Forms of Practitioner Reflexivity: Critical, Conversational, and Arts-based Approaches

This edited volume addresses the different methods professionals use to promote a critical reflective and reflexive stance among practitioners, leading to both a reconceptualization of practice and its subsequent change.  The goal of increased reflection in professional education is intended to expand approaches for professionals to work with diverse others. It is also intended to increase their levels of cognitive differentiation and depth of professional consciousness about themselves alongside diverse others in a rapidly changing world. This is an important issue in a range of applied professional programs, from education to medicine, social work to psychology, business to criminal justice, in nearly every country in the world.  

Hilary Brown is Associate Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Brock University, Canada. She is the recipient of the 2012 Brock University Award for Excellence in Teaching for Early Career Faculty. As a qualitative researcher, Brown encourages her students to delve deeply into the self in order to expose and reconcile their vulnerabilities while simultaneously attempting to do the same. The reciprocal nature of this deeply reflective process has the potential to result in the improvement of one’s professional practice. Brown’s research focuses on the practical application of holistic and invitational theory.  

Richard D. Sawyer is Professor of Education at Washington State University Vancouver, USA. His scholarship focuses on qualitative research and curricular theory and he is interested in reflexive and transformative curriculum within transnational contexts, especially those related to education and neo-liberalism and homo-normativity. He isthe recipient of  the 2015 American Educational Research Association Division D Significant Contribution to Educational Measurement and Research Methodology Award. 

Joe Norris is Professor of Drama in Education and Applied Theatre at Brock University, Canada. He is the recipient of the 2015 Tom Barone Award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts Based Educational Research from the Arts Based Educational SIG of the American Educational Research Association. Norris has focused his teaching and research on fostering a playful, creative, participatory, and socially aware stance toward self and Other.