Whats good about social work Learning from Critical Reflection on Practice

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Whats good about social work? Learning from
Critical Reflection on Practice

• Jan Fook
• South West London Academic Network

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Lisa

• Community health setting
• Situation of mother chasing toddler around the
  room
• Lisas distress in interfering

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What did critical reflection reveal?

• For Lisa
• Judgement of herself for not stopping the abuse
• Re-affirmation of structural social work
• Discrepancy between structural analysis and own
  feelings of trauma

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• For me
• Struck by type of situation
• Lisas judgement of self
• Lisas self denial
• Difficulty in using theory to help with practice

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What happens in critical reflection?

• The complex and integrated nature of experience
• Articulating and validating the experience of
  practice
• Learning from and making meaning of experience
  (combining different knowledges, values,
  skills).
• The role of emotion..
• Reaffirming fundamental values
• Finding a place for integrity (combining values
  and actions)

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What is critical reflection?

• Learning from/making meaning of experience (eg.
  Boud, Mezirow)
• Process of unearthing deeper assumptions (eg.
  Schon)
• What makes it critical unearthing fundamental
  (dominant) assumptions about power ideology
  critique (eg. Brookfield)

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• Critical reflection involves both
• a theoretical framework and
• a structured process
• It aims to unsettle taken for granted thinking
  and expose it to scrutiny..
• (stage 1)
• In order to change it (and subsequent actions) if
  necessary
• (stage 2)

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Related theories

• Reflective practice the gap between theory and
  practice (eg. Schon)
• Postmodernism/deconstruction/the linguistic turn
  how our language/discourse constructs our
  knowledge
• Reflexivity how who we are (socially and
  personally) constructs our knowledge (eg. Taylor
  and White)
• Critical perspectives how personal experience
  is linked with social arrangements, and how
  social awareness leads links with social change
  (eg. Brookfield)

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Basic method/process

• Focuses on
• Specific instances of practice (critical
  incidents)
• To unsettle (dominant) implicit assumptions
  (stage 1)
• In order to discover and change relevant thinking
  and practices (stage 2)
• Uses critical reflective questions derived from
  theories
• May be used in a number of ways (eg. Small
  groups, self-reflection)
• In an ethical climate

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Critical reflective questions

• Reflective what does my practice imply about my
  fundamental values? What am I assuming about the
  nature of human beings? Society? power and
  conflict?
• Reflexive where do my assumptions come from?
  How does who I am affect what I see? How do my
  emotions affect my knowledge?
• Postmodern/deconstructive what language
  patterns do I use? What binaries exist? What
  other perspectives am I leaving out?

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Questionscont

• Critical perspectives how does my social
  context influence my personal experience? What
  has this got to do with power? How does my
  changed awareness contribute to my changed
  practices?

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Critical incident

• An event which is significant in some way to the
  learner/participant
• Used as raw material for reflection

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The ethical climate of critical reflection

• Trust respect
• Acceptance not affirmation
• Focus on professional learning
• Right to draw limits
• Focus on story or construction
• Openness to multiple and contradictory
  perspectives
• Responsibility (agency) not blame

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An example of critical reflection

• Barbara..(stage 1)
• A social worker/manager in a large government
  income security bureaucracy
• Incident from personal life she intervenes
  between 2 men in angry argument
• Didnt want to be a control freak
• Assumptions about control, someone needing to be
  in control, and equated with the need for action
• Reflected on her own needs to be in control and
  assumptions about good professional practice
  equated with need to take action

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Barbaracont.

• Fear of uncertainty?
• Emotions and assumptions come together in the
  experience
• Caught herself telling a staff member that he
  needed to stay with the uncertainty.

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Stage 2 .

• Therefore a need to construct her desired
  practice as being powerful in uncertainty or
  structured uncertainty
• She spoke of creating her own emotional
  scaffolding to help her in new situations

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What does this tell us about social work practice?

• complex many different and conflicting
  interests
• Uncertain changeable, unpredictable,
  uncontrollable, contextual
• Holistic integrates many different aspects,
  cant be fragmented
• value-based
• commitment to better outcomes

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Whats good about social work?

• Simple solutions to complex problems
• Relates to people as whole people
• Preserves human experience as a basis for
  practice
• Embodies the commitment and ability to act
  decisively and justly in uncontrollable
  circumstances

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What do we learn from critical reflection about
how social workers do this?

• Framing the experience (by recognising the
  complexity and naming it) thus handling
  incongruity and contradiction
• Giving meaning to the experience (putting it into
  a framework which allows it to relate to other
  experiences)

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• Connecting emotions and assumptions and actions
  (positive/creative use of emotion - emotions are
  more than phenomena to be contained or resolved)
• Framing the experience in a way it can be acted
  on (allows integrity) (connecting theory and
  practice)
• Creating practice theory or knowledge directly
  from experience itself the ability to work with
  uncertainty