Becoming a Reflective Practitioner, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 14The Reflective Curriculum

Christopher Johns

Reflection is mandated in every healthcare curriculum, acknowledging it as a significant and proven learning approach, and is a vital attribute to becoming a reflective practitioner. Given that, how can reflection be efficaciously incorporated into the curriculum?

Radical Shift

Let us be under no illusion. Creating a reflective curriculum will require a radical shift in the assumptions teachers hold about its nature. Shifting to a reflective curriculum requires a turnaround of the relationship between teacher and student and between theory and practice. This can be envisaged as a shift from a technical rational perspective to a professional artistry perspective. Professional artistry is the practitioner’s knowing in practice informed by extant knowledge as appropriate and guided by a vision of desirable practice.

The role of the teacher becomes a guide to facilitate student learning by enabling them to reveal, understand and resolve the creative tension between their developing practice as known through reflection and their vision of desirable practice. This necessarily requires knowing what desirable practice is, not just as an ideal but as something lived and meaningful.

In my experience, reflective practice is usually bolted onto the curriculum as another technical rational approach whereby students are directed to reflect using a prescribed model of reflection and students tested on their ability to apply the model. ...