lifelong learning 2006
lifelong learning 2007
lifelong learning 2008
Professional Lifelong Learning: beyond reflective practice
Keynote speakers
Professor David Boud
University of Technology, Sydney
Rehabilitation or rejection? Relocating reflection in the context of practice
Professor Boud has been involved in research and teaching development in adult, higher and professional education for nearly 30 years and has contributed extensively to the literature. Previously he held the position of Head of the School of Adult and Language Education at UTS and before that Professor and Foundation Director of the Professional Development Centre at the University of New South Wales. Professor Boud has an international reputation for his work in experiential learning, problem based learning and work based learning.
Professor Boud's presentation will address the following issues. Notions of reflection and reflective practice have become well established in professional education since the late 1980s. While some applications of these ideas in courses have distorted their original intentions and taken an excessively instrumental approach to their use, they have nevertheless provided useful framing devices to help conceptualise some important processes in professional learning. One of the reasons why they were readily accepted is because they shared an individualised view of learning with the very programs in which they were used. In the 2000s we are however seeing a questioning of the individualistic view of learning previously associated with reflection and an exploration of alternative conceptions that view reflection within the context of settings which necessarily have more of a group or team-based work-orientation. The presentation will question whether we should reject earlier views of reflection, rehabilitate them to capture their previous potential or move to new ways of regarding reflection that are more in keeping with what we know about the context of practice. It will suggest that the pursuit of each of these directions together might be more worthwhile than an exclusive focus on any one.
Professor Jan Fook
Director of the Centre for Professional Development in Health Sciences, La Trobe University.
Beyond Reflective Practice: the "Critical" in Critical Reflection
Professor Fook has over twenty years experience teaching social work and welfare in several Australian universities. Her teaching and research span the areas of critical practice, critical reflection, practice research and professional expertise. Over the course of her career, Jan has presented many different workshops for practitioners. Jan's books include: The Reflective Researcher, Social Work: Critical Theory and Practice, and Professional Expertise (with M. Ryan and L. Hawkins).
Professor Fook's presentation will raise the following issues. The imperative to be reflective seems taken-for-granted, yet are we really clear on what is involved? And is critical reflection the same thing as reflective practice? In this paper Professor Fook will argue that both these concepts are often ill-defined and used in a fairly undiscriminating way. She suggests that we need to pay more rigorous attention to both how they are understood and implemented in practice in concrete ways. This particularly involves more systematic research.
In the second part of the paper she reaffirms a notion of the critical aspects of critical reflection, both in theory and practice, and illustrates this with some results of empirical research with participants in critical reflection continuing education workshops she has conducted with several hundred professionals over the last four years.