Reflection as performativity

In addition to moves towards responsibilising reflection, there is also a renewed emphasis on reflection as a tool of self-management and performativity.

Erlandson (2014:1) argued that ‘reflection has been a major theme in discussions about professional skilfulness and the development of the competence of

practitioners’ such that many professions call for practitioners to engage in continuous professional development (CPD). The background context and rationale for the drive for continuous professional development is relentless change within the professional context. Across professions, practitioners are persuaded that the uncertain and unstable professional landscape requires

72 constant reflection, revision and review of the self. However, Edwards and Nicholls have argued that:

By naturalising change, that is, representing it as a natural and thus inevitable characteristic of the world, it assumes not only a suasive force but in effect hides its own work as a speech act as well. It also hides the social practices that make certain changes happen (Edwards and Nicholls 2006:118).

I propose that the above view of professionalism mobilises professional learning in a particular way. Indeed, Edwards and Nicholls have themselves argued that this particular interpretation of professionalism has driven modern ‘rituals and performances’ in discourse on professional learning (2006:119). The search to position professional status and knowledge as ‘expert’ depends on notions of competence and performance standards in general. This repositioning of professional knowledge requires professionals to demonstrate technical

expertise and capabilities through continuous professional development and a key foundational concept in the interpretation and communication of

professional learning is the reflective self. As Edwards and Nicolls (2006:122) argued, ‘A cognitive aspect is therefore necessary for competent performance and this is signified through the notion of reflection’. Thus, reflection has been positioned centre stage in professional development such that Lyons asserted ‘There is today a new imperative to include a focus on reflective inquiry for the education of all kinds of professionals’ (2010:17). As such, reflection has

become the foundational concept in professional learning due to the benefits some believe it to impart to professional practice. Lyons explained that:

Reflective inquiry, then, can reveal important valued benefits at the core of professional education and learning: uncovering needed perspectives; identifying critical moral and ethical dimensions of practice; encouraging collaborative inquiries; deliberating about underlying professional purposes (Lyons 2010:8).

Using concepts of perspective, morality and underlying purpose, Lyons noted that reflection offered learners multiple perspectives with which they could explore practice in order to question underpinning assumptions in a similar vein to Mezirow (1981,1991,2000) and Brookfield (1995, 2000) as discussed earlier in

73 Chapter Two. However, Lyons also acknowledged that shifting reflection from its original purpose and form to relocate it in more modern professional

discourse also involved complex and contested ideas of self-creation, self-

management and performativity. The different conceptions of reflection here in this Chapter, together with those detailed in Chapter Two, became useful maps to help me chart the students’ reported experiences in Chapter Five.

Lyons (2010) highlighted the central position inhabited by reflection within professional learning as a move to situate reflection as the cornerstone of a new kind of professionalism. By locating the concept alongside responsibilisation and self-evaluation, it might be argued that reflection has now become the

foundation stone of the creation of professional values, behaviour and

development. For example, Clegg and Bradley (2006:468) noted the increased emphasis on ‘reflexivity and individualisation’ in society and suggested that ‘the emphasis on reflection cannot be regarded simply as an isolated pedagogic devise [sic], but rather represents broader societal and policy shifts in

understandings of education and the production of the self’. Thus, reflection can also be viewed as a concept and tool of self-management and self-creation. It is this interesting tension between reflection and the concept of self-governance that is the focus of the next section, which reveals the disciplinary impacts of reflection.

3.3.3 Reflection as self-regulation

As the above sections discussing responsibilisation and performativity suggest, the politics of reflection in HE is complex and subject to criticism. According to MacFarlane and Gourlay (2009), reflective commentaries provided by learners ‘are often overly self-critical, guilt-ridden and aimed at demonstrating

inauthentic transformation of an individual’. This suggests that there is the opportunity for learners to use reflection punitively. Indeed, when considering reflection on practice and work based learning, Jeffrey and McCrae (2004) commented that reflection was linked to economic objectives in that individuals were invited to reflect on ‘how I can work harder and more effectively to meet my manager’s and my organisation’s goals’ (2004:110). Their argument

74 external parties such as employing organisation and professional bodies. The relationship between reflection and external objectives is revisited in Chapter Five, section 5.2.1 where I discuss the students’ experiences of reflection for learning in terms of self-improvement and organisational benefits.

I propose that the discussion of self-regulation through reflection conveys the image of perpetual observation from which it is impossible to escape, and thus suggests parallels with Foucault’s reference to the Panopticon (Foucault 1991), Bentham’s all-seeing eye. This is the nineteenth century Benthamite design for a prison in which individual cells encircle a central observation point. In this scenario, each individual was isolated from others and subject to observation, thus individual prisoners could not see who observed them, leading each to assume that they were being observed continuously. By extension, the group would end up policing and regulating itself and for Foucault, the Panopticon was the perfect metaphor for modern disciplinary power. This represents for me another alternative conception of reflection in learning.

One implication of the way Foucault positioned disciplinary power is that it then functioned through monitoring and surveillance. Subjects could become

constructed in their individuality and subject to categories, like reflection, to understand and learn more about themselves. Thus, using these particular insights, reflection as a concept also can be inscribed as ‘the examination that places individuals in a field of surveillance [and] also situates them in a network of writing; it engages them in a whole mass of documents that capture and fix them’ (Foucault 1991:189). The learner using reflection becomes an individual ‘case’, subject to ongoing examination and record. I believe Foucault’s insights regarding surveillance and regulation offers another specific and unique role for reflection. Barnett (2009) developed Foucault’s insights by considering how students’ selves became constructed around notions of reflection and

employment:

The student has been constructed as an acting being rather than a cognitive being…We have seen …the emergence of what might be termed ‘the performative student’ … replete with ‘transferable skills’, contemplates with equanimity the prospect of multiple careers in the lifespan, is entrepreneurial and has an eye to the main chance, and possesses a breezy self-confidence in facing the unpredictability that characterizes contemporary life (Barnett 2009:430).

75 Already noted above, by using the concept of governmentality, Foucault argued that people are governed, not through repression, but through ‘educating people to govern themselves’ (Frejes and Nicoll 2015:6) and that pastoral power works by ‘people placing themselves under their own surveillance, they control

themselves not through ‘external’ discipline but by applying disciplinary techniques of confession and self-examination to themselves’ (Usher and

Edwards, 1994:51). Construed this way, reflection can be perceived as a way of bringing one’s actions in line with the ‘government’, not through compliance, but through self-discipline and through construction of the reflective self. I would argue that this conception of reflection is particularly pertinent for exploration in HE and specifically professional education, where there is a constant requirement for students to meet specified outcomes, professional standards and benchmark statements in order to validate experiences. Foucault argued that pastoral power could not be exercised ‘without knowing the inside of people’s minds, without exploring their souls, without making them reveal their innermost secrets’ (Foucault 1982:214). With reference to the field of education, Usher and Edwards (1995) have further argued that the shift to pastoral power through confession had been particularly noticeable in practices such as recognition of reflection on experience, portfolio-based assessment and self-evaluation where the individual had to justify performance. Such practices remain commonplace in undergraduate learning and professional landscapes where reflective activities encourage self-disclosure arising from reflection, with the proclaimed aim of facilitating personal development and empowerment. However, Usher and Edwards (1995) have pointed out the apparent illusion in such a belief:

Thus, in confessing we feel liberated, even though we are still

‘subject’ to the power-knowledge formations that shape subjectivity as an entity that confesses. Confession, therefore, results in regulation through self-regulation, discipline through self-discipline (Usher and Edwards 1995:10).

I argue that viewing reflection as ‘confession’ above raises the issue that in the process of engaging students with self-reflection, educators are inducting them into the confession mode required for professional employment. Thus, the argument can be made that individual identification of the benefit that comes

76 from the experience of reflection is an illusion, and that any benefit actually accrues to an external, dominant party. Viewed in this way, reflection within the student learning experience can be repositioned to ensure compliant

implementation of external directives and the reflective experience can be cast as a political tool of power and discipline in undergraduate education. With this in mind, I consider the specific role of reflection in undergraduate education later in this Chapter. However, I present a typology of reflection next.