ABSTRACT
Western democracies are infatuated with neoliberalism and attendant notions of choice, individualism, competition, metrification and market-based approaches, even within education. This chapter looks to the possibilities of disrupting this failed social experiment by pursuing a revived version of critical reflection. Two parts of the chapter include a rehearsal of events when we embraced critical reflection within teaching in the 1980s, and the lessons we might learn. Second, an argument is made for a more sociologically informed and socially critical approach to reflective practice that has quite different turns from its predecessor. Three animating questions ask: Why do we need a critically reflective approach now, and what is behind this imperative? What form might a revitalized form of critical reflection take, and to where can we look for ideas? What benefits may flow from such a reworked notion of critical reflection, and what might be the barriers and obstacles?
