Critical Reflection

Background and Definition of Reflection and Critical Reflection

A multitude of definitions of action research include reflection as a key element of the approach. For example, as early as 1988, Stephen Kemmis and Robin McTaggart explained that action research was a form of collective self-reflective inquiry. Later, in 2001, Bob Dick considered that alternating action and critical reflection was part of action research. It is often said that in action research, reflection integrates the action and the research. Alongside the articulated centrality of reflection, however, there is an assumption that everyone knows what it is—this is not always the case. To understand what it is requires a short walk through the history of our understanding of reflection.

Although Donald Schön’s work in the 1980s is most frequently referred to in defining reflection associated with the notion of enhancing professional practice through a process of structured thinking, this material in fact drew influence from the early Greek ‘Socratic questioning’ and John Dewey’s work on reflection in the 1930s. In the 1990s, David Boud and his team indicated that reflection involved recapturing experience, thinking about this experience, mulling over it and evaluating it.

‘Critical’ reflection takes reflection to a deeper level because it has underpinning intents of emancipation and a fair, more just society. It is often linked to identifying and questioning the assumptions that govern actions and reframing, or developing, alternative actions. Stephen Brookfield’s work in the 1990s has been important in defining that such a level of reflection inherently involves challenging prevailing social, political, cultural or professional ways of acting: a challenge that may provide an alternative to the majority position. Later work implies that there is threat to personal competence in such a stance, which includes being both self-critical and ethically alert.

Many descriptions of critical reflection within action research raise the importance of rigour. Proposals for how the latter is applied vary, from the use of robust self-questioning through to the more specific use of data- or evidence-based evaluation in critical reflection that can be adopted in the phases of action research. The context and approach employed for action research will influence choices around the extent and the type of rigour that is applied—a point raised in the recent book, Evaluation of Action Research, by Eileen Piggot-Irvine and Brendan Bartlett.

When defining the parameters of reflection and critical reflection, it is important to distinguish each from ‘reflexivity’, which is a process used to make overt an action researcher’s internal dialogue about attitudes, values, beliefs, decisions and thoughts on the research. Reflexivity, though clearly distinctive, most essentially involves both reflection and critical reflection.

Approaches and Models of Critical Reflection

There are many approaches and models that can be used to critically reflect in order to learn from experience. The concept of reflection, in fact, has grown in tandem with interest in experiential learning, proposed by David Kolb in the 1980s. At a basic level, models of reflection exist to provide guidance to help look back over events that have happened and to turn them into learning experiences. Important models include those of ‘double-loop learning’ and reflection generally from Chris Argyris and Donald Schön in the 1970s and 1980s, later from the likes of Graham Gibbs and Chris Johns and more recently from Gary Rolfe and colleagues.

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