Reflections as professional development tool

My managing supervisor structured learning by introducing Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model (Kolb, 1984). The intention with this reflective writing was to facilitate the emergence of my professional skills, roles and activities. Belenky and Stanton (2000, p. 72) write: “Reflective discourse and critical thinking thus provide the tools for continued intellectual and ethical development throughout adulthood, enabling participants to meet the challenges of a complex and changing society in creative ways.” My challenge to discover new ways of dealing with issues within the various contexts emerging from the system dynamic, was learning in creative ways. To Hase and Kenyon (2007) this is basic to heutagogy. How I discovered creative ways to deal with my social interconnectedness may be a promised benefit emerging from the CCI reflections. When reflecting on career conversations with students, I may have learnt to improve my ability to establish rapport and it helped me with coping with my own emotions when stressful situations occurred. Belenky and Stanton (2000, p. 95) also give a reason as to why reflective writing leads to heutagogic learning: “When reflective dialogue takes place in writing, the whole process slows down. Ideas can be framed with great care, with the writer able to stand back and reflect on own thinking ... and often the writing itself leads to insights for the writer.”

Heutagogic learning is described as the self-determined learning in a student-centred environment and emphasises the holistic development of an independent capability in the learner (Hase & Kenyon, 2001). The academic themes that support heutagogy as study include phenomenology, systems thinking, double loop learning, organisational learning, androgogy, learner managed learning, action learning, capability and work- based learning (Bolton, 2010; Hansen, 1997; Smith & Webster, 1997). As tools in

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professional development, these aspects of heutagogic learning must be allowed by the research design to transfer from the reflective record to the global disquisition.

In the case of professional development Van Vuuren (2010) uses reflective practice to understand the goodness of fit for IOP students as professionals in the system in which it functions. Bolton (2010), Coetzee and Roythorne-Jacobs (2007) and Hansen (1997) state that reflection and journal writing are appropriate techniques to understand oneself and one’s work as career counsellor. This understanding, according to the experiential learning theory (Kolb, 1984), comes from the proper relationship among learning, work, and other knowledge generating life activities. In this view, the tendency to define learning in terms of outcomes can become a definition for non-learning, in the sense that failure to modify ideas and habits, as a result of experience, is maladaptive (Senge, 2006). Counsellor education is outcomes based (Coetzee & Roythorne-Jacobs, 2007) and if the theory-praxis gap is a result of this maladaptive behaviour, then a useful analysis of the reflective record may reveal these patterns.

Kolb (1984) acknowledges the roots of the experiential learning model as the Lewinian Model of Action Research and Laboratory Training, Dewey’s model of Learning and Piaget’s Model of Learning and Cognitive Development. Experiential learning also addresses Bronfenbrenner’s concerns that development in learning behaviour is built around the briefest possible periods of time interactions (Hook, 2004; Pryor & Bright, 2011). French and Bell (1999) describe Lewin’s three-stage model as fundamental to organisation development and change studies (action research) and then mention Kolb’s model as a useful roadmap to think about change. Hase and Kenyon (2007) link action research to heutagogic learning. This fits the thinking framework of my managing supervisor, who introduced Kolb’s model into the counsellor development programme to provoke change towards professional affirmation (Wiesenfeld, Brockner & Martin, 1999). They state that participants who are given an opportunity to reflect on their significant values, reaffirm their sense of identity and influence wellbeing positively. Edwards and Usher (1997, p. 157) explain it as “Learning through life and lifelong learning then become not simply an aspect of economic instrumentalism nor an assertion of enlightened humanism but a means to constituting a meaningful life”. This meaningful life is “[C]ontinually constructed

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through self-reflexive biographies” (Edwards & Usher, 1997). Thus wellness emerges from this action rich generative structure and changing work patterns (Hansen, 1997). This benefit of reflective writing to inform my professional behaviour is captured as patterns of emerging wellness in the dataset.

In the context of the protean and boundaryless career of the 21st century Schreuder and Coetzee (2006) describe self-reflection about one’s identity and adaptability as a meta-skill in which one learns to learn, and suggest that this continuous learning is required for continued success. Luthans (2008) sees self-reflection as an important capability in high performance organisational leadership and extends the Hase and Kenyon (2001) focus on vocation. Reflective inquiry is valuable when using a systems approach and Senge (2006) aligns it to learning organizations, but he is also critical of the experiential learning model. He argues that although reflection is a necessary element of systems behaviour, no knowledge can be acquired when the outcome of the behaviour reflected on, falls outside the time and space horizon of the reflection. Holman, Pavlica and Thorpe (1997) also suggest a rethink of reflective learning around management learning. They want it to consider emergence, as do Pryor and Bright (2011). They start by questioning the value of Lewin’s three-stage model and models derived from it, because these models characterise change as something that can be clearly conceptualised. These conceptualisations ignore the emerging nature of change. In contrast, they accept Senge’s systems, limits on rationality, non-linearity and openness, but state that he neglects to consider emergence, phase-shifts, fractals and attractors that are dimensions of chaos and complexity. They also consider Bronfenbrenner’s systemic model as important in the career development milieu. To summarize, the 21st century brings new challenges to our understanding of careers as professional counsellors and as professionals we need to reflect more often (Holman et al., 1997; Pryor & Bright, 2011).

Lifelong reflecting is only one challenge facing professional development in this century. This century also demands action and immediate connectivity. Robertson (2000) supports this reflective stance because it becomes part of educational action research and Hase and Kenyon (2007) confirm the link between heutaogic learning and action research. Bolton (2010) and Wright and Griffiths (2010) support the e- training and e-supervision. In her article about a qualitative research project “Every

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word is true”, Richards (2011) supports collaborative reflective practice, an andragogical learning intervention, with electronic means.

Postmodern trends in adult education and reflective practice, especially Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory, are well researched in the professional development of educators (Edwards & Usher, 1997), medical professions (Bolton, 2010) and management (Mezirow, 2000). In their manual for career counselling practitioners, Coetzee and Roythorne-Jacobs (2007) fail to discuss reflective writing as a professional development tool. Still, reflective writing was a positive experience for me and thickened my career story (Barnard et al., 2012). Viljoen, Beukes and Louw (1999) evaluate the training of psychologists at a local university and never mention experiential learning or reflexivity as an option. Thus experiential learning with reflective practice has literature support in the training environment, but is neither universally favoured, nor universally applied in professional development.

With professional development of as general outcome (Kaplan et al., 2013), reflective writing was introduced as a tool to specifically establish supervised feedback and strengthen management control. This is supported by Senge (2006), who mentions skills of inquiry and skills of reflection as learning tools for individuals in learning organisations. Pryor and Bright (2011) support reflective practice in complex systems, because it encourages people to deal with shift experiences. Amagoh (2008) sees this complex dynamic as valuable for creating organisational intelligence to add to our understanding of corporate strategy and knowledge management. Further support is provided by Mezirow (2000) in how adults find meaning in information and transform themselves in the world of work. Belenky and Stanton (2000) critique Mezirow's transformative learning perspective. They argue that transformative learning fails to trace the many steps people take in the transformation process and that understanding the process requires detail of growth over time and of the meaning-making perspectives shaping the way people construct knowledge. This is where the reflection per shift policy of my counselling supervisor was useful. My learning was captured in more detail in near real time and allowed timeliness corrective interventions.

Within a constructive developmental framework, Parks Daloz (2000) draws a connection between transformation and broader responsibility in conditions of historic

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and social complexity. The author argues that social context matters enormously as we become “enculturated” and as adults critically reflect to form a larger sense of self that “identifies with all people and ultimately with all life” (p. 104). Our social responsibility therefore seeks the wellbeing of self and the ecosystem external to the self. My reflections often captured my learning as I embedded myself into the cultures of IOP, career counselling and the organisation. The reflections also captured my transformations about diversity and the wellness that should permeate the CCI ecosystem. This is evidence of how professional development benefited from transformations, which benefited from reflective practice.

Reflecting on these reflexive writings to get insights into the collective story, and the self’s interactions with this story, is what ethnographers do and it becomes an ongoing moral dialogue that privileges the presence of the writer in the text (Richardson, 2002). Although moral behaviour cannot be assumed as standard human practice, counselling interventions take place under the ethical code of the IOP profession and the narrative counselling practice accepts the stories as multiple subjective truths. The reflective data is then anchored in a moral dialogue with the participating voices (Bolton, 2010). Bochner (2001) recognises narrative truth as a pragmatic truth. Constructing professional development on a pragmatic truth raises doubt about researching the benefits gained from such a pragmatic process, but the doubt can be beneficial in directing the research design.