ABSTRACT
Refl ecting on what we do is essential to the development of professional judgement, but unless our refl ection involves some form of challenge to and critique of ourselves and our professional values, we tend to simply reinforce existing patterns and tendencies. The problem is that refl ection does not take place in a social and psychological vacuum; so-called ‘objectivity’ is always partial because perception and thought are always contextualised and therefore limited. Refl ection is always informed by a view of the world which is created by our culture, values and experiences. This forms a circularity that reinforces our existing view of the world: we construct our world through refl ection, but how and on what we refl ect is largely determined by our existing world view. It is this tendency which means that we have to do something other than merely refl ect upon our practice to change it or view it differently. We fi rst must change our awareness through deliberately setting out to view the world of our practice in new ways. In other words, to
develop our professional judgement, we have to move beyond our everyday ‘working’ way of looking at things, and this chapter is about how critical incidents can help us to do so.
