I like to think of it as healthy scepticism but I suspect that I am constitutionally wired to be suspicious of anything approaching grand idea status. Although not exactly this year's black, reflective practice is nonetheless one of a number of grand ideas adopted by nursing and other healthcare practices - as well as by other similarly grounded practices across the spectrum of helping professions. For many of these types of occupational groups, the grand idea of reflection has become an accepted part of the lexicon of practice. This is, on the whole, a good thing for there is no doubt that unreflective practice is likely to result in actions born of repetition, ritual, and routine - and we all know the harm that can follow from such uncritical and unthinking practice. Nevertheless, reflective practice appears to be one of those grand ideas that has become such a part of the received wisdom of professional practice that it rarely receives the kind of critical attention to which other, perhaps lesser, ideas are subjected. Reflection, reflective practice, and critical reflection which, if not precisely the same thing at least have a common ancestry in the work of Donald Schon (1983,1987) who, as Kinsella (2010) points out, owes a considerable debt to Dewey. Such respectable antecedents together with the general acceptance of reflection across a broad spectrum of occupations usually considered well beyond those primarily concerned with health or social care should give us confidence that reflection is no mere passing fad.
展开▼
