Reflection and Action The reflective cycle revisited

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Reflection and Action The reflective cycle
revisited
Mary Birchenall
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3 Fundamental Ideas

• Ghaye T (Ed.) 1996 in Reflection and Action for
  Healthcare Professionals A Reader proposes that
• Practice is intentional
• It is socially, historically and politically
  constructed
• It is interpreted (and therefore valued) not only
  by ourselves but by a range of significant others

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A Holistic Model for Learning
Professional values
Improving practice areas
Evidence based practice
Theory practice relationships
Validation of practice
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Understanding Reflection6 interpretations

• Dichotomy of reflection-in-action
  reflection-on-action
• Intentional activity - reflect on purpose with a
  purpose in mind
• Knowledge skill development
• Creation of practitioner derived knowledge
• Resolution of problematic situations - problem
  based learning
• Development of critical analysis of practice

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Purposes of reflection

• Theory generation - bridges the theory practice
  gap
• Enhancement of the quality of action through
  discourse on action
• Increases accountability
• Values practice discourse and refutes tendencies
  to marginalise the value of practical wisdom

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Types of reflection-on-practice

• Descriptive - a personal account
• Perceptive - links made between your practice
  your feelings about practice
• Receptive - justify, and validate your practice
  in the context of evidence
• Interactive - reflection informs future practice
• Critical - challenges transforms practice

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Professional Values What kind of professional
are you?

• Reflection is seen as a step-by-step process,
  through which we interrogate practice and so
  clarify thoughts feelings
• Reflection is more than looking back Boud uses
  Association Integration Validation Appropriation
• Reflection enables practitioners to live out
  their values, so improving practice
• Reflection reduces helps us to manage
  contradictions between theory practice

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Evidence-based practice

• Does research lie outside the practice arena?
• Reflection can help you to manage resistance to
  change
• Critical thinking is an essential component of
  reflective practice
• Reflective practice demands that you move from
  intuitive to explicit understandings

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Theory practice relationships

• Knowledge for responsible and competent action -
  how gained and justified?
• Tensions between practical knowledge and theory
• Practical knowledge is functional, situational,
  expert
• Theory may be regarded as remote and intellectual
  rather than grounded in practice
• Practical theory? - Theory guided practice.

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Relating Theory to Practice Is there a gap?

• Theory is seen as oppositional to practice
• Theory practice joined along a continuum
• Theory/practice oscillate
• Fit theory to practice - practice plays the role
  of handmaiden to theory
• Action research advocates integration of T P
  through reflection
• Interactive TP as all clinical practice is
  theory laden

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Theory practice relationships

• Di Marks-Maran (199557) suggests
• Perhaps all definitions of theory can be summed
  up in this way theory is an attempt to
  articulate what practice is and what
  practitioners do or ought to do. The purpose of
  theory, if it is to have a practical purpose, is
  to explain what individuals experience in their
  day-to-day practice, to predict what might happen
  should certain actions be taken and to describe
  events.
• Modified quotation

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Key references

• Marks-Maran D 1995 Procrustes in the ward
  fitting people into models in Jolley M
  Bryczynska G (eds.) Nursing beyond tradition and
  conflict London Mosby
• Ghaye T Cuthbert S Donai K Dennis D 1996 Theory
  Practice Relationships Reconstructing Practice