ABSTRACT
This quote exemplifies the challenge that empirical work can offer current academic understandings of the practice of ‘reflection9 in the way that it highlights the significance of emotions in managers’ understandings of reflection. The relations between emotion and reflection has until recently been largely under analysed and under-theorised in the literature on reflection. In contrast, a great deal of attention has been given to the development of both ‘reflective practitioners’ and theories on reflection in recent years such that A Tuinjman somewhat sceptically calls it the ‘idea of the decade for many educators’ (1995). Variously defined as a competence, a process of problem-solving, and a means of individual and social emancipation, ‘reflection’ now forms a core part of many post-graduate management qualifications at Certificate, Diploma and Masters levels, and is a developing field of academic study. Although there are of course many different definitions of reflection, these can be seen as representative of one of two dominant understandings of reflection: ‘instrumental reflection’ and ‘critical reflection’. Instrumental reflection has been defined as being ‘concerned with practical questions about what courses of action can best lead to the achievement of goals or solutions of specific problems’ (Reynolds, 1997, p. 314). On the other hand critical reflection is seen as confronting ‘underlying assumptions, in particular about the context, and involves engaging with individual, organizational or social problems with the aim of changing the conditions which gave rise to them, as well as providing the basis for personal change’ (ibid, p. 314). In sum, instrumental reflection describes a kind of organizational or management improvement through problem-solving or learning, and critical reflection, a form of ‘consciousness-
raising9. Many advocates of critical reflection are keen to emphasise the difference between critical reflection and instrumental reflection. The way that this difference is conceptualized varies from definition to definition but overall, it is widely believed that critical reflection is a deeper, more complex, ethical and political transformatory form of reflection than instrumental reflection.
