Reflective Practice

My first encounter with reflective practice was in 2000, working for WestEd and the State of California Department of Mental Health to infuse infant-preschool mental health practice in county mental health systems. We began with eight pilot counties, providing training to practitioners and administrators, technical support, and forming collaborations within each county, particularly between early childhood, special education and mental health. Bruce Perry’s groundbreaking research on brain development during the first three years of a child’s life provided evidence that early intervention needed to occur long before a child’s fifth, or even third, birthday. The results of his research set in motion relationship building mental health practice with parents and caregivers of infants and very young children, demonstrating the importance of interaction with infants. His visual depictions comparing the brain development of children in Romanian orphanages to children who experienced nurture, love, and frequent physical and emotional engagement was astounding – propelling mental health and early childhood into a new research and practice trajectory

As a member of the WestEd/Department of Mental Health team and liaison to three of the pilot counties, I was required to travel frequently and interact with county and community agencies. Shifting the paradigm on service delivery was no small feat – from the actual intervention to developing billing systems or as was often the case – finding ways to access existing ones. Our work included coordinating large and small sale trainings, facilitating meetings with community and agency representatives, and faculty in psychology and psychiatry from local universities into the collaborations. We often found ourselves mitigating the obstacles inherent to new partnerships and old resentments. Mental health professionals in some county systems liked to joke – are we going to put babies on couches and do therapy?

The model of reflective practice and reflective supervision was implemented as part of our work with the counties and in our individual supervision. Reflective practice and supervision was a new concept to me; however, most notable was the way I experienced supervision compared to my previous jobs. Reflective supervision was more of an exchange and problem solving session, not punitive. I had not read Schön's work; however, what resonated with me at that time was a more intuitive and natural way to practice, supervise, and be supervised that allowed for discovery.

A reflective practitioner, according to Schön (1983), “allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique. He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behavior. He carries out an experiment, which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation. (p.68). I realize this is dated material; however, I take issue with his use of the masculine rather being gender neutral – it was written in 1983, not 1963. (Had to say that before I continue) He further states, “when a practitioner makes sense of a situation he perceives to be unique, he sees it as something already present in his repertoire. To see this site as that one is not to subsume the first under a familiar category or rule…the familiar situation functions as a precedent, or a metaphor, or…an exemplar for the unfamiliar one” (p.138).

In Mart, my work has been confusing, full of surprise and discovery. It has been an experiment of sorts; however, I have relied upon my past experiences to help formulate a new and refined approach, inviting engagement with the phenomenon or situation at hand. In the Knight and Schwartzman (2006) CRAFT model that I use with my students, reflection is an important step; however, in the throws of action – and often the reality of community work eclipses reflection. I have had to dial back their urgency to complete a project for the sake of having a finished product in an artificial time period of a semester. Several of my students have expressed an appreciation of the two-hour drive as critical time for planning on the way and reflection on the return to Austin. What seemed like a burden in the beginning of the semester has become a relished time for reflection and process. Schön (1983) states, “When someone reflects in action, he becomes a researcher in the practice context. He is not dependent on the categories of established theory and technique, but constructs a new theory of the unique case” (p.68).

My students’ work in Mart has redefined their previous concept of research – they now define their encounters with residents, and time spent mingling at cafes, grocery store and schools as research. I like how Schön (1983) describes a practitioner who reflects in action, “ a practitioner in action tends to question the definition of his task, the theories in action that he brings to it, and the measures of performance by which he is controlled. And as he questions these things, he also questions elements of the organizational knowledge structure in which his functions are embedded” (p.337). I see my graduate students coming to similar junctures in their Mart work, broadening their definition of research, fieldwork, and successful community engagement. The ensuing discourse that has evolved on the student blogs between the students and my co-instructor has created an exchange of ideas and candid reflections. Schon (1983) refers to “reciprocal reflection-in-action, something unlikely to be discovered by “ordinary social science which tends to direct, and treat as reality, the patterns of institutionalized contention and limited learning which individuals transcend, if at all, only on rare occasions” (p.354). I believe our experience in Mart is a rare occasion as far as the academy and typical pedagogy go. The territory is largely unfamiliar for most of my students – the pronounced racial polarization in this day and age, the way those with power and privilege still dictate the agenda - even in the midst of Mart’s spiraling decay, and the degree of rural poverty that remains off the grid for many Americans.

Knight, K. S., M. (2006). Beginner's guide to community-based arts. Oakland: New Village Press.
Schön, Donald (1983). Educating the Reflective Practitioner. Basic Books.