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Faith in reflective practiceJo Trelfa aa The College of St Mark & St John, UKPublished online: 20 Aug 2006.
To cite this article: Jo Trelfa (2005) Faith in reflective practice, Reflective Practice: Internationaland Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 6:2, 205-212, DOI: 10.1080/14623940500105866
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Reflective PracticeVol. 6, No. 2, May 2005, pp. 205–212
ISSN 1462-3943 (print)/ISSN 1470-1103 (online)/05/020205–08© 2005 Taylor & Francis Group LtdDOI: 10.1080/14623940500105866
Faith in reflective practiceJo Trelfa*The College of St Mark & St John, UKTaylor and Francis LtdCREP110569.sgm10.1080/14623940500105866Reflective Practice1462-3943 (print)/1470-1103 (online)Original Article2005Taylor & Francis Ltd62000000May 2005JoTrelfaThe Station, Bolberry Down, Bolberry, MalboroughKingsbridgeDevonTQ7 [email protected].
Qualifying in 1987 I have worked as a youth and community worker for 12 years and since then asa lecturer training new workers within higher education. Throughout I have been interested in theprocess by which we become professional practitioners, specifically reflective practice. Whilst else-where practitioners/researchers describe and explore stages of development in, and levels of,reflective practice, in this paper I explore students reactions and responses to the process, bestcharacterised as a ‘backlash’ both to the notion and their experience of it. The paper follows myown process of reflective practice, an exploration of ‘calling’ and ‘faith’, ideas stimulated fromlistening to students. The process shows my inquiry into the roots of the backlash through an anal-ysis of what students are asked to do within the process of reflective practice and stages of develop-ment of faith in it as a guiding principle to their work. This enabled me to develop a broader senseof the student reactions to the process of reflective practice and successfully change my ownpractice.
Introduction
Within my work as a lecturer in higher education I ask new students training to beyouth and community workers why they have chosen this particular profession.Whilst a minority state pragmatic reasons—not being accepted onto their first choiceof course or the outcome of a process of elimination (i.e., not wanting to be a teacher/social worker/counsellor)—the majority speak with passion about wanting to workwith people, caring for people, wanting to give back something they feel they bene-fited from, or needed but wasn’t there—and a general agreement in what theydescribe as ‘a calling’. However, later in the course the same students begin to expressdoubts, disappointments, fears, anxieties and anger at having this calling challenged,shaped and not developing in ways they had expected.
Reflecting on this, I decided to explore ‘a calling’. Doyle (1999) turns to Christiandiscourse for this. She observes that a calling is about someone discovering/acknowl-edging their abilities and tendencies, committing to a set of ideals, shaping this into a
*The College of St Mark & St John, Derriford Road, Plymouth PL6 8BH, UK. Email:[email protected].
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way of being in relation to self and world which involves respect, justice and democ-racy, and a commitment to building groups/communities and action. Moreover, itinvolves the person and those around them naming their calling and its craft and qual-ities, and then having it all tested—so moving from the ‘private’ (a private belief/posi-tion/driver) to ‘public’ (articulating/expressing it and then this being questioned,challenged and tested by others and circumstances).
Student youth and community workers are learning to work with young peopleand adults in their communities through practice that is in ‘the direction of thegood’ (Everitt & Hardiker, 1996, p. 72), ‘good’ meaning ‘concern with the wholeperson’, the morals, norms and shared ideas that ‘make for human flourishing’within an anti-oppressive framework (Smith, 1994, p. 35; Jeffs & Smith, 1990, p.17). This is held through a clear value base and identified National OccupationalStandards. In brief, the role has been characterized as ‘being about’ and ‘beingthere’, so being known and approachable, knowing when to make contact and whennot, and engaging appropriately but also sharing something of self as a person froma place of integrity and authenticity (Smith, 1994, p. 109). Practitioners need to beable to work in different situations and with different approaches and interventions(Heron, 1990). Integral to this students also need to develop commitment to theprofession as a whole, facilitated through, for example, interactions with peers whotogether have a wide variety of related experience, placement experiences and work-ing with teaching staff who had/continue to have direct involvement with the field.Involvement with the ‘community of practice’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger,1998) is another way they learn to ‘walk the walk’ and ‘talk the talk’ of establishedmembers of the profession. The process of training is also significant. Students arerequired to link theory to practice, hence name, discover and develop abilities,circumstances and tendencies, and then encounter this being ‘tested’ through theexperiences and interventions.
When considered together in this way it is apparent that the process for developingpractice is more than simply the acquisition of skills but facilitating a way of being inthe world that is committed to change, community development and empowerment.Using the frame of a calling to consider youth and community work appears to be veryappropriate.
However, the job of a youth and community worker is hard. There is a general lackof understanding about the nature of the role, in part because the effectiveness of apractitioner lies in their ability ‘to involve themselves in the action without becomingan overwhelming point of reference’—‘simply’ talking with people is not perceived as‘real work’ (Smith, 1994, pp. 28, 18). In fact, the profession has been described as an‘oral culture’ (Smith, 1994, p. 29)—and ‘conversation is something that anybody cando well’ (Davis & Gibson, 1967, cited Smith, 1994, p. 31). For the same reasonspractitioners can also find it difficult to understand and articulate their role andpurpose. Furthermore, a process based on conversation creates vulnerability since itis unpredictable, fluid and open to innumerable variables (Smith, 1994, pp. 29, 67).
In this context, then, how do youth and community work students ‘operationalize’their calling? What do they have faith in? Schön’s (1983) inquiry into how professionals
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Faith in reflective practice 207
deal with ‘the swampy lowlands and messes of human interaction’ is quite apt here!‘Faith’ often has religious connotations—yet those of us who have no religion will stillhave had to deal with the ‘swampy lowlands’, and those of us who have a religion willrecall times when it hasn’t made dealing with them any easier! Smith (1963, citedFowler, 1981) argues that faith is deeper and ‘below’ religion and in this way religioncan be viewed as the window through which someone sees their faith but the two donot have to be linked. What, then, underpins youth and community work professionalpractice—what is the window practitioners look through?
Having taken ‘faith’ out of the context of religion there are insights to be gained inthat arena from which to explore calling and faith in relation to youth and communitywork and the development of professional practice. From the brief description of therole it is clear practitioners need faith in something that has intrinsic worth. Fowler(1981, pp. 18–19) writes that ‘within the pressures of powerful forces that enlarge,diminish, form and destroy we need to invest in and align with powers that sustainand undergird us’ that will provide focus, coherence, meaning and order. He arguesfaith does just this. Faith is a way a person can ‘see themselves in relation to a back-ground of shared meaning and purpose’ (1981, p. 4); it is ‘an active mode of beingand committing’ (1981, p. 16); and rather than a ‘separate dimension of life orcompartmentalized speciality’ it should be ‘an orientation of the total person thatgives their hopes/efforts/thoughts/actions purpose and direction’ (1981, p. 14).Clearly, youth and community workers would do well with such an anchor, but faithin what? I contend the answer is reflective practice—reflective practice is the windowthrough which we aim students to develop their faith.
Understanding of reflective practice takes contributions from numerous profes-sions (Moon 2002, 2004; Trelfa & Feaviour, 2004) resulting in a field that ‘knows nounified, coherent and common approach and continues to ignite heated controversy’(Van Dyk, 2004, p. 4). This said, what is agreed is that reflecting on and after practice(Schön, 1983) should not be crisis intervention, de-briefing, or a technically appliedskill (see also Van Dyk, 2004, p. 4) but ‘a specialized tool for professional practice’(Moon, 2002, p. 4). Reflective practice is about a way of being in the world, acommitment as opposed to something a practitioner does (Trelfa & Feaviour, 2004).Van Dyk observes that reflective practice ‘cannot be divorced from one’s deepestcommitments, beliefs and feelings’ and hence can never be ‘a cold distantiated activ-ity, a taking distance from a presumably objective state of affairs’ (ibid.). It providesa fitting match for the elements of faith described above.
‘Reflective practice’ is clearly different to merely ‘being reflective’ which mightconsist of mulling over events of the day, a particularly galling incident or somethinga practitioner feels especially satisfied about as they make their way home. ‘Beingreflective’ certainly has value but like others I have been more interested in whatmakes for ‘real meaningful change’ (Van Dyk, 2004, p. 10). Considering the profes-sion through the frame of calling highlights that the development of professional prac-tice needs such change and this means a depth and breadth to the process of reflectivepractice. To this end a colleague and I developed a framework that encourages prac-titioners to consider five dimensions as they explore their practice (Trelfa & Feaviour,
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2004). Having faith in reflective practice offers practitioners a ‘guiding principle’(Fowler, 1981, p. x) to their practice. Ghaye (2004) refers to it in the plural to indi-cate there are numerous ways to reach the same ends countering the implication thatthere is one ‘ideal’ reflective practice that everyone should adhere to.
Fowler sees how faith ‘provides people with the nerve to stand in the presence ofthe abyss, a dependable life space that is ‘profound, ultimate and stable no matterwhat happens at the level of the immediate event’ (Fowler, 1981, p. 11; Smith, 1979,cited ibid.). In this sense I argue faith in reflective practice has the same effect foryouth and community workers as they deal with the ‘swampy lowlands’ of the workand role.
However, picture the start of a course and a large number of students the majorityof whom are following a calling to join the profession—how do they know having faithreflective practice will provide a guiding principle? Over the years we have witnessedstudents feeling angry, challenged, threatened, demoralized, shocked and put off bythe need to develop reflective practice, the ‘leap into the unknown’ it takes and thejourney its development entails as they have their personally and privately held callingtested, challenged and shaped in the ‘public’ arena of the course.
A source that articulated my sense of what we were asking students to do meant Icould begin to more fully appreciate their experiences. Van Dyk’s (2004) three facetsto reflective practice explains the process requires students first to identify theirfundamental worldview and practice philosophy, i.e., the priorities, values andcommitments that ‘form the implicit and unarticulated frameworks that shape theirpractice’ (2004, p. 5); then to explore and articulate their reflections around this; andfinally revisit their principles, value base and worldview to see how/whether they alignwith each other and with their practice—both in immediate terms but also in relationto their overall approach and philosophy. Reflective practice through the ‘five dimen-sions’ model (Trelfa & Feaviour, 2004) asks students to challenge, question and illu-minate these three facets in a vigorous, rigorous and systematic way and to do sowithin the course, with their student peers, and through fieldwork. In this way they‘achieve a deepening awareness of the sociocultural reality that shapes their lives andtheir capacity to transform it’ (Schipani, cited ibid., 2004), important for real mean-ingful change as well as developing as effective professionals. Indeed, Van Dyk (2004,p. 8) observes that ‘much of education can be a gigantic waste of time if what islearned makes no difference in the lives of learners’. It becomes clear encouraging/expecting students to ‘operationalize’ their calling through reflective practice is atroubled and troubling process. For example, it can equate to changes in their polit-ical, social and personal beliefs/values, leading to leaving familiar networks and find-ing new ones to associate with, even a change in a significant relationship. None ofthis is ‘easy’ and not what they may have had in mind when they started out in highereducation.
At this point in my own process of reflective practice a colleague directed metowards Fowler’s (1981) six stages of faith development. It offered a frame to mapand ‘explain’ students experiences and reactions, see how and why these might bediffer from person to person, and consider ways to respond.
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Faith in reflective practice 209
Stage 1: intuitive–projective
Someone at this level of calling and faith bases their worldview, conceptions, under-standing and commitments completely on imitations of beliefs, ideas, values, exam-ple, mood and actions of others. It is about the development of powerful images butthe risk is what images since, for example, they could merely reinforce oppressive andprejudiced societal values, of concern per se but also significant given the nature ofyouth and community work.
Stage 2: mythical–literal
At this level an individual has begun to take on for themselves the stories, beliefs, moralrules, attitudes, etc—but with a ‘literal one-dimensional interpretation and meaning’.As a result their understanding and explanations are linear, based on description notanalysis/depth, and they are unable to stand back to ‘formulate reflective, conceptualmeanings’. If they meet someone who appears to ‘disagree’ with their sense of things,offers an alternative perspective or challenges them in some way at best they dismisstheir views but at worst the person outright.
Stage 3: synthetic–conventional
Worldview is more complex at this stage so ‘a coherent orientation’ is needed andconsequently ‘experience is structured in interpersonal and relational terms’.However it is acutely attuned to the expectations and judgements of significant othersand as a result they still have no clear grasp of their own identity and lack autonomousjudgement to build/maintain an independent perspective. In other words, they ‘toethe party line’—say/do what is expected/wanted and internalize it as their own.Because of this, their ideology is deeply felt but they cannot articulate it—differencesare still seen more as a difference in the ‘kind of person’ rather than outlook.
Stage 4: individuative–reflective
Here a practitioner begins to face the unavoidable tensions they experience and so to‘take seriously the burden of responsibility for her/his own commitments, lifestyle,beliefs and attitudes’ (p. 182). In other words, their understanding is no longerdefined by shifting roles and/or others. Their new frame is ‘conscious of its ownboundaries and inner connections and aware of itself as a ‘world view’’ (p. 182). Theycan judge reactions, interpretations, assumptions etc as being just that and separateto ‘the person’. The strength of this stage, then, is the capacity for critical reflectionof self and ideology but it can be accompanied with ‘excessive confidence’ in theirposition, a kind of egotism.
Stage 5: conjunctive
At Stage 5 the person can integrate into their sense of self and outlook ‘much thatwas suppressed or unrecognized at Stage 4’. It is ‘an opening to the voices of
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one’s “deeper self”’ and involves a critical recognition of their social uncon-scious—deeply held:
… myths, ideal images and prejudices in-built by virtue of nurture within a particular socialclass, religious tradition, ethnic group, etc. (Fowler 1981 p. 198; Thompson 1997)
Previously held ‘concrete’ boundaries are now viewed as ‘porous and permeable’;students are ‘alive to paradox and the truth in apparent contradiction’ and ‘commit-ment to justice is freed from tribe, class, religion, nation, etc’. However, the risks atthis stage include becoming complacent, ‘paralyzing passivity’ and/or cynical with-drawal as their changed worldview, vision and commitments encounter anunchanged world.
Stage 6: universalizing
The final stage is characterized by disciplined activism, a ‘heedlessness of self preser-vation’ which ‘a devotion to compassion and justice requires’. In this sense, then,students may well ‘offend parochial perceptions of justice’. It is about ‘ultimaterespect’, non-violent leadership and ‘enlarged visions of people and community’which in themselves ‘reveal the partialness of other visions’ (p. 200). A practitionercreates ‘zones of liberation from the social, political, economic and ideological shack-les’ (p. 210) through their subversive practice, perspectives and approaches to thestructures that ‘sustain our individual and corporate survival, security and signifi-cance’ (p. 201). At this stage individuals have a ‘special grace that makes them seemmore lucid, more simple, and yet somehow more fully human than the rest of us’(p. 201). Whilst this may seem to be a superior position in reality it is about:
… inclusiveness of community, radical commitment to justice and love and selfless passionfor a transformed world. (p. 201)
The parallels between this and the nature of youth and community work highlightedearlier are clear.
Understanding Fowlers stages of development of faith had the same impact on meas if someone had turned on a light in a murky room! ‘Mapping’ students onto theframe gave me potential insight into their reactions as they experienced having theircalling challenged, tested, pushed shaped and directed through the process of reflec-tive practice. I could also begin to see more clearly individual difference in roots toreactions. For example, someone beginning the course with a sense of calling at Stage1 is very much basing their ideas, values and beliefs on those of others and may wellexperience the challenge through reflective practice as a direct, explicit and personalcriticism. No wonder they might be angry. However, this anger would be qualitativelydifferent from someone at Stage 2 experiencing dissonance when the placement andsupervision interventions reveal their literalism is not tenable; or at Stage 3 when aperson begins to question the efficacy of their previous sources of authority as theycritically reflect on practices and beliefs previously held ‘sacred’. This level of under-standing means I can now attune my responses and enable each person to continueto develop professional practice and have faith in reflective practice.
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Faith in reflective practice 211
The field of reflective practice is still evolving. For example, still required is:
… good empirical evidence that its development has long-term and definite benefit to themajority of learners. (Mackintosh, 1998, cited in Moon, 2004, p. 81)
The students and I are researchers in this as we assess and evaluate the extent to whichreflective practice enables youth and community work professional practice. By sharingmy process of reflection and learning around faith and calling I have offered an under-standing of the ‘backlash’ that can happen during courses where reflective practice isfundamental to the learning of a profession and its practice. In my work as a lecturerI have successfully incorporated this into my interventions and improved my practice.
Acknowledgements
Jonathon Roberts, Senior Lecturer, University of Teeside, Middlesborough, UK, fororiginal idea. John Van Dyk, Professor of Philosophy of Studies, Dorolt College,Iowa, USA.
Notes on contributor
Jo Trelfa is lecturer, faciliator/trainer and consultant in reflective practice, interpersonalcommunication, group work and anti-oppressive practice.
She has a wide range of experience as a Youth and Community Worker, teacher/trainer, Social Worker and Psychotherapist. She practiced for twelve years nationallyand internationally with young people and their communities in the areas of mentalhealth, abuce, human rights, gender, conflict and violence. In more recent years shefocused on the issue of domestic violence and with a colleague established a pioneer-ing perpetrator programme in Plymouth, UK, alongside consultancy work trainingsocial workers, community workers, solicitors and police in the UK and abroad. Shehas also training programmes published across the Caribbean countries and Surinam,South America on behalf of UNIFEM, CAFRA and IDB. Running through hercareer has been the theme of reflective practice, and when she joined Higher Educa-tion as a lecturer in 1999 and the staff team of Youth and Community Work shecentered her work in this area. Her interests range from all aspects of theory to prac-tice, individual to organisaion practice, and facilitative approaches. Among hercurrent research interests she is exploring definitions of reflective practice within theYouth and Community field and what works in relation to developing, facilitating andevaluating/assessing it. She has delivered papers at national and international confer-ences, and published papers and chapters on the above interests.
References
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