The concept of critical reflection: promises and contradictions

Abstract

In the world of professional education today we see frequent calls for practitioners to be critically reflective. This conflating of the terms ‘reflection’ and ‘critical reflection’ implies that adding the qualifier ‘critical’ somehow makes the kind of reflection happening deeper and more profound. I contend that reflection is not, by definition, critical. It is quite possible to practise reflectively while focusing solely on the nuts and bolts of process and leaving unquestioned the criteria, power dynamics and wider structures that frame a field of practice. Reflection is useful and necessary in the terms it sets itself; that is, to make a set of practices work more smoothly and achieve the consequences intended for them. But this is not critical reflection; critical reflection calls into question the power relationships that allow, or promote, one set of practices considered to be technically effective. It assumes that the minutiae of practice have embedded within them the struggles between unequal interests and groups that exist in the wider world. For reflection to be considered critical it must have as its explicit focus uncovering, and challenging, the power dynamics that frame practice and uncovering and challenging hegemonic assumptions (those assumptions we embrace as being in our best interests when in fact they are working against us). I believe that the ideas of critical theory – particularly that of ideology critique – must be central to critical reflection and, by implication, to transformation. Ideology critique describes the process by which people learn to recognise how uncritically accepted and unjust dominant ideologies are embedded in everyday situations and practices. Critical reflection as ideology critique focuses on helping people come to an awareness of how Capitalism and White Supremacy – the twin towers of contemporary ideology – shape beliefs and practices that justify and maintain economic and political inequity. An important element in this tradition is the concept of hegemony which explains how subjugated people are convinced to embrace dominant ideologies as always being in their own best interests. Understanding ideology means knowing how it's embedded in the inclinations, biases, hunches and apparently intuitive ways of experiencing reality that we think are unique to us. To challenge ideology we need to be aware of how it lives within us and works against us by furthering the interests of others. Without this element of ideology critique the process of clarifying and questioning assumptions is reflective, but it is not necessarily critical.