Practising Critical Reflection A Resource Handbook

Critical reflection in professional practice is popular across many different professions as a way of ensuring on going scrutiny and improved practice skills

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.

This handbook acts as an essential guide to understanding and using reflective and experiential learning - whether it be for personal or professional development, or as a tool for learning. It takes a fresh look at experiential and reflective learning, locating them within an overall theoretical framework for learning and exploring the relationships between different approaches. As well as the theory, the book provides practical ideas for applying the models of learning, with tools, activities and photocopiable resources which can be incorporated directly into classroom practice. This book is essential reading to guide any teacher, lecturer or trainer wanting to improve teaching and learning.

Philosophers have warned of the perils of a life spent without reflection, but what constitutes reflective inquiry - and why it’s necessary in our lives - can be an elusive concept. Synthesizing ideas from minds as diverse as John Dewey and Paulo Freire, theHandbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry presents reflective thought in its most vital aspects, not as a fanciful or nostalgic exercise, but as a powerful means of seeing familiar events anew, encouraging critical thinking and crucial insight, teaching and learning. In its opening pages, two seasoned educators, Maxine Greene and Lee Shulman, discuss reflective inquiry as a form of active attention (Thoreau’s "wide-awakeness"), an act of consciousness, and a process by which people can understand themselves, their work (particularly in the form of life projects), and others. Building on this foundation, the Handbook analyzes through the work of 40 internationally oriented authors: - Definitional issues concerning reflection, what it is and is not; - Worldwide social and moral conditions contributing to the growing interest in reflective inquiry in professional education; - Reflection as promoted across professional educational domains, including K-12 education, teacher education, occupational therapy, and the law; - Methods of facilitating and scaffolding reflective engagement; - Current pedagogical and research practices in reflection; - Approaches to assessing reflective inquiry. Educators across the professions as well as adult educators, counselors and psychologists, and curriculum developers concerned with adult learning will find the Handbook of Reflection and Reflective Inquiry an invaluable teaching tool for challenging times.

"... the book makes an excellent contributionto the library of those keen to delve further intothe realm of critical reflection, understand variousinterpretations of interdisciplinary practices, anduse these to aid their own and others’ professionalpractice, exploration and development." Learning in Health and Social Care How can professionals reflect critically on the aspects of their work they take for granted? How can professionals practise with creativity, intelligence and compassion? What current methods and frameworks are available to assist professionals to reflect critically on their practice? The use of critical reflection in professional practice is becoming increasingly popular across the health professions as a way of ensuring ongoing scrutiny and improved concrete practice - skills transferable across a variety of settings in the health, social care and social work fields. This book showcases current work within the field of critical reflection throughout the world and across disciplines in health and social care as well as analyzing the literature in the field. Critical Reflection in Health and Social Carereflects the transformative potential of critical reflection and provides practitioners, students, educators and researchers with the key concepts and methods necessary to improve practice through effective critical reflection. Contributors:Gurid Aga Askeland, Andy Bilson, Fran Crawford, Jan Fook, Lynn Froggett , Sue Frost, Fiona Gardner, Jennifer Lehmann, Marceline Naudi, Bairbre Redmond, Gerhard Reimann, Colin Stuart, Pauline Sung-Chan, Carolyn Taylor, Susan White, Elizabeth Whitmore, Angelina Yuen-Tsang.

Overwhelmingly, critical practitioners working across a range of human service fields, who are committed to emancipatory and progressive social change ideals, report feeling powerless, alienated from the means of change, and hopeless about their capacities to make a difference in the lives of the individuals, groups or communities with whom they work because of restrictive contexts that ultimately determine the nature and parameters of their work. This ground-breaking book addresses this dilemma by demonstrating how critical reflection as an educational tool enables practitioners to envision possibilities for change. The legal system, particularly in its response to sexual assault provides a perfect example of this type of context and this volume explores the work of sexual assault practitioners that are engaged in supporting victims/survivors of sexual assault through the legal process. By reshaping ideas that have previously been considered as predominantly theoretical and abstract, Morley’s work provides an innovative framework that enables social work and human services practitioners to find hope, agency and practical strategies to work towards change, despite operating in contexts that appear immutably oppressive.

Lecturers, why waste time waiting for the post to arrive? Request your e-inspection copy today! In the new third edition of this popular and highly readable book, the author draws on her considerable experience and extensive research to demonstrate a creative dynamic mode of reflection and reflexivity. Using expressive and explorative writing combined with in-depth group work/mentoring alongside appropriate focussed research, it enables critical yet sensitive examinations of practice. Gillie offers a searching and thorough approach which increases student and professional motivation, satisfaction, and deep levels of learning. She clearly explains reflection; reflexivity; narrative; metaphor, and complexity, and grounds the literary and artistic methods in educational theory and values. Clear step-by-step practical methods are given for every aspect of the process. New to this edition are: A chapter presenting different ways of undertaking and facilitating reflective practice Further international coverage, including material from Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The Third Edition also includes: An annotated glossary explaining key terms End-of-chapter activities and exercises Suggested further reading, and clear guides on chapter contents and how to use the book. Companion website www.uk.sagepub.com/bolton An accompanying companion website includes a range of free additional materials for lecturers and students to use in tutorials and for independent study, including discussion, workshop exercises, glossary and online readings. The methods are appropriate to, and used worldwide by, students and professionals across education; medicine and healthcare; clinical psychology; therapy; social work; pastoral care; counselling; police; business management; organisational consultancy; leadership training.

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.