Becoming a Reflective Practitioner, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 23Awakenings: Guided Reflection as ‘Reality Shock’

Aileen Joiner and Christopher Johns

Prologue

Without doubt, many practitioners suffer various degrees of burnout resulting in fatigue, low morale, stress, anxiety, disillusionment or whatever adjective fits the bill. Guided reflection can be a ‘reality shock’ for such practitioners to confront and remedy such a sense of being. Aileen is one such practitioner. ‘Awakenings’ is constructed from an amalgam of three assignments she wrote whilst undertaking the Becoming a reflective and effective practitioner course.¹

The First Assignment

People live in a crisis that ripples across their beings below the surface of conscious thought. These ripples can be observed by paying attention to the signs, yet most people live in a state of partial visibility as if wrapped up in themselves to keep the tension from exploding. Reflection is my trigger to release this tension.

Johns and Freshwater (1998, p. x) state that reflection ’gives us wings to soar as we emerge from our cocoons’. I certainly feel that I am at that stage. I sense reflection is my opportunity, that window which Johns (1998, p. 9) describes as ‘a window to look inside, to know who I am as I strive towards understanding and realising the meaning of desirable work in my everyday practice’. I am beginning to associate reflection as permission to break from ‘performing’ in order to consider the ‘performance’ and the need to plan future ‘performances’.

After our first ...