Aside from the confusion in practice that it has caused, the epistemic conflict also resulted in some problems in the education, where students are expected to demonstrate their ability to reflect and be assessed on it. This gives rise to false reflection, which is contrived, sterile, and in certain extreme cases, fabricated (Russell 2005; Wong et al. 2016).
7.3.1. True and False Reflection
My co-researchers and I negotiated the epistemic differences between us and our educators and supervisors by being admittedly less than honest in our own reflections.
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Dialogic reflection is not an easy process and requires one to reveal weakness and to prod at unpleasant experiences. When dialogic reflection is conducted in the form of supervision, it adds an additional layer of difficulty because the student is expected to reveal himself or herself to a superior. In many instances this resulted in some reticence where the reflection that was presented was, to a certain degree, false.
It is hard when you are reflecting with someone to offer a true reflection, I don’t know, sometimes I find that when I look at my own practice, it is also hard to be completely honest to yourself that you have done something wrong or you lacked knowledge in certain areas. [Me in group one]
You are not going to do a true reflection or be really honest about what you are feeling and thinking deep down if someone is going to read it. [May in group one]
I feel like you need to get it all down out on paper and then edit it, I feel that is the most natural way, be totally honest with myself, get it all down there and then depends on who is reading it, then alter it. And that almost feel like a refined version for whoever is gonna read it. [Isabella in group two]
There is always a truthful reflection behind an untruthful one. [Alicia in group two]
These false reflections were edited versions of a true reflection, often impassive and devoid of the rich emotions and deep thought that occurred. To a certain extent, it was a more objective version of reflection where we felt protected by not revealing too much or only revealing what that cannot be contested, i.e. a factual descriptive account of the experience.
Writing reflection is often a common method of measuring a student’s ability to practice reflectively. However, assessing this writing, as indicative of an ability to reflect, has resulted in reflection being treated as an artificial and superficial process of demonstrating professional competence.
My reflections are quite private, almost personal, because I was reflecting on the educators or on the setting and they did read them. And I was a bit like "oh god, can’t
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remember what I have written now or if I have offended them" … I felt like I wanted to write one for me and then one for them. [Isabella in group two]
Isabella had stated that her reflections were private and personal in nature hence resulting in her apprehension about sharing them with her educators. Such reticence had caused her to want to write one for her own private use and another more acceptable version for her educators that would be less personal. She had also insinuated that her private thoughts and feelings may be deemed as offensive to others and by feeling this way, she had felt that a more sterile version of her own reflection was more suitable for assessment. This showed the effects of assessing reflection which reduced the rich and emotional process of reflection to something more rational and logical which students considered more acceptable to educators.
Sophie in group two shared an experience she had on her placement where she had not gotten along with her educator. A particularly bad incident had resulted in an altercation between her and her educator.
I felt that she was shouting at me and then the next day morning she was like "I want you write a reflection on what happened yesterday" and I felt like saying everything about her but instead I made it all about myself. [Sophie in group two]
The group reacted with sympathy and I pointed out the potentially damaging consequence of her false reflection.
It could be quite self-destructive writing something like that blaming yourself for everything, I mean it’s one thing to point out your flaws but it another to ... internalise everything … to make it all about you, putting all the blame on yourself, that could be quite damaging to your own practice. [Me in group two]
While this was a one-off case that emerged from this research, it is possible that false reflections may have rather damaging consequences to a student’s development. Group one however noted that since a false reflection is a façade for the true reflection, the learning process has not been discounted as the true reflection still occurs.
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When reflection is to be conducted dialogically, it is often better; however, finding the right reflective partner is an issue (Boniface 2002). Supervisors tend not to make the best reflective partners due to their superior position, because they are judging the reflector’s progress and assessing their practice, which makes the reflector reticent. The difficulty of expressing oneself honestly under this circumstance stems from the vulnerability that one experiences. Therefore, the presence of a superior in a reflective environment may be overpowering and may prevent one from being able to fully analyse oneself (Harvey and Struzziero 2008) due to the fear of vulnerability. There had been cases where students had fabricated experiences to reflect on to demonstrate their prowess rather than reveal their fallibility (Russell 2005). The intense pressure to do well academically had led to reflective assignments to be unrepresentative of a student’s analytical and evaluative abilities. It had perpetuated a culture where students feel the need to demonstrate their abilities through their reflections. Consequently, reflective pieces produced are often contrived and sanitised of the messy reality of the true experience, just to achieve a better grade from the supervisor (Wong et al. 2016).
In addition to privacy, I saw that these false reflections were coping mechanism that my co- researchers and I had developed to defend our epistemic position on reflection while fulfilling our academic requirements. When educators impose their perspective of reflection on the students through assessment criteria or assignment marking rubrics, students can become unwilling to express their reflections from their own perspective of what reflection means to them. This is a result of the fear of being judged or being corrected as shown by the data that we had generated. These false reflections protected us from others who may view reflection differently, such as Ava’s educator who “crossed out” her reflections on her feelings about the experience. As we saw reflection as an emotional process as well, a judgement on our reflections was also a judgement on how we felt. These false reflections, being edited and ready for review, are decoys of the true reflection. Assessments or critiques on them do not emotionally affect
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the reflector as much. In other words, it is safer to produce false reflection because it does not bring to question our perspective of reflection.
False reflections were not always intended. Some co-researchers found that in order to be graded on reflection, they had to express their reflective process which they find very difficult.
I find it hard to express myself on paper, particularly with written reflection, I really struggle with it. I find it very superficial because if I am reflecting verbally with somebody or in a conversation with my educator, or even driving home like having a chat, I find that you can reflect on these little things naturally but as soon as I have been told to write it down, it becomes so bit-ty. [Eve in group one]
Assessing reflection is essentially assessing the cognitive processes that go on behind professional practice. It is expecting the student to express, in writing, these implicit processes and knowledge that is often beyond what words can describe (Polanyi, 1967). Assessing reflection in this way is essentially assessing how well the student is able to express his or her reflection not the reflection itself.
Gilbert (2001), drawing on Foucault (1980), noted that reflection can be perceived as a form of confessional however from what these research groups had noted, it is only so when one is completely honest when reflecting. Both research groups noted that true reflection was often not being shared. The confession of truth requires overcoming great resistance (Foucault 1981) and as these co-researchers have noted, a false reflection was the easier way out.
I think it defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? If you can’t be truthful when you reflect then what is the point of doing it. [Me in group one]
A false reflection is a carefully crafted confession, both of which are oxymoronic in nature. As I had noted here, what is a point of a false reflection? What is the purpose of a confessional if it is not true? If what was being assessed by educators was a false version of the true reflection, then to what extent was this assessment a true measure of their reflective ability?
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Assessing reflection suggests that there is a good way to reflect and a bad way to do so. It often is a measure of a student’s analytical abilities which can allude to a belief that the rational perspective of reflection is more important (Wong et al. 2016). This was troubling to both research groups because of our understanding of reflection as more than a rational process. The false reflection is a product of the reticence that students face when engaging in reflection and expressing it. This reticence is often from a fear of judgement by others.
You are afraid that whatever you say may have an impact on your image socially and professionally which is why certain things are being brought up because you don’t want to come across as being too critical. [Karen in group one]
I would leave out services as well, like how the services are being run and how I don’t agree with how things are being done …. I just don’t want them to see that I am criticising the service. [Oliva in group two]
My reflections are personal but I have had educators asking to read my reflections and very rarely would I say “I am wrong” … part of me knows that at the end of the day, they will be reading it and they are judging my ability to be a professional therapist. [Charlotte in group two]
My co-researchers were very aware of how they were being perceived by others when they shared their reflections, leading them to edit, falsify or even refuse to share anything. Geri in group one noted that there were professional ramifications to writing a reflection as well. She found herself in a situation where she could have implied that a member of staff was negligent if she reflected truthfully.
I was trying not to drop the member of staff in it ... so I had to go around those things and not to make it like they had not done their job properly. [Geri in group one]
Karen from group one noted that sharing an honest and truthful reflection could be perceived as whistle-blowing which could have impacted her professional image. Hence there needs to be
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a certain level of care when sharing reflection especially in the professional milieu and an awareness to “protect yourself” as Karen had put it.
While they are aware of the potential judgement others might make, some co-researchers also noted that they are concerned about the audience of their reflections and how they might feel when they read or listen to them.
How do you reflect effectively without making it personal to somebody? I don’t think anyone had figured out a good way to do that. [Eve in group one]
I personally would not feel confident raising negative issues or things that we need to work on without thinking "how am I going to say this without causing offence?" [Nicola in group one]
False reflections, were defensive tactics that my co-researchers and I employed to protect ourselves from judgements by others on our reflections, our feelings and thoughts about the experience and our own perspectives of reflection. Amidst the epistemic differences, we decided to produce a reflection safe for reviewing. These false reflections were for the educators or supervisors rather than for ourselves.
7.3.2. Fish, Twinn and Purr: Strands of Reflection
The implication of this epistemic difference is also evident at a more macro level. This is best exemplified by Fish’s work with Twinn and Purr (Fish et al. 1991).
In response to the positivist idea of Technical Rationality that was prevalent in the medical, health and care practice, Fish, Twinn and Purr developed Strands of Reflection (Fish et al. 1991). Strands of Reflection helped the practitioner delineate four aspects of an event which he or she can reflect upon. It was purposed to facilitate a better understanding of the clinical experience by pushing the practitioner from the technical rational perspective of the event to explore the artistic elements in practice (Fish 2012). To do so, Strands of Reflection required the practitioner to analyse and synthesise the following four aspects of the experience (Fish 2012, p. 40):
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1. The Factual Strand – Recount the facts of the event
2. The Retrospective Strand – Identifying key patterns that emerged in the event
3. The Sub Stratum Strand – Uncovering and exploring critically the personal theory that underlies the piece of practice
4. The Connective Strand – Considering how present theory and practice might relate to future theory and practice
The Connective Strand highlights the fact that knowledge from an experience cannot be freely applied to another situation as practice situations are unique. Experiences are worth reflecting upon insofar as they offer learning points hence reflection should not be limited to the negative aspects of practice (Fish and de Cossart 2007; Fish 2012).
Fish (2012) noted that while Strands of Reflection garnered some popularity amongst occupational therapy and other healthcare professionals, it failed in diverting the focus of professionals to further explore themselves as a practitioner. While it encouraged one to probe at the artistic elements of practice in the Sub Stratum Strand, it was not successful at doing so. Fish (2012) felt that due to practitioners passing on Strands of Reflection from educator to student through a reductive method that can be perceived as instrumentalist. Instrumentalism is the idea advanced by Dewey (1916) that theories are useful to the extent of its ability to serve a practical purpose. However, when applied indiscriminately, it can strip theories of their rich philosophical and theoretical underpinnings to become tools of practice, a reduced version. This distortion resulted in Strands of Reflection becoming an instrument for general use by practitioners, when it was initially intended for supervisors to use with supervisees (Fish 2012). Strands of Reflection was reduced to be a rigid structure for practice, instead of a theoretical model which is to be used to supplement and guide the practitioner and his or her supervisor to better practice.
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Despite the change in context, Fish (2012) found that professions still preferred a more reduced version of reflection - a method of critical analysis - despite it not being used critically. As a structure for practice, Strands of Reflection was used partially: often, the Sub Stratum and Connective Stands were neglected even though they are the most critical and challenging strands. The focus is placed solely on the Factual and Retrospective aspects which were more comfortable (Fish 2012), objective, straightforward and less artistic, once again reverting to the positivist perception of professional practice, Technical Rationality. The reductive use of the Strands of Reflection is because of the way some practitioners perceived reflection. When practitioners favour the Factual and Retrospective Strands, it suggests that they believe that they are sufficient for their own reflective practice. It can be interpreted that they build their reflective practice around facts and descriptive reports of their own experience of practice. This suggests that reflection, to them, is perhaps perceived from a more empirical and positivist stance. This is reductive, not because of their epistemic stance towards reflection but because of their use of their use of the theory which appears to stem from a constructivist position.
7.4. Conclusion
Reflection can be viewed from many epistemic orientations, these different positions value different aspects of the reflective process. However, educators may unconsciously project these epistemic stances onto students by attempting to teach them what reflection should look like. To students who had firm beliefs about reflection, these differing stances appeared to be conflicts; students who are still conceptualising reflection in the context of their own use were bombarded with mixed messages about reflection which resulted in some confusion about what reflection was to them.
The use of reflection can sometimes be reductive. Some professionals see reflection as an analytical tool or a method of problem-solving. In these instances, reflection can be reduced to an objective analysis of an experience, stripped of the emotions and thoughts that occur behind
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it. Fish (2012) saw this as reverting to the Technical Rational model where the focus was on problem-solving rather than problem framing.
Reflection is nebulous however, that was how Schön (1983) had meant it to be. The lack of guidance on how to reflect has resulted in many other theorists to appropriate this concept in the context of various professional spheres to provide some clarity on the reflective process using different philosophical concepts. This thus caused further confusion about the process however as these theories are being applied out of context by other professions.
A disciplined and open mind is required for reflection to be successful (Dewey 1933). However, as there is a propensity to reflect on experiences that are negative in nature, it is harder to challenge oneself or even admit to being wrong. My co-researchers and I faced some difficulties emotionally when reflecting because we saw reflection as something more than a rational problem-solving process.
Reflection requires a great degree of vulnerability and this is even more difficult when done dialogically with someone in authority who may sit in judgement. False reflections, a façade of the true reflection, is often easier to share. Being edited, sterile and contrived, these false reflections are not accurate depictions of elaborate process that the reflector undergoes. They are a defensive mechanism that one may employ to protect one’s perspective of reflection.