Abstract
Critical reflection involves the uncovering and understanding of the assumptions, which are made in the development of knowledge and the establishment and perception of facts. A capacity to understand the development of facts is proposed as an important outcome of social learning. The public perception of the facticity of expert scientific and technological knowledge is analysed in four sets of workshops conducted with publics who utilised recycled water, were within close proximity to water recycling schemes or lived in an area where planned water recycling schemes were to be implemented. The purpose of these workshops was to develop a social learning method, which could be utilised within public engagement about water reuse management. Jonathan Potter's concepts of offensive and defensive rhetoric and reifying and ironising discourse were used to describe how a public perceived expert knowledge as factual or resisted the facticity of expert pronouncements about water reuse, which were utilised in the workshops. Examples of this type of rhetoric and discourse were identified in the deliberative workshops developed in this study of social learning about water reuse and its implementation in public engagement.
Highlights
Critical reflection involves the uncovering and understanding of the assumptions, which are made in the development of knowledge and the establishment and perception of facts
A process of social learning, that we developed in a series of workshops designed for use in an engagement process for public consideration of water reuse, focused on public understanding of expert knowledge about water reuse and public capacity to reflect on the expertise presented to them
The funding provisions of the federal government required the public to give their opinion on water recycling within a short timeframe, which precluded the local government from engaging the public in a social learning process on recycled water
Summary
Keen, Brown and Dyball (2005), in reviewing social learning in environmental management, ask how social learning relates to different ways of knowing and engaging. Potter's concept of facticity was used to analyse the discussion in the workshops in order to assess how critical reflection, encouraged in the workshop process, enabled citizens to question the scientific information provided to them. Critical reflection on the expert knowledge provided to the public and a reticence to accept the facticity of such knowledge is regarded as essential for a social learning process on new technology. The use of ironizing discourse and offensive rhetoric suggests that effective social learning has taken place through critical reflection achieved by questioning of expert information. The workshops were oriented to encouraging critical reflection, and may have served to encourage various forms of discourse and rhetoric which indicate a resistance to the apparent facticity of the scientific and technological knowledge of recycled water. Future research could assess through experimental methodology whether critical reflection leads to a reduction in the perception of facticity
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