is their capacity to learn from experience and to adapt continuously to changing external conditions such as downward pressure on resources, constant reconfiguration of the welfare state and rapidly changing patterns of social need. This invaluable, groundbreaking volume discusses in detail the concept of the learning organization, in particular its relevance to social work and social services. Contributors join together from across Europe, North America and Australia to explore the development of the learning organization within social work contexts and its use as a strategic tool for meeting problems of continuous learning, supervision and change. The volume addresses a range of important topics, from strategies for embedding learning and critical reflection in the social work learning organization, to the implications of the learning organization for the new community-based health and social care agenda.

This book is an accessible entry point into the theory and practice of work reflection for students and practitioners. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach, it covers management, education, organizational psychology and sociology, drawing on examples from Europe, the Middle East, North America and Australia. It traces reflection at work from an emphasis on training, through a focus on how organizations learn, to a concern with the necessary learning groups to operate effectively. It emphasizes productivity combined with satisfying lived experience of work life and points the way to a new collective focus on learning at work.

A critical characteristic of human service organizations is their capacity to learn from experience and to adapt continuously to changing external conditions such as downward pressure on resources, constant reconfiguration of the welfare state and rapidly changing patterns of social need. This invaluable, groundbreaking volume discusses in detail the concept of the learning organization, in particular its relevance to social work and social services. Contributors join together from across Europe, North America and Australia to explore the development of the learning organization within social work contexts and its use as a strategic tool for meeting problems of continuous learning, supervision and change. The volume addresses a range of important topics, from strategies for embedding learning and critical reflection in the social work learning organization, to the implications of the learning organization for the new community-based health and social care agenda.

How can professionals learn more easily from their own experience? How can critical reflection be performed in a structured way? How can professionals maintain a critically reflective stance when contexts may be restrictive? Critical reflection in professional practice is popular across many different professions as a way of ensuring ongoing scrutiny and improved practice skills. This accessible handbook focuses on a description and analysis of the theoretical input as well as the approach involved in critical reflection. It also demonstrates some skills, strategies and tools which might be used to practise it. The cross-disciplinary approach taken by the authors will appeal to a wide range of students and professionals and combines neatly with useful discussion of the complex educational and professional issues which arise from the practice of critical reflection. An innovative website containing a variety of useful resources accompanies the book www.openup.co.uk/fook&gardner. Resources include: Extracts from workshops, interviews and lectures Additional articles and readings Sample material for workshop preparation Throughout the book, the authors provide pertinent examples from their own practice, referring to relevant literature, providing annotated bibliographies, and noting where additional resource materials are available to provide further illustration. Practising Critical Reflection is key reading for a variety of students across social work, health sciences and nursing, as well as health care and social welfare professionals.