Nick Gould - Reflective Learning for Social Work

Research, Theory and Practice

Edited by
Nick Gould and Imogen Taylor

First published 1996

by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright Nick Gould and Imogen Taylor 1996

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library in Cataloguing Data
Reflective learning for social work:
research, theory and practice
1. Social work education
2. Social service
I. Gould, Nick II. Taylor, Imogen
361.3'07

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-84530

ISBN 978 1 85742 321 1 (paperback)
ISBN 978 1 85742 320 4 (hardback)

Transfered to Digital Printing in 2013

ISBN 9781857423211 (pbk)
ISBN 9781857423204 (hbk)

Jane Batchelor is Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Bath, UK.

David Boud is Professor of Adult Education in the School of Adult Education at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Karen Boutland is Joint Co-ordinator of the Practice Learning Centre at the University of Bath, UK.

Brian Dimmock is Lecturer in Health and Social Welfare at the Open University, UK.

Nick Gould is Senior Lecturer and head of research and consultancy at the Social Services Research and Development Unit, University of Bath, UK.

Susan Knights is Senior Lecturer and co-ordinator of the BEd in Adult Education in the School of Adult Education at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.

Ken Moffatt is Assistant Professor at King's College, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.

Catherine P. Papell is Professor Emeritus at the School of Social Work, Adelphi University, New York, USA.

Phyllida Parsloe is Professor of Social Work at the University of Bristol, UK.

Amy B. Rossiter teaches in the School of Social Work at York University, Toronto, Canada.

Imogen Taylor is Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Bristol, UK.

Above all, we acknowledge the crucial role of our contributors whose work both inspires and extends the debate about reflective learning. Our thanks also to colleagues at the Universities of Bristol and Bath whose support and stimulation have helped this book come to fruition. Equally significant have been the students who over the years have contributed to our own reflective learning. Finally, we are deeply grateful to Jo Campling for her encouragement at an early stage of the project and Alison Brady for producing the manuscript.

Nick Gould

What kinds of knowledge do skilled social work practitioners bring to bear on their practice? What are the components of this knowledge - is it cognitive, behavioural, attitudinal, affective or multidimensional? How is this knowledge acquired, maintained and developed? Such questions inevitably become the pre-occupation of social work educators, whether they are academics located in institutions of higher education, or trainers based in practice agencies with a responsibility for student practice learning or staff development. This volume presents an international collection of writing by authors whose interest in such questions - whether arising from educational research, teaching social work, or practice as specialists in adult education has led them to engagement with the concept of reflective learning.

The reflective learning paradigm starts from an attempt to understand how social workers make judgements and decisions in domains which are uncertain and complex. There is considerable empirical evidence, based on research into a variety of occupations, suggesting that expertise does not derive from the application of rules or procedures applied deductively from positivist research. Instead, it is argued that practice wisdom rests upon highly developed intuition which may be difficult to articulate but can be demonstrated through practice. On the basis of this reconstructed epistemology of practice, reflective learning offers an approach to education which operates through an understanding of professional knowledge as primarily developed through practice and the systematic analysis of experience. This is sometimes referred to as a theory of experiential learning, although this is a term open to misunderstanding in social work, being often trivialized as a general reference to techniques such as role play and simulation exercises. Although already influential in other areas of professional education, reflective learning as a distinct educational theory has so far only been tentatively examined in the social work literature but is indicated by reference to such concepts as reflective learning', reflective practice', reflection-in-action' and 'the reflective learning environment'.

There is always a danger that a concept such as reflective learning will become little more than a slogan. The contributors to this volume offer a range of definitions of what they mean by reflection, but the commonality is that they are all engaging at some level with the application in social work of the ideas of Donald Schon, but often refracted through other influences. For instance, there is the work of John Dewey, who identified the centrality of reflection as a process through which learning from experience takes place (Dewey 1933). Experience, Dewey argued, is the organizing focus for learning; observations and actions are synthesized with conceptual ideas leading to higher-order practice. Kolb has more recently been highly influential in formalizing these ideas into a cyclical model of experiential learning, a feedback loop by which experience is acted upon through reflective observation, leading to abstract conceptualization, on the basis of which active experimentation produces modified practice intervention (Kolb 1984). Critical theory has also provided inspiration for approaches to reflective learning; in particular, Carr and Kemmis, influenced by Habermas's conception of communicative action, have extended the idea of the practitioner as an action researcher who is constantly testing and critiquing theories of action through situated practice (Carr and Kemmis 1986).