Reflexive Practice Research Articles

Understanding ‘violence’ within protest: A call for further research within occupational therapy and occupational science

ABSTRACT There is a dearth of research in occupational science towards understanding ‘violence' within the context of protest, including why and how these two phenomena occur in and of each other and why both are characteristic of Post-Apartheid South Africa. This gap in knowledge is particularly concerning as both the profession of occupational therapy and the discipline of occupational science are concerned with human occupation as a means of analysing everyday doing as shaped by context. Efforts towards contextually reflexive research, practice, and education in the discipline and profession cannot continue to ignore this issue, especially as it pertains to the impact of violence within protest on the health and well-being of activists. This article offers a historical analysis of protest ‘violence’ across key political shifts in South Africa, using a decolonial lens. This perspective foregrounds colonial configurations of context, and the need to critically interrogate structures, practices, and processes that are potentially complicit in sustaining and reproducing this social order. The conceptualisation of what is termed ‘violence’ within the context of protest is problematised throughout, highlighting the contested nature of this term. Lastly, this article identifies occupational science constructs that may offer insights into this complex phenomenon and notes pertinent questions for theory and practice developments.

Shifting professional and personal identities of the cisgender scholar doing LGBT research

Background: Scholars researching the issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other sexual and gender minorities (LGBT) are being denounced as performers of ‘dirty’ work and promotors of ‘immorality’. Such scholars face obstacles in the workplace, such as difficulties in obtaining ethical approval, scarcity of funding, bullying, denial of promotion and unacknowledged scholarship, among other struggles.Objectives: This article intends to highlight the unintended, unanticipated and often overlooked impact that certain LGBT research interests have on the professional and personal identities of the scholar.Method: This exploratory qualitative study uses a reflexive dialogical single case study approach to understand how Katlego (a pseudonym), a cisgender heterosexual researcher, is affected by his interest in LGBT studies. Continuous supervision notes that enable thoughtful reflexive practice in qualitative research shaped the basis of this article.Results: This article shows how Katlego’s LGBT research interest resulted in him being policed, his professional intentions questioned, his bodily expression scrutinised and personal conflict being blamed on his allegedly ‘disgraceful’ research interest. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the conflation of Katlego’s interest in LGBT research with pervasive negative assumptions of non-heteronormative sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions has resulted in a shift in his professional and personal identities.Conclusion: This article calls for awareness of the issues faced by all researchers interested in LGBT research and support strategies for navigating the professional identity, workplace environment and social ecologies within a frowned-upon research field. Failure to do so could compromise their career trajectory, well-being and safety in compulsory heterosexual environments.Contribution: This article illustrated how gender regimes position the researcher as an active creator of knowledge; therefore, the research process experiences can neither be made invisible nor neutralised. Researchers must overtly consider and prepare for situational and unanticipated ethical issues.

Episodic organizational learning in system development

PurposeThis study aims to understand how practitioners use their insights in software development models to share experiences within and between organizations.Design/methodology/approachThis is a qualitative study of practitioners in software development projects, in large-, medium- or small-size businesses. It analyzes interview material in three-step iterations to understand reflexive practice when using software development models.FindingsThe study shows how work processes are based on team members’ experiences and common views. This study highlights the challenges of organizational learning in system development projects. Current practice is unreflective, habitual and lacks systematic ways to address recurring problems and share information within and between organizations. Learning is episodic and sporadic. Knowledge from previous experience is individual not organizational.Originality/valueSoftware development teams and organizations tend to learn about, and adopt, software development models episodically. This research expands understanding of how organizational learning takes place within and between organizations with practitioners who participate in teams. Learnings show the potential for further research to determine how new curriculums might be formed for teaching software development model improvements.

Accelerating heat pump diffusion in the UK: emergent tensions and priority areas for change

Abstract Energy efficiency is essential to meeting international carbon reduction ambitions. Shifting how energy services are delivered through the adoption of strategic technologies, like heat pumps for domestic heating, offers one important route to deliver efficiency gains if associated infrastructures, markets, cultures, and practices around broader systems can be transformed as well. Transformative Innovation Policy calls for new, reflexive, multi-actor governance practices capable of guiding such transformative change in particular directions whilst remaining open and responsive to system developments as they unfold. Yet seldom are stakeholders afforded the chance to deliberate on progress towards system transformation and offer insights on what is needed to expediate change. In this paper, we draw on data from three deliberative workshops carried out in 2023 in which experts from across industry, manufacturing, policy and research explored what is required to accelerate the diffusion of heat pumps in the UK. Our findings suggest decision theatres are a promising tool for reflexive evaluation of policy and identify five priority areas for change: (i) fostering a clear narrative, (ii) developing and delivering a coherent, long-term policy, (iii) increasing affordability, (iv) building installer capacity and (v) improving customer journeys. Although individual policies remain important, these priority areas shift the focus from policy instruments to broader considerations about the coherence of policy mixes and strategy for system transformations. Our work affirms how tensions arise in reflexive governance practices and supports the use of decision theatres as a method for exploring their implications in practice.

Forum: The Case for Reflexive Writing Practices in Management Communication and Organization Studies

Following criticism about the quality of writing in management communication and organization studies, this Forum presents arguments for change in how scholarly knowledge is communicated. The expectation today seems to be that, to get published, academic writing requires monologic and complex ways of expression. However, using formulaic and reader-exclusive language in publications limits their accessibility to a wider readership, including not only more diverse members of the disciplinary community—such as non-Anglophone scholars and junior researchers—but also those we study and write about. In our respective contributions, we argue for more meaningful communication between writers and readers achieved through writers adopting reflexive practices when crafting their texts for publication. Specifically, we suggest considering reflexivity through the following concepts: conformity and individuality, socialization, tenderness, and respect. These, we argue, help make our academic writing more accessible and meaningful.

Finding the right combination for self-directed learning: A focus group study of residents' choice and use of digital resources to support their learning.

There has been a shift in postgraduate medical education towards digital educational resources-podcasts, videos, social media and other formats consumed asynchronously and apart from formal curricula. It is unclear what drives residents to select and use these resources. Understanding how and why residents choose digital resources can aid programme directors, faculty and residents in optimising residents' informal learning time. This focus group study was conducted with residents at two US internal medicine residency programmes. The authors used the framework approach to content analysis using self-determination theory as guide for deductive coding and iteratively assessing connections among codes and identifying themes. Trustworthiness was addressed through use of analytic memos, reflexive practice and member checking. The authors conducted eight virtual focus groups (n = 23) from 5/27/20 to 6/11/20. Residents described that a feeling of 'should know' drove initial choices towards self-directed learning outside of work. Regular use of a resource was influenced by how the resource fit into a resident's lifestyle, the personal cognitive energy and the perceived 'activation energy' of using a particular resource. Familiarity, increased confidence and in-person social networks gained from digital resources served to reinforce and further guide resource choice. The selection of digital resources for self-directed learning is driven by multiple factors, suggesting an interdependent relationship between the learning environment and a residents' cognitive capacity. Understanding these interconnections can help residents and clinical educators explicitly choose resources that fit their lifestyle and learning needs.

Reflection, Reflexivity, Learning and the Influence of Formalised and Experiential Piano Training

This autoethnographic study examines how music learning is influenced by teachers and socio-cultural environments and how this influences not only our musical journeys but the way we view our lives, of the progress we have made, the goals in which we hope to achieve, and the way we perceive we will achieve them. This study explores how my musical background, understanding, learning, music-making abilities, and skills have shaped my present beliefs, attitudes and identity as a musician, educator, and researcher. Focusing on teacher pedagogy and practice, the study reveals how prevailing teacher-centred and didactic approaches to teaching impact the perspectives and experiences of learning, and how music teachers have the ability to motivate, and encourage, but also demoralise and dissuade the musical learner. This study highlights understanding of reflective and reflexive teacher practice and how this can unlock impactful pedagogical and relational attributes, articulating teacher development in becoming the better musician and teacher. This study revealed important insights into the way in which I now experience and understand music through a more insightful and deeper awareness of the influences and contexts that impact the way learners engage in music instruction.

Realizing the Potentials of Reflection in the Construction Reflective Practices

In the early 1990s, the author published a book where she theoretically, phenomenologically and empirically substantiated the role of reflection in the formation of professional, creative, and ethical attitudes of a scientist. The book developed a methodology for converting the conceptual model of attitudes and their reflexive mediation into various practices of reflection oriented to the adult developing personality. This article highlights the results of the author’s new research focused on the problem of developing theoretically grounded reflective practices in the field of general personology. The methods of hermeneutics and conceptual modelling were used to identify the potentials of reflection in individual life: cultural, psychological, existential, and practical. We emphasized the practical potential of reflection, which, in unity with other potentials, determines the development of specific reflective practices, including their intentional, significative, operational, semantic aspects. The forms of reflection that set the content and structure of various reflexive practices have been identified. These forms include self-exploration, self-evaluation and recognition of self-value, self-reflection, self-expression, inner dialogue with a significant Other, reflection on a life path. Based on references to culture, psychology, and the experience of individual self-knowledge, as well as on the outlined classification of forms of reflection and the model of step-by-step construction of reflective practices, the author, following the main goal of the research, proposes a number of reflective practices. These include the practice of reflective disclosure of one’s life problems; the practice of reflective dialogue of the Self with another as “You”; the practice of dialogical achievement of self-identity of the Self; the practice of reflection of key life experiences; the practice of reflective discovery of the unknown Self. The developed practices are oriented to application in personality research, in the context of counselling and psychotherapeutic work and in individual self-knowledge.

The Participation between Indigenous Empowerment and State Normalization

The present work starts from a social and systematic anthropological perspective with its epistemological limitations and openings with a constant analytical and methodological deconstruction within the framework of critical and reflexive practices. We will seek to understand the dynamics and implications of the normative, historical and structural relations between the State and indigenous peoples in two working spaces: the Provincial Council of Indigenous Affairs (CPAI) located in La Plata, and the comanagement in Bariloche located within the National Parks Administration (APN). Therefore, we will investigate and analyze a heterogeneous corpus that includes legal and administrative materials composed of a particular language and logic of state bureaucracy. In this context, we will observe these dynamics and tensions through the legal personality as a case of analysis of such strategic uses by indigenous people to reaffirm themselves as communities and, at the same time, this process translated into a normative “waiting” as a control mechanism. This will allow us to understand the historical, normative and structural relations with the State and participation as the main dimension of work.

Seeds in the Classroom: The Place of the Arts in Education

This article examines the role of the arts in education through a detailed sharing of a research project, Hum Hindustani, on children and citizenship. Using examples of work co-created with children in art workshops for the project, the article offers an understanding of the place of the arts in the classroom to provoke a larger conversation that can lead to meaningful ways of engaging with children. It looks at questions of children’s voice, authenticity and positionality to argue for a reflexive teaching practice that can challenge pedagogies that emphasise tests and results, and instead allow for the development of the whole individual.

Piloting a Virtual Arts-Based Methodology to Explore Children’s Experiences of Chronic Pain: Methodological Insights and Lessons Learned

In the field of childhood pain, the knowledge and expertise of children has long been overlooked. Instead, adult knowledge has been privileged over child knowledge, despite contemporary understandings that the experience of pain is subjective in nature and can only be fully appreciated by the person experiencing it – regardless of age, stage, or status. In this paper, we report on a pilot study that combined virtual semi-structured interviewing methods with arts-based research methods (drawing or painting, produced offline in the time between virtual interviews) to explore children’s experiences of chronic pain from their own perspectives. We use this study as a backdrop to make visible the ‘behind the scenes’ methodological work of arts-based research with children, paying particular attention to the ways in which our methodological approach created time and space for reflection, supported the co-production of knowledge, provided a means through which to visualize the effect of broader social influences on knowledge production, and provoked novel lines of analysis and inquiry. All these affordances call for deeply reflexive research practices. We suggest the methodological approach described in this paper can help amplify and add value to research with young children. The richness of the children’s accounts concerning chronic pain add to the body of evidence demonstrating that ‘even’ young children have knowledge, expertise, and insights that should be elicited to expand understandings of children’s pain and other similarly abstract topics, phenomenon, and lines of inquiry in health.

Modelling Teacher Practice With Digital Indigenised Teaching Strategies During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Reflexive Practice Of An Early Career Academic

Modelling Teacher Practice With Digital Indigenised Teaching Strategies During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Reflexive Practice Of An Early Career Academic

GAME-REFLECTIVE PRACTICES AS A WAY TO DEVELOP STUDENTS’ CREATIVE POTENTIAL

The article is devoted the relevance of the use of game-reflective practices in the framework of educational work with first-year students as a way to develop the creative potential of students. The article describes in detail the logic of including reflexive methods of working with students, the problems faced by the teacher while implementing reflexive methods of working with students, and also presents the results of long-term use of reflexive practices as a method that allows to form personal qualities of a student, as well as contributing to the development of a trusting corporate culture.

Valuing emotions and reflecting on group work: A ‘metalogic’ approach to teaching research methods in a university course

Students are often apprehensive about group work and about learning research methods. Challenges such as group work ‘free-riders’, and high anxiety about methods, dominate the literature on teaching within these complex learning domains. Drawing on both reflexive and emotional turns in sociological theory, we explore the potential of a group research project on students' experiences of group work for fostering reflexive learning of skills in group work and research methods. Guided by a socio-personal pedagogical theory, which prioritises students reflecting on and integrating experiences within their identities and values, the group project featured an individual reflexive journal assessment on students' socio-emotional experiences of group work. The findings highlight the merits of taking such a ‘metalogic’ approach that prompts learning about learning itself. Students showed experience-based understanding of the socio-emotional complexities of qualitative research practices, and insight into their emerging group work skills – identifying how they, not just others, can develop skills to improve reflexive practice and group work, and to better grapple with the complexities of learning and applying research methods.

A Decolonial Feminist Politics of Fieldwork: Centering Community, Reflexivity, and Loving Accountability

Abstract International studies scholarship has benefitted from insights from anthropology, peace and conflict studies, geography, and other disciplines to craft a thoughtful set of reflections and considerations for researchers to take with them “into the field” when they embark on “fieldwork.” In this essay, we map out a history of critical approaches to fieldwork, starting with the encounters that initially encouraged reflection on the positionality of the researcher and the power dynamics of research. Building on decolonial feminist scholarship, we show how a commitment to reflexive practice “in the field” has developed further, through a reflection on the self as a researcher and on “the field” as a construct. This ethical and political commitment prompts a rethinking of key concepts in fieldwork (and research more generally), including those of “the researcher,” “the research participant” (or “population”), “expertise,” and what constitutes “data” and “knowledge.” We argue that a preferable approach to critical fieldwork is grounded in feminist and decolonial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist politics. This approach is committed not just to reflecting critically on “the field” and the interactions of the researcher within it but also to challenging the divisions, exclusions, and structures of oppression that sustain the separations between “here” and “there,” “researcher” and “researched,” and “knower" and “known.”

Short Note—Revisiting Formality in Contemporary Business Interaction: A Conceptual Framework

Formality is better than its reputation. Formality may accomplish and sustain shared attention, execute events in an orderly and fair manner and secure broad and relevant participation. Formality is moreover not rigid and binary. It is relative, dynamic, co-constructed, and locally negotiated. It may provide proactive solutions to complexities in contemporary institutional interactions and may support participants’ orientation toward specific goals. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the concept of formality in social interaction. The paper proposes that formality is analyzed according to six dimensions: structural–episodic; preemptive–remedial; stipulated–taken-for-granted; instructed–questioned; scripted–negotiated; and excessive–granular. It takes a conversation analytic approach to video or audio recordings of real-life contemporary business interaction, both co-located and mediated via information and communication technology. As a wide-ranging and multifaceted set of instruments, formality may be used beyond institutional goal-orientation to include and exclude, to create transparency or lack thereof, and to promote or block (un)just powers. The practical implication is therefore to encourage a reflexive practice that promotes transparency by allowing for the participants to negotiate the formality of a situation. To formulate and explain formality may serve to include lay people in institutional procedures and place the participants on a more equal footing. Being aware of how to increase and decrease formality, episodically as well as structurally, makes it possible to question and redesign layers of formality in institutional processes, procedures, and encounters.

Reflexivity 3. Breaking out the Reflexive Loop to Decolonise Practice

Reflexivity guides our everyday relational ethics but always takes place within a cultural loop. We find what we recognise. Reflexive practice is a commitment to ethical practice but it isn’t a safety net which stops us from reproducing the same dominant discourses of who or what counts and structures which maintain inequalities. In this paper I explore the question, “How can systemic therapists develop reflexivity in their practice to intentionally change and connect personal struggle with wider systems which reproduce power and inequality?” I describe some differences between what I call Reflexivity 1, Reflexivity 2 and Reflexivity 3 to show the impact of ideology on theory, method and what we (think we) notice and act on. I share some reflexive questions, stories from practice and research and examples of wider systemic activism. These working ideas are a response to concerns that the clinic and the organisations which host them are oppressive, colonial structures which limit the progress members of the public can make within them and restrict opportunities to develop practice-theory which takes into account and challenges social, historic and material inequalites and injustice.

Embedding a strengths-based approach in humanitarian engineering research through reflexive practice

Strengths-based approaches (SBAs) aim to empower communities, ensuring community assets are acknowledged and embraced. We embarked on a process to embed an SBA in ourselves as humanitarian engineering researchers. Through a process of collaborative reflexive practice, we discussed themes of engineering identity and problem-solving mentalities, power dynamics across a research process, theories for humanitarian engineering research, deficit terminology, and more. SBA tools and activities aided our process, allowing us to trial practical applications of an SBA across a research process. Through our journeys, we explored the empowering and transformational qualities of SBAs, which present in this paper. We emphasise that SBAs should not be seen as toolbox approaches, but rather as a philosophy that can be incorporated on both professional and personal levels. We present our model for embedding an SBA through reflexive practice, and we encourage others to consider the potential, and the importance, or both reflexivity and SBAs.

The Role of the Scientist’s Personal Brand in the Reflexive Construction of Organizational Identity

Abstract Our purpose in this article is to explore the phenomenon of scientist’s personal brand (SPB) to better understand the relationship between organizational culture, institutional identity, and a scientist’s (self-) image. In doing so, we used Hatch and Schultz’s model of the dynamic of organizational identity which links culture and image via four processes: 1) mirroring – where identity is mirrored in the image of others; 2) reflecting – where identity is embedded in cultural understanding; 3) expressing – where culture makes itself known through identity claims; and 4) impressing – where expressions of identity leave impressions on others. Qualitative research methods, based on individual In-depth interviews (IDI) with eleven scientists who represented public and private institutions in Poland, allowed the authors to examine and develop the concept of SPB within the context of an organizational identity approach. We found from the IDI four recurring themes: the idea that SPB reflects cultural understanding, mirrors images of others’ expressions of identity, leaves impressions on others, and is constructed through scientists’ reflexive practices.

Critical Friends, Dialogues of Discomfort, and Researcher Reflexivity in the Sociology of Sport

In this special issue, which calls for a “more radical sociology of sport and physical culture,” the purpose of this paper is to address how practices of reflexivity might be mobilized among critical sport scholars toward changing the intersectional, fragmented, and complex communities we inhabit inside and outside the academy. We begin by conducting a literature review of researcher reflexivity and positionality in Sociology of Sport Journal from 2000 to 2022. Utilizing Wanda Pillow’s “reflexivities of discomfort,” we interrogate our own research by engaging in a reflexive dialogue as “critical friends.” Through this work, we try to make sense of the potential of these dialogues for shaping our ethical, political, and personal approaches to research, writing, methodology, and knowledge production.