Facing obstacles to reflective practice
Learning Objectives
After considering this resource, you should understand the potential impact of organisational culture on critically reflective practice.
Reflection should be central to your social work practice, although there are many potential barriers to reflective practice which means such an approach is not always easy to accommodate.
One of these obstacles is the organisational culture of your work place. There are a number of reasons for this including: a focus on 'managerialism'; the idea that those in the helping profession are bureaucrats employed to carry out their employers' instructions rather than problem solvers who are able to work autonomously; a general sense of mistrust about change, and anti-intellectualism (Thompson and Thompson, 2008, pp.138-139).
In the following case study, Remy talks about his experiences of how the organisational culture in his own agency proved to be a barrier to reflective practice.
Reflective Questions
- If you were Remy, in what ways could he promote a critically reflective approach in his agency?
- What can you do to maintain a commitment to reflective practice as an individual?
- How can critical reflection reinforce the professional value base?
- What are other barriers to reflective practice? How might these be overcome?
Reference:
S Thompson and N Thompson (2008) The Critically Reflective Practitioner. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.