Professional education,reflective practice and feminism

This paper offers acritical perspectiveon Schon, and on reflective practice as apedagogy, by engaging with themes in feminism. A comparison between consciousness raising and reflective practice gives insights into the pleasures experienced by practitioners. However, it also suggests that reflection-in-action is not the prerogative of professionals. Consciousness raising and feminist reflexivity in research provide positive examples of political engagement and reflexive self-awareness. The scope of reflective practice is limited by the contexts in which it has been adopted. In the UK reflective practice has been implemented in professions with large female workforces: nursing, teaching and social work. The scope for autonomy in these professions is increasingly limited. Reflective practice, therefore, may be becoming avehicle for self-surveillance and orthodoxy. These socio-political considerations provide the basis for more searching epistemological questions about the nature of professional knowledge and the characteristics of all human labour. Both Marxist and feminist traditions suggest that the capacity to reflect is a characteristic of all humans, while some social scientists have suggested that reflexivity is a particular characteristic of modernity. These views challenge the status of reflective practice as the episteme of professional knowledge. Moreover, Schon's methodology is based on a partial and gender-blind view of professionals. The paper concludes that a reinvigorated research agenda, which engages with these broader themes, is necessary.