THEORY, THEORISING
AND CRITICALLY
REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
IN PRACTICE LEARNING
Siobhan Maclean
November 2012
Ask a student or even a qualified
social worker what theory are you
using there? And ….
Ask a social worker what legislation they are
using and they know – chapter and verse….
We are leaving ourselves open to
direction from others….
“Social work is what
social workers do”
(Health and Social
Care Bill 2011)
International Definition of Social Work
“The social work profession promotes social
change, problem solving in human
relationships and the empowerment and
liberation of people to enhance well-being.
Utilising theories of human behaviour and
social systems, social work intervenes at the
points where people interact with their
environments. Principles of human rights and
social justice are fundamental to social work.”
My Eureka Moment!
Theory – noun – ‘naming’ word
Theoretical – adjective – ‘describing’ word
Theorising – verb – ‘doing’ word
Theorising is putting ideas into
action and drawing ideas out of
action.
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Reflective practice : what is it?
• Process of review to inform learning (eg:
Schon, Reid etc)
• Active, persistent and careful consideration
of any belief or supposed form of knowledge
(Dewey 1933)
• Mental process of trying to
restructure existing
knowledge and insights
(Korthagen 2001)
WHY IS IT SO
IMPORTANT FOR
SOCIAL WORK
STUDENTS?
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
Key aspect of professionalisation

Active CPD activity

Improves accountability

Supports theorising – using theory in practice and
drawing theory out of practice

Improves practice (Munro – critically reflective
organisations)

Ensures ethical practice

Enhances a practitioner’s ‘core’ and
their resilience
Social Workers who fly…..
Grant and Kinman (2009) research into the
professional development of newly qualified
workers identified two key factors that:
 Enhance resilience to stress
 Foster wellbeing
 Are key qualities of those social workers who
“fly” after they qualify.
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 Emotional
intelligence
 Reflective
abilities
Critically reflective practice:
key components
 Rethinking / deconstructing power
 Awareness of values and implications
for practice
 Exploring emotions / emotional intelligence
 Drawing on knowledge / developing knowledge
and practice wisdom
 Self awareness
 Creating uncertainty through dynamic
questioning – willingness to live with
that uncertainty
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Safeguarding practice:
key issues
 Power and powerlessness
 Changing societal values
 Emotional impact / distress
 Developing / emerging knowledge
 Impact of personal experiences /
values (self awareness)
 More questions than answers
(uncertainty)
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POWER
VALUES
EMOTIONS
KNOWLEDGE
SELF AWARENESS
UNCERTAINTY
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Reflective Practice: Power
• Fook – critically reflective practice
• Deconstruction of ‘realities’ with a focus on
power dynamics
Reflective Practice: Self Awareness
 Personal process relies on personal
awareness
Distress and emotions
Reflection and self awareness are key aspects of
emotional intelligence – “keeping distress from
swamping the ability to think, to empathise and to
hope” (Goleman 1996)
Drawing on Knowledge
Knowledge is fixed and creates limitations to the
way that we see things……
Knowledge is time, context and societally and
culturally specific..
19
Freud’s Seminar ‘The Ateology of Hysteria’ (1896)
“Almost all of my women patients told me that they had
been seduced by their father. I was driven to recognize in
the end that these reports were untrue and so came to
understand that the hysterical symptoms are derived from
phantasies and not from real occurrences……
It was only later that I was able to recognize
in this phantasy of being seduced by
the father the expression of the typical
Oedipus complex in women.”
(Sigmund Freud 1933)
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Reflective processes can potentially unearth
any assumptions about anything…. Some
crucial but hitherto deeply hidden assumptions
may be uncovered.
(Fook 2004)
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The earth was flat……….
Child sexual
abuse didn’t
happen….
Sula Wolff
(1973)
Seminal text
No mention of
child sexual
abuse
10 years on…..
Judith Herman
“This disturbing fact….
Has been repeatedly
unearthed in the past
hundred years, and just
as repeatedly buried…..
The information was
simply too threatening to
be maintained in public
consciousness.”
(1982:7)
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Kristy Bamu’s murder raised issues of beliefs in
witchcraft and evil spirit possession – but this
issue has been raised a number of times since
the deaths of Victoria Climbie and Khyra Ishaq.
……………..is this information
“simply too threatening to be maintained in
public consciousness?”
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Critically reflective practice recognises that
there is no truth and that we need to be open
to all possibilities…..
An ability to “imagine” or think
beyond knowledge
Despite the known importance of critical
reflection there are a number of
barriers….
Difficulties / barriers




Time constraints
Striving for certainty
Evidence based practice
Reflective practice can be painful and create
a crisis of confidence
 Organisational constraints
 Lack of reflective supervision
 Lack of clarity about reflective
practice
So how can we support students to be
more reflective?
 Support them to find a model of reflective
practice which they are comfortable with – this
will vary for each individual
 Enable them to understand the need for “critical
friendships” – and be a critical friend to them
during placement
 Develop their awareness of what is impacting on
their reflection
 Make sure that they don’t avoid the
questions – but likewise don’t delay actions
Critical Friends….
Introduced by Stenhouse
(1975) as a method to
support action research.
Research indicates that
whilst having a critical
friend is useful, acting as
one is even more helpful
to professional
development (Dahlgren
et al 2006)
Schön
 Reflection in action
 Reflection on action
reflection for action
(Killian and Todnem 1991)
Reflective cycle
Plan – reflection for action
Do – reflection in action
Review – reflection on action
So what are the models?
Remember Schön is a theory of reflection not a
model – it highlights the need to do it but not
how to do it!
The models include:
• Gibbs
• Borton
• Boud, Keogh and Walker
• Fook
• Korthagen
Theorising on practice
Examples of students
and practitioners
theorising on models of
reflective practice…
RACHEL RAYNER
HAIR-RAISING
MOMENTS
What were the
moments that made
you think “wow”? i.e.
the things that
shocked you;
That you were not
expecting?
What gave you
goose-bumps?
TUMMY-SINKING
MOMENTS
What are the moments
you think did not go as
hoped? What, if
anything, gave you the
“sinking feeling”?
i.e. what might you do
differently next time?
HEART-WARMING
MOMENTS
What went well? What
made you feel good about
your work/practice?
What are you proud of?
TOE-CURLING MOMENTS
What were the moments
that made you feel
uncomfortable? The
moments that you had
not/could not plan for that
you learn from the most?
i.e. the moments that in
years to come you will look
back and say, “I remember…
and these “awful” moments
are often the ones that we
learn from the most.
Practice Educators: The Roller Coaster
 Before you get on the ride –
what are you expecting?
Any apprehensions? etc
 During the ride – how does
it feel? Do you want to get
off? etc
 After the ride – how do you
feel? What was it like? etc
 POWER – who put you on
the ride? Did you have any
choices? etc
“The weather model”
 Sunshine – what went
well? What felt good?
 Rain – what didn’t go so
well?
 Lightening – what came
as a shock?
 Fog – where did you get
lost? What couldn’t you
see? Why?
The Cake model
(Welsh Practice Educators)
Preparation
What ingredients have you got?
What recipe are you using?
How are you feeling about making
the cake?
Making the cake
Did you follow the recipe?
Did you add any spice?
Did you make a mess?
If so, how did you tidy it up?
Cont….
Digesting the cake
Did you burn your fingers?
Did you share the cake?
Did it sink or did it rise?
What did it taste like?
If you had changed the
ingredients would it have tasted
the same?
Did you cater for all tastes?
What was the “icing on the cake”?
Reflective practice is more than the
icing on the cake…….
It is the
cake
And we
can have
our cake
and eat
it……….
SOME OF THE
TRADITIONAL
MODELS……
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Gibbs (1988)
Stage 1:
Stage 2:
Stage 3:
Stage 4:
Stage 5:
Stage 6:
Description
Feelings and thoughts
Evaluation
Analysis
Conclusion
Action planning
GIBBS
Borton (1970)
 What?
 So what?
 Now what?
Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985)
An individual:
 recaptures their experience
 thinks about it
 mulls it over (perhaps with others)
 evaluates it
 acts on the reflection
Korthagen’s reflective onion
o Environment
o Behaviour
o Competences
o Beliefs
o Identity
o Mission
Jan Fook
1. Telling the narrative – ‘describing’ the
practice.
2. Deconstruction – reflective questioning,
exploring practice. Focus on power.
3. Reconstruction – planning
future practice and putting the
plans into action – again focus
on power.
Kolb: Experiential learning
Concrete experience
Reflective Observation
Abstract Conceptualisation
Active Experimentation
- What was the event?
- What are your
personal thoughts and
feelings about the
experience?
- How can you draw on
previous experiences and on
your knowledge to help you
‘make sense’ of this
experience?
- If this event were to occur
again, what would you do
differently?
- What additional knowledge
do you need to gain?
Williams and Rutter (2007) based on
Gibbs
Description: What happened?
Feelings:
What were you thinking and feeling?
Evaluation: What was good and bad about the
experience?
Analysis:
What sense can you make of the
situation?
Conclusion: What else could you have done?
Action Plan: What was learnt? If it arose again,
what would you do?
References
Brookfield, S. (ed) (1988) Training Educators of adults: The Theory and
Practice of Graduate Adult Education. (New York) Routledge.
Borton, T. (1970) Reach, Teach and Touch. (London) McGraw Hill.
Boud D, Keogh, R. and Walker, D (1985) Reflection: Turning experience into
learning. (London), Kogan Page.
Burnham, J. (1993)n Systemic Supervision: the evolution of reflexivity in the
context of supervisory relationships, human systems. The Journal of systemic
consultation and management, 4 (3-4) pp349-381.
Dewey, J. (1933) How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective
thinking to the educative process. (Boston) DC Health.
Dahlgren, L.O. Eriksson, B.E., Gyllenhaamar, H. Korkeila, M. and Saaf-Rothoff,
A. (2006) to be and to have a critical friend in medical teaching. Journal of
medical Education, 40 (1) pp.5-6.
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Dreyfus, H.L. and Dreyfus, S.E. (1986) Mind over Machine: the power of human
intuition and expertise in the era of the computer (Oxford) Basil Blackwell.
Fook, J. (2004) Critical Reflection and Organisational Learning and Change: A Case
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Learning Organisation. (Aldershot) Ashgate Publishing.
Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods.
(Oxford) Further Education Unit Oxford Polytechnic.
Grant, L. and Kinman, G. (2009) developing emotional resilience in social work
students: supporting effective reflective practitioners. Presentation at JSWEC
Conference 2009.
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and Theory: The Pedagogy of realistic teacher education. (New Jersey) Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates
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Reid, B. (1993) But we’re doing it already! Exploring a response to the concept of
reflective practice in order to improve its facilitation. Nurse Education Today, 13
pp305-309.
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(London) Temple Smith.
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Stenhouse, L. (1975) An Introduction to Curriculum Research and
Development. (London) Heinemann.