Introduction
The reflexive practice involves informed reflexivity as an epistemic virtue that promotes using reliable techniques to achieve epistemic aims. The assignment discusses the concept of reflexivity, highlights the difference between reflexivity and reflection, and explains how teachers can benefit from reflexive practice. Finally, it highlights how reflexive practice can improve the effectiveness of future professional practice by identifying strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement.
Reflexivity
Reflexivity is typically understood as the process of critical self-evaluation, ongoing internal dialogue, and explicit acknowledgment that one’s position may influence the process and outcome. In parallel with the requirement that therapeutic professionals consider the impact of their concerns and background on their comprehension of and responses to client reflexivity, self-evaluation in research is also a requirement (Adams, 2006). Reflexivity is an ambiguous and aesthetic process interwoven into simply replicating social institutions rather than transcending them. Cognitively, it manifests as a recurring instance of banal identity construction and an ingrained instance of phony regulatory awareness.
According to Adams (2006), reflexivity is assessed concerning the claims made for it by the extended reflexivity thesis: to what extent is it endowed with the capacity to reflect perspicuously on the prior “givens” of all aspects of social structure regarding subjectivity, to the point of further substantiating transformative social change that makes such reflexivity .possible?
Reflexive Practice
According to Weinstock et al. (2017), reflexive action concerning epistemic cognition is examined. We suggest informed reflexivity as an epistemic virtue informed by its particular context, purposes of knowing, and ways of action. It promotes the use of trustworthy techniques to achieve epistemic goals. While functioning in a specific context—whether academic or practical—that necessitates the development, evaluation, and application of knowledge, it requires utilizing social relationships to which a person belongs.
Difference between Reflexivity and Reflection
Critical or transformational reflection are concepts sometimes used interchangeably with reflexivity. Reflexivity, characterized by internal debate and deliberate action after reflective thinking, requires reflection as a crucial component (Brownlee et al., 2017). Reflexivity, as opposed to reflection, is an internal conversation taken to help comprehend and assess various options and maintain or modify courses of action in response to this dialogue.
Brownlee et al. (2017) argue that reflexivity is a more involved process than reflection alone since it involves internal debates and cycles of action. The teacher must re-establish a connection to themselves by comparing their instructional strategies to practical methods for realizing epistemic goals. While in reflection, teachers can concentrate on various epistemic goals for classroom teaching practices, such as focusing on knowledge, understanding, or explanations. Reflexivity involves teachers evaluating various teaching practices in tandem with their identified epistemic aims for those approaches to teaching. A thinker will instinctively evaluate themselves and respond to the situation as it arises, but a reflective thinker will evaluate what has already occurred (Brownlee et al., 2017).
Importance of Reflexive Analysis and Reflexive Practice
A Christian researcher who worked on a team that examined narratives about what it was like to be Jewish talked about the importance of reflexivity in improving one’s capacity to evaluate data rigorously in the lack of familiarity with the phenomena under study (Berger, 2015). Like in the research mentioned earlier of immigrant women, reflexivity while discussing participants’ experiences aids in addressing the situation’s underlying double-edginess.
On the one hand, such familiarity may enable more thorough knowledge of participants’ perceptions and interpretations of their lived experiences in an impractical way without having gone through them (Berger, 2015). By conducting “two studies in one” and comparing the data and conclusions made during the “insider’s” phase with those from the “outsider’s” phase, reflexivity provides researchers with the chance to understand better the impacts of position on the process and outcome of the study.
By allowing the practitioner to consider why things are the way they are, assess their role in the current circumstance, and assess a scenario as it develops and makes modifications as they go, the reflexive practice promotes a higher degree of self-awareness in the practitioner (Learning for Sustainability, 2023).
Benefits of Engaging in Reflexivity
According to Berger (2015 the ability to reflect on how one hinders the process of co-constructing meanings through reflexivity is helpful for researchers. By taking this activity, they can better manage and display the data, as well as consider the nuanced implications and ways in which it might further our knowledge of social phenomena and the process of knowledge creation. Reflexivity also aids researchers in upholding the ethical standards of their relationship with research by “decolonizing” the discourse of the “other” and making sure that, while the researcher’s eyes and cultural standards are always used to interpret findings, the effects of this on the research process are monitored(Berger, 2015).
Teachers also gain from reflexivity. With their defined epistemic goals for those instructional strategies, instructors can assess various teaching methods using reflexivity (Brownlee et al., 2017). Based on epistemic reflexivity, teachers make decisions and then carry those decisions out in the classroom.
How Reflexive Practice Improves Effectiveness in Future Professional Practice
Reflecting on one’s experiences, decisions, and behaviors can help one see how one might be better in the future is known as reflexive practice. Professionals may improve their effectiveness by using this technique to assess their strengths, shortcomings, and potential growth areas. Rania (2021) argues that reflexive practice can enhance professional practice in several ways, including improving awareness. Professionals may realize their limits and become more receptive to criticism and feedback by engaging in reflective practice, which helps them get a more profound knowledge of their values, beliefs, and prejudices. By analyzing their previous choices, professionals may also understand the elements that impacted them and pinpoint strategies for making more intelligent and sensible selections. Lastly, by analyzing their interactions with others, professionals can find methods to communicate more effectively and forge better connections with stakeholders like clients, coworkers, and customers.
References
Adams, M. P. (2006). Hybridizing Habitus and Reflexivity: Sociology, 40(3), 511–528.
Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it; I do not: researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 15(2), 219–234.
Brownlee, J. L., Ferguson, L. E., & Ryan, M. P. (2017). Changing Teachers’ Epistemic Cognition: A New Conceptual Framework for Epistemic Reflexivity. Educational Psychologist, 52(4), 242–252.
Learning for Sustainability. (2023). Reflective and reflexive practice. https://learningforsustainability.net/reflective-practice/
Rania, N., Coppola, I., & Pinna, L. (2021). Reflective practices to study group dynamics: Implement empowerment and understand the functioning of groups. Frontiers in Psychology, 5534. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.786754/full
Weinstock, M., Kienhues, D., Feucht, F. C., & Ryan, M. P. (2017). Informed Reflexivity: Enacting Epistemic Virtue. Educational Psychologist, 52(4), 284–298.
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