SWN025 Chap.2 The Reflective Approach and Critical Reflection
The Reflective Approach and Critical Reflection
This chapter defines the reflective approach and critical reflection as the Week 2 lecture presents them through Fook.
It traces the approach to Argyris and Schon, who showed that practice already carries theory and can generate more of it, sets out the ground rules that make reflection safe in a group, distinguishes reflexivity, and introduces the three-part process of storying, deconstruction and reconstruction that the rest of the unit and the essay depend on.
It also explains why the unit treats critical reflection as contested, and why dropping your guard and being non-defensive is presented as a practical skill rather than a personality trait. Everything later in the guide assumes the definitions set out here.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The reflective approach as practice and as research
- 02
Origins in Argyris and Schon
- 03
Definitions of critical reflection
- 04
Ground rules for reflective groups
- 05
Reflexivity: locating yourself in the picture
- 06
Storying, deconstruction and reconstruction
- 07
Making the familiar strange
Worked example · free
Turn a reflective sentence into a critically reflective one
- 1Spot the first explanation: the sentence explains the situation by a trait of the residents, being difficult, and stops there.
- 1Ask why again: what makes a resident appear difficult to staff, for example loss of control over routines, pain or grief, in a setting organised around staff time.
- 1Reach a social explanation: the label serves the organisation’s routines and locates the problem in the resident rather than in the conditions of care.
- 1Turn it on yourself: name your part in reproducing the label, and the practice that changes if you ask residents what they need.
Key terms
- Reflective approach
- The reflective approach is a way of practising that also researches practice in order to develop theory from it.
- Inductive theory
- Inductive theory is theory developed from practice experience rather than deduced in advance and applied to it.
- Espoused theory
- Espoused theory is the theory a practitioner says guides their work, which may differ from the theory implied by what they do.
- Conceptual space
- Conceptual space is the room critical reflection creates to step back from hegemonic and limited ways of thinking.
- Storying
- Storying is the first stage of the process, telling the practice experience and its context as a narrative.
- Forever why
- The forever why is the ground rule of never stopping at the first explanation and reaching at least a social one.
The Reflective Approach and Critical Reflection FAQ
Where did the reflective approach come from?
The Week 2 lecture traces it to Argyris and Schon in 1976 and to Schon’s later work. They questioned deductive ways of building knowledge and the gap between theory and practice, and saw that people’s actions already carry theory, so practice can generate theory inductively.
What are the ground rules for reflecting in a group?
The lecture lists confidentiality, non-judgementalism, acceptance of what people say about their own story, openness to other points of view, the forever ‘why’ that never stops at the first explanation, and responsibility understood as the ability to respond rather than as blame.
Is reflexivity the same thing as reflection?
Not in this unit. The Week 3 lecture, following Fook, defines reflexivity as the capacity to locate yourself in the picture and appreciate how your own self influences the situation. Reflection is the broader process; reflexivity names the specific move of seeing your own part.
What are the three steps of the critical reflection process?
The Week 2 lecture gives them through Fook: first, tell the practice experience and its setting as a narrative, which postmodern writers call storying; second, reflect on that account through questioning, which is deconstruction; third, develop practice and theory from what the questioning reveals, which is reconstruction.
What do certain uncertainty and thoughtfully unthinking mean?
They are Bolton’s phrases, cited in Fook and colleagues, for the stance critical reflection asks of you. Along with a process of letting go, they describe unlearning restrictive assumptions and stepping outside familiar theories so they look strange enough to question, which builds the capacity to resist and transgress.
Assessment move
Learn the two published definitions of critical reflection in the Week 2 lecture accurately, with their citations, because the essay brief asks you to demonstrate knowledge of Fook’s model rather than a generic one. Then practise the forever why on three sentences from your initial account, pushing each one until it reaches a social explanation.
Keep the six ground rules in mind during tutorials: they are the conditions the forum rubric means when it rewards a critically reflective culture. Keep a short glossary of the unit’s own terms, such as storying and conceptual space, with the source for each, so your essay uses the vocabulary precisely.
When a tutor or classmate asks why, treat it as an invitation rather than a challenge; the ground rules exist so that the question can be asked safely and answered honestly.
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