Critical Reflection
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- Date Submitted: 06/30/2011 07:57 AM
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Critical Reflection
“All efforts at self-transformation challenge us to engage in on-going, critical self-examination and reflection about practice, and about how we live in the world. This individual commitment, when coupled with engagement in collective discussion, provides a space for critical feedback which strengthens our efforts to change and make ourselves anew.”
— bell hooks
'Critical reflection from the position of academics and educators may be viewed differently from the position of child protection field workers. What looks ‘possible’ and ‘positive’ from an academic perspective may feel considerably different for those who are ‘in the trenches’. Critical reflection leads to increased awareness of the tension between personal and professional integrity and ethics, and the tasks one is meant to undertake in the course of one’s work. Self-reflection, self-location and critical reflection are unquestionably necessary skills for child protection as the need to remain conscious is integral to anti-oppressive and emancipatory work with others. Whether such frameworks are the purveyance of social work, or social work alone, is not the subject of this post. However social work education unquestionably supports the development and integration of such frameworks into practice.
Whilst the tension of balancing safety with the benefits of critical reflection is certainly acknowledged in the literature, for instance in Practicing Critical Reflection: A Resource Handbook by Jan Fook and Fiona Gardener, the academic discourse appears unable to encompass a practical solution to the challenges of working within hostile environments. Risk appears minimized or marginalized as is the very real personal and professional danger of undertaking critical reflection in environments, which are not only not organized to support critical reflection, but overtly work to discourage, undermine and punish it. Sadly many professionals, who work within statutory child protection,...
“All efforts at self-transformation challenge us to engage in on-going, critical self-examination and reflection about practice, and about how we live in the world. This individual commitment, when coupled with engagement in collective discussion, provides a space for critical feedback which strengthens our efforts to change and make ourselves anew.”
— bell hooks
'Critical reflection from the position of academics and educators may be viewed differently from the position of child protection field workers. What looks ‘possible’ and ‘positive’ from an academic perspective may feel considerably different for those who are ‘in the trenches’. Critical reflection leads to increased awareness of the tension between personal and professional integrity and ethics, and the tasks one is meant to undertake in the course of one’s work. Self-reflection, self-location and critical reflection are unquestionably necessary skills for child protection as the need to remain conscious is integral to anti-oppressive and emancipatory work with others. Whether such frameworks are the purveyance of social work, or social work alone, is not the subject of this post. However social work education unquestionably supports the development and integration of such frameworks into practice.
Whilst the tension of balancing safety with the benefits of critical reflection is certainly acknowledged in the literature, for instance in Practicing Critical Reflection: A Resource Handbook by Jan Fook and Fiona Gardener, the academic discourse appears unable to encompass a practical solution to the challenges of working within hostile environments. Risk appears minimized or marginalized as is the very real personal and professional danger of undertaking critical reflection in environments, which are not only not organized to support critical reflection, but overtly work to discourage, undermine and punish it. Sadly many professionals, who work within statutory child protection,...