Reflective Practice

International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives

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Refining professional knowing as a creative

practice: towards a framework for Self-Reflective
Shapes and a novel approach to reflection

Philip Kirkman & Simon Brownhill

To cite this article: Philip Kirkman & Simon Brownhill (2020) Refining professional knowing as
a creative practice: towards a framework for Self-Reflective�Shapes and a novel approach to
reflection, Reflective Practice, 21:1, 94-109, DOI: 10.1080/14623943.2020.1712195

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REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
2020, VOL. 21, NO. 1, 94–109
https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2020.1712195

Refining professional knowing as a creative practice: towards

a framework for Self-Reflective Shapes and a novel approach
to reflection
a b
Philip Kirkman and Simon Brownhill
a
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK; bBristol University, Bristol, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper introduces a theoretical framework for the Self- Received 4 September 2019
Reflective Shapes approach, a creative solution that was developed in Accepted 2 January 2020
response to a practical challenge of supporting the development of a KEYWORDS
culture of reflection. We frame the problem empirically by outlining Reflection; creative practice;
the context of our work with Kazakhstani teacher-trainers and theore- professional knowledge;
tically by examining conceptions of professional knowing and reflec- self-reflection; teacher
tion that can lead to the overemphasis of either explicit, well- education
defined knowledge outcomes or tacit, ill-defined embodied knowl-
edge. Drawing on diverse reflective traditions, in this context reflection
is focused on developing the freedoms necessary to successfully meet
competing educational demands, be they academic, standards-
based, developmental, or social-transformational in nature. We pro-
pose that acts which balance freedoms and constraints are inherently
creative and therefore reflection can be seen as a creative act. This in
turn offers a vehicle to manage tensions that arise from the divergent
pressures which arise across educators’ experiences. Self-
Reflective Shapes is presented as an example of such a creative
approach as it empowers teachers to focus on the tensions and
intentions that are of greatest concern in their context as well as
addressing the need to simultaneously develop diverse knowledge
forms when addressing multiple, ill-defined and competing educa-
tional problems.

Introduction
With the persistent demand for quality provision in education across the globe, the call for
reflective educators remains ever present (Krishnaratne, White, & Carpenter, 2013).
Reflective practice is widely recognised as an essential tool for supporting the develop-
ment of educators, helping to inform change and improve practice (Moon, 2004).
Arguments for the use of reflective practice in support of teacher development in
education are well rehearsed in professional and academic arenas (Soomro, 2018).
Finlay (2008, p. 1) proposes a level of consensus around notions of reflection that includes
individual practitioners being self-aware and critically evaluating their responses to

CONTACT Philip Kirkman [email protected] Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 95

practice situations. It is this notion of self-reflection in support of teacher development to

which this paper focusses its attention.
Michell (2017, p. 166) asserts that ‘[t]eaching reflective practice is not easy, nor is
engagement with the reflective process.’ This was certainly true of tutors’ experiences
of working with Kazakhstani trainers as part of the in-service NIS Centre of Excellence
training. As part of a Kazakhstan-wide programme of educational development visits,
tutors from the UK visited the NIS Centre of Excellence headquarters in Astana to offer
support to Kazakhstani teacher-trainers with training across a wide range of areas includ-
ing reflective practice (see Wilson et al., 2013 for further details). Informal observations in
taught sessions highlighted that Kazakhstani professionals were struggling to engage in
the reflective process, merely describing what they had done with educators in a variety
of educational settings (Mortari, 2015) as opposed to employing ‘analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation’ to gain a deeper critical understanding of their experience (Cole, 2000, p. 32).
It was noted that many of these practicing teacher-trainers were knowledgeable in their
field, were skilled communicators and were already perceived as effective trainers in their
context. Yet, participants in the programme also exhibited pedagogies that prized reified
knowledge over understanding and application, generic ‘best practice’ over personalized and
differentiated approaches, and which were struggling to move beyond the well-established
culture of passivity and compliance (Turner et al., 2017; Wilson et al., 2013). For example,
during peer assessment sessions a common response to requests for feedback about areas for
improvement in their own and other trainer’s work was to pivot back onto previously
mentioned successful features or to rearticulate descriptive success criteria without reference
to any specific work. Efforts to probe the trainers’ thoughts and understanding were con-
stantly greeted with a sea of verbalised positivity which appeared to serve as a protective
veneer that avoided the expression of any issues or weaknesses that may have been perceived
as ‘failure’ by their peers (Helyer, 2015). This lack of honesty and openness, which Knutsson,
Jarling, and Thorén (2015, p. 459) identify as being two reflective ‘learning prerequisites’,
meant that only a ‘surface level’ of reflection was shared in both oral and written form with
peers and the tutors (Ryken & Hamel, 2016), thus limiting the Kazakhstani trainers’ reflection to
more of the who and the what as opposed to the how and the why (Jasper, 2011).
To understand why trainers were experiencing such difficulties, reference was made to
the work of Burkhalter and Shegebayev (2010) who acknowledge that reflection was not
a prominent feature of Soviet pedagogy. This gave a firm footing to our emerging
experiences which suggested that the process of learning through reflection was not
something that many Kazakhstani trainers had previous experience of, understood or had
been taught to use. In this way, it became clear that a structured approach to reflective
practice would be necessary which attended to their development needs in a culturally
appropriate manner. Thus, we were faced with the challenge of balancing the need to
support processes of reflection with the need to avoid it becoming a prescribed formula
for ‘best practice.’ Put another way, we needed to ensure that reflection remained an
exploratory endeavour.
The following sections will outline will develop a framework that responds to this
challenge and positions the development of professional knowing as a creative practice.
This works towards presenting the Self-Reflective Shapes approach as a solution to the
need to support Kazakhstani trainers in moving beyond uncritical and passive approaches
to reified knowledge.
96 P. KIRKMAN AND S. BROWNHILL

Reflection and professional knowing

At a basic-level reflection is something that we do implicitly as part of being human,
‘underpinning our identities through a process of negotiation between our sense of
self and our experiences of others’ (Demetriou, 2000, p. 210). This notion is afforded
weight in Dewey’s (1933) frequently cited view of reflection as an everyday habit that
is complex, rigorous, and intellectual and which ‘takes time to do well.’ (Rodgers,
2002, p. 844). Schön’s (1983) pervasive model proposes two types of reflective action:
i) reflection on knowing which involves looking back, and ii) reflection-in-action:
which involves reflecting whilst in engaged in the activity. Hébert (2015) highlights
the contrasting aspects of these perspectives in her characterisation of them as
rationalist-technicist and experiential-intuitive, respectively. However, notably, she
also suggests that both models separate knowledge and experience in their own
way in order to privilege knowledge over experience. She suggests that pathic
knowing is the epistemological foundation of tacit knowledge and is a bodily act
rather than a cognitive one. In turn, proposing that a pedagogy which engages with
this kind of tacit knowing can help to recapture experiential-intuitive knowing. Yet,
this characterisation of ‘pathic knowing’ is in danger of falling into the same
Cartesian dualism that Bleakley (1999) suggests is evident in attempts to propose
models of reflective practice. In contrast, given the ‘interrelated’ nature of existence
(Gendlin, 1979, p. 43), pathic knowing is at once both a bodily and cognitive act.
Thus, understanding that involves tacit knowing also necessitates attention also to
thought and articulation/expression (ibid.). In the light of this, the challenge for
educators is how to foster the kind of professional knowing which connotes explicit
and tacit knowing; cognitive and bodily acts; knowledge and experience.
The work of Kolb (2015) develops the relationship between knowledge and experi-
ence by proposing reflection as a mental activity that has a role in learning from
experience. Whilst there are numerous critiques of these notions of reflection (e.g.
Johns, 2006) there is broad agreement across these and other models that reflection is
not only personal and recursive in nature but is also made up of a number of
sequential ‘never-ending’ stages or phases – (Gibbs, 1988; Greenaway, 2002).
Nevertheless, there are outstanding questions in relation to the temporal displacement
of the cognitive from the embodied aspects of this model.

Self-reflection
Focusing on self-reflection offers the potential to address some of the challenges
noted above, as rather than emerging from the separation of knowledge and
experience it draws on teachers’ lived experiences. Lew and Schmidt (2011a) argue
that self-reflection has received numerous definitions and thus any effort to develop
self-reflective practice requires clarification as to its meaning. Efforts to define the
term ‘self-reflection’ within educational environments suggest that it is ‘thinking over
one’s own actions and acting in interaction with pupils’ with an emphasis being
placed on “the teachers” inner dialogue with him/herself’ (Švec, 2005, p. 78). This
highlights that self-reflection can take place in action as well as on-action. Gillespie
(2007, p. 678) emphasizes the experiential nature of self-reflection in description of it
 REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 97

as ‘a temporary phenomenological experience in which self becomes an object to

oneself.’ Through this ‘experience’ that individuals can reflect ‘upon their learning,
which includes their personal experiences, perspectives, beliefs, and claims’ (Shaw,
Kuvalja, & Suto, 2018, p. 2). Their description of self-reflection regards it as a process
that allows students, for example, opportunities to be reflective about the learning
that has taken place. Illumination of this process is offered by Yip who regards self-
reflection as a critical analysis of an individual’s practice: (S)he relates his or her
practice to personal, situational. . ., and contextual factors. The[y] . . . may engage in
a process of self-analysis by examining his or her personal attributes (feelings,
personality, interest, preferences, background, and experience) in response to exter-
nal factors (social and cultural environments, . . .agency and service contexts) (2006,
p. 780). Synergies with the notion of learning through practice are noted in the
thinking of Lew and Schmidt (2011b), who argue that self-reflection is facilitated by
two connected processes, especially in the context of trying to improve academic
achievement; this is presented in Figure 1.
Acknowledging self-reflection as ‘a process’ would suggest that self-reflection is not ‘a
product’ with a fixed endpoint. However, Schön highlights that embodied rather than
articulated knowledge is developed through intentional restructuring and thus ‘self-
reflection ‘stops’ when professionals cease being purposely self-reflective’ (Brownhill,
2014, p.132). Thus, it can be argued that a key challenge for educators is not stopping
but continuing to actively engage in purposeful self-reflection. Indeed, Driessen, Tartwijk,
and Dornan (2008, p. 829) suggest that some professionals ‘will not generally do it
automatically’.
It may be argued that defining self-reflection as a purposeful activity negates the
possibility of moving beyond technical-rationality (Hébert, 2015). However, action can
be both purposive and towards an ill-defined goal (Johnson-Laird, 1988). This is possible if
the focus of the reflection is towards an individual’s (ill-defined) personal developmental
process. Thus, self-reflection can be seen as a purposeful process of self-experience and -
analysis that involves critical thought as well as personal attributes and external factors in
response to an ill-defined problem. This construction of self-reflection may offer a means
to move towards professional knowing which connotes explicit and tacit knowing, knowl-
edge, and experience.

How the learning took place What was learned -

Self-reflection

- where the learner looks where the learner explores

back on their past learning connections between the
experiences and what they knowledge that was taught
did to enable learning to and their own ideas about
occur them

Figure 1. Processes involved in self-reflection (Adapted from the work of Lew & Schmidt, 2011a, p. 530).
98 P. KIRKMAN AND S. BROWNHILL

The educational context

Having noted the challenges when working with Kazakhstani trainers and having outlined
a notion of self-reflection that offers opportunities to move beyond notions of reflection
that neglect more experiential and tacit aspects of professional knowing, we will now turn
our attention to systemic challenges that can underpin educators’ resistance to the self-
reflective process defined above.
There are systemic challenges, faced by educators across the world, not least in the
Kazakhstani context, that can disrupt this self-reflective process. These are most easily
understood through brief look at the legacy of technical-rationality across education
systems. The enduring legacy of this epistemology across policy and educational leader-
ship contexts is that practitioners continue to express concerns with being asked to apply
‘research-based’, ‘proven’, ‘technical’ knowledge (EEF, 2019) that are too detached from
practice (TDBRC, 2003). More recently this tension can be seen in responses to interna-
tional projects such as Hattie’s Visible Learning (2008) and the Teaching and Learning
Toolkit, (EEF, 2019) which enjoy seemingly unprecedented and often uncritical favour
(Myburgh, 2016) as policy-makers and school leaders use ‘the research’ to target resources
on developing what are proclaimed as the ‘best low cost proven approaches’ (Sutton
Trust and Education Endowment Foundation, 2015, p. 8). As Schön (1983) argued, the
effect of the underlying epistemology is that it fosters a view of reflection as ‘an applica-
tion of knowledge to instrumental decisions’ (p.50) and professional knowledge as knowl-
edge about ‘what works’. Furthermore, applying technical knowledge in professional
contexts leads to several misunderstandings that see certain aspects of practice as
‘limitations’ (Schön, 1983); namely, that practice is divergent, practice has unstable con-
texts and ill-defined outcomes and that practice does not focus on problems or solutions’.
Attempts to generate solutions to these limitations encourage convergence towards
homogeneous approaches which are evaluated in terms of the rudimentary yet clear and
stable outcomes of cost and attainment and offers seductively simple solutions to the
manifest, enduring, and ethical dilemma; the problem of how best to focus limited
educational resources to achieve measurable outcomes. Taking the Teaching and
Learning Toolkit (EEF, 2019) as an example, it is clear to see that within this resource,
solutions are offered at a national scale in relation to measurable investment and out-
comes. While these projects are helpful in as much as they have developed ways of
drawing together theoretical understanding about the effects of certain approaches on
a macro scale, relying on this kind of knowledge leaves us with two significant short-
comings. The first is that focusing on cost and attainment as the only measures of success
can encourage schooling that neglects the more ill-defined and holistic aspects of
education (Niyozov & Hughes, 2019) and encourages an unhelpful hierarchy of subjects
(Bleazby, 2015). The second is that using an evidence base which relies on large-scale
statistical modelling cannot account for individual variations in practice at a school,
classroom, or student level and crucially obscures the notion explored above; namely
that reflection is a personal and subjective, cyclic and recursive process.
This was reflected in the experiences of the Kazakhstani teacher-trainers whose need to
maintain a protective veneer was directly related to externally imposed measures of
success (Turner et al., 2017) that were driven by cost, attainment, and the legacy of
a heavily standardized system. Analysis of these tensions – between the need to develop
 REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 99

personal practice through openness and honesty and the need to ‘be successful’ in terms
of external measures – revealed that the key challenge was not with the process of
reflection itself but rather with the divergent and competing purposes of reflective
processes. For example, if teacher-trainers read that ‘Feedback is the most effective
educational ‘approach’ in terms of its impact on outcomes (EEF, 2019) they were then
less able to consider questions such as: “What might the feedback look like?; How might it
be communicated?; Does all feedback work?; Is some more helpful than others?; Is it
helpful for all students?; In what ways?; etc. Instead, the priority was to ‘be successful’ and
to perform success by re-asserting that ‘Feedback is the most effective educational
‘approach’. The more subtle questions were left unanswered. Individual teachers need
to know-how to formulate answers to questions like these to make informed but neces-
sarily subjective decisions about how to work in their classrooms, and the intention of our
support for self-reflective practice was to help develop the professional knowledge
necessary to address these questions. Thus, there was a mismatch between the intentions
of the reified knowledge available to Kazakhstani educators as they made decisions about
how to act and the knowledge they needed to respond to educational dilemmas in
specific contexts. One focuses on generalities, the other specifics; one considers success
in terms of economics and large-scale trends, the other success in terms of individual
learner development.

Towards a solution: four traditions of reflection

We address this mismatch we return to the intentions of reflection, seen across four
well-established traditions. This approach allows us to refine the act of professional
knowledge as a creative, embodied act of explicit and tacit knowing that involves mind
and body; knowledge and experience. This, in turn, allows us to articulate the self-
reflective shapes approach as a solution to our practical education problem (see
introduction).
Tabachnick and Zeichner (1991) suggest four contrasting traditions of reflection that
highlight different ways in which reflective practices have been employed in the pursuit
of professional knowledge; these include i) the Academic tradition, ii) the Social Efficiency
tradition, iii) the Developmentalist tradition. And iv) the Social Reconstructivist tradition.
Zeichner and Liston (1990) had previously developed these categories in response to the
tensions and conflicts that were impeding reform across teacher education programmes
describing the confusion about the underlying assumptions of popular terms that were
used within the teaching community. From a contemporary perspective, the notion of
conceptual ambiguity around reflection is also shared by Marshall (2019), although his
focus is on defining processes of reflection as opposed to identifying traditions of reform.
Tabachnick and Zeichner’s (1991) approach highlights that the specific intention of
reflective activity is just as important as the process of reflecting and suggests that if
we are to engage in well-defined reflection we need to acknowledge that both the
personal intention of the act and the features of the educational context in which it
takes place are implicated in the shape of the process. Thus, as we discuss Tabachnick
and Zeichner’s (1991) four traditions, we will note both their intentions and contexts.
The Academic orientation highlights the teacher’s role as a specialist in transforming
subject knowledge. In this tradition, reform was concerned with promoting student
100 P. KIRKMAN AND S. BROWNHILL

understanding by using pedagogic knowledge to transform subject knowledge. The

intention of reflection was to challenge the historically more dominant ‘academic reform’
perspective that ‘more subject knowledge is better’.
The Social Efficiency tradition emphasizes the intelligent use of research to inform
decisions about employing the ‘skills and competencies that research has shown to be
associated with desirable pupil outcomes’ (p.6) and to establish principles of procedure.
The intention of reflection lies on a continuum between fostering teachers’ capabilities to
make informed judgements about using different approaches to achieve the goals of
education, on the one hand, and considering how their practice conforms to generic
standards on the other.
The Developmentalist tradition of reform is concerned with the natural development
of learners and with the ways in which ‘what’ and ‘how’ subject matter is taught
responded to the needs and behaviour of learners. Tabachnick and Zeichner (1991)
highlight three metaphors within this tradition:

(i) The teacher as naturalist – emphasizing the importance of teachers’ skills in

observing and responding to students needs;
(ii) The teacher as researcher – stressing the importance of developing appropriate
responses to observations through experimental casework;
(iii) The teacher as artist – highlighting the need for creative teachers and stimulating
classrooms.

Reflection in this tradition is about working to consider students’ learning. The intention
of reflection is to move from less to more responsive, targeted, creative, and stimulating
classrooms.
The Social Reconstructivist tradition of reform focuses on the need for education
to help address societal injustice around issues such as class, race, and gender. This
tradition recognizes the intrinsically political nature of schooling the ways in which
schooling contributes to or disrupts social equity and injustice. Reflection within this
tradition focusses inwardly at a teacher’s own practice and outwardly at the social
conditions in which these practices are situated. Reflection moves teachers who are
less aware and compliant towards educators who are increasingly sensitive and
responsive to issues of social equity and injustice. The intention of reflection is to
increasingly disrupt the constraints imposed on students by the status quo with the
purpose of achieving a more just society in the form of emancipated students.
Notably, all these traditions can be considered in terms of the way they highlight
that acts of educating are situated in positions of tension between competing free-
doms and constraints. Reflection across all four traditions is concerned with addres-
sing both the structural constraints of the environmental contexts in which it takes
place, and to develop the teacher agency necessary to successfully meet competing
educational demands through intentional acts of professional knowing. The academic
tradition contrasts the constraint of the historical belief that more knowledge is
better with the freedom to decide, promoting student understanding that pedagogic
knowledge brings to teachers. The social efficiency tradition distinguishes between
the constraints of conforming to standards with the freedoms of making decisions
about different approaches and their relationship with the means and ends of
 REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 101

education in a given context. The Developmentalist tradition highlights the con-

straints of rigid and insensitive contexts with the freedoms of a responsive and
stimulating environment. The Social Reconstructivist tradition explicitly emphasizes
the constraints of culture and context with the purpose of freeing individuals from
the injustice within the status quo. Yet, while each tradition of reflection seeks to
develop practice by supporting the development of certain freedoms it also threa-
tens to constrain practice if the outcome is perceived as fixed, prescribed, or
externally measurable. Furthermore, reflective processes may look very different
depending on an individual’s context.

Refining professional knowing as a creative practice

To help the Kazakhstani teacher-trainers to understand reflection we needed to address
this tension between competing freedoms and constraints that arise from individual
contexts. Thus, we needed an approach that simultaneously allows multiple possible
different outcomes in response to multiple, ill-defined and competing problems. Thus, we
turned to notions of development in creativity which deals directly with individual
approaches to balancing the freedoms and constraints offered by diverse traditions
(Burnard, 2012).
We defined acts of professional knowing as creative acts. In so doing, we high-
lighted the need to attend to explicit and tacit knowing, mind, and body, and
knowledge and experience as these aspects are central to creative practice
(Bonnett, 1994). Furthermore, within the context of creative acts, constraints, such
as knowledge or standards, are transformed into scaffolding that can help to struc-
ture the creative process of decision-making (Johnson-Laird, 1988). Thus, positioning
acts of professional knowing as creative acts highlight that contextual constraints,
such as reified knowledge or external standards became supportive rather than
prescriptive in the processes of decision-making. These aspects of practice are well
established in creativity literature (Burns, Machado, & Corte, 2015; Mumford &
Hemlin, 2017). Table 1 shows the key constraints of each reflective environment
noted in Tabachnick and Zeichner’s (1991) four reflective traditions alongside the
respective freedoms intended through reflection and maps these onto the features of
creative acts. Viewing reflection as a creative act highlights the different scaffolding
that was identified in the current educational environment. This, in turn, revealed
how teacher knowing could be transformed through reflection as a creative-act. In
transcending the need to atomize reflection into any one tradition and in positioning
it as a developing way of knowing, the construction of reflection as a creative
practice of professional knowing is well matched to complex natural contexts of
teaching and by extension of personal and social reflection.
Given the framework (above) which reveals how reflection can be understood as
a creative act of professional knowing, we will now turn to the specific example of Self-
Reflective Shapes. This will serve to demonstrate how creative reflection practices can help
teachers to balance the tensions noted above and, in the case of the Kazakhstani trainers,
move beyond their focus on an uncritical approach to knowledge, best practice, and
passive compliance.
102 P. KIRKMAN AND S. BROWNHILL

Table 1. Freedoms and constraints of reflective traditions mapped onto the features of creative acts.
Constraint of the reflective Freedom intended through
Reflective tradition environment reflection Features of creative acts
Academic The perspective that ‘more To transform subject A) Transforms form and
subject knowledge is knowledge to foster student materials and to shape and
better’ therefore better understanding. present novel ideas.
teachers deliver more
knowledge.
Social Efficiency The need for teachers to Capability to make informed B) Personal response to
consider how their judgements about using externally defined
practice conforms to different approaches to standards.
generic standards. achieve the means and ends
of education.
Developmentalist Homogenous, rigid, To create sensitive, C) Deals with ill-defined
undifferentiated differentiated, creative and problems yet clear contexts
dull, uninspiring exciting learning contexts. and ends. Has ambiguity of
educational demands/ purpose and is intrinsically
contexts. motivating.
Social Unaware and compliant in To disrupt the cultural and D) Disruptive by fostering
Reconstructivist relation to issues of social contextual constraints and knowledge that is embodied
equity and injustice from free individuals from the rather than articulated
within culture and injustice within the status developed by restructuring
context quo. implicit understandings

The emergence of the self-reflective shapes approach

The idea of Self-Reflective Shapes emerged from a process of reflection-in-action (Schön, 1983)
and reflection-for-action (Killion & Todnem, 1991). When working directly with a group of
Kazakhstani trainers, tutors noted their discomfort at being asked to reflect on their recent
experiences of working with professionals in a variety of educational settings. Confused facial
expressions, averted eyes, and closed body language suggested that this was an uncomfor-
table activity. This assertion was validated by the interpreter who reported that participants
were happy to tell others about their lived experiences (what happened) but they were
reluctant to acknowledge aspects of their experience which were not successful (‘Everything is
positive!’), nor were they clear on what they had to do/think when tutors asked them to reflect
on why they thought things had happened the way they had and what they would do
differently if they were able to engage in the experience again. Lists of translated reflective
questions were offered to trainers in written form to promote critical discussion in small
groups but these merely served to compound their confusion, with trainers asking tutors to
‘tell them what to think/say’ in response to select questions rather than their responses being
drawn from their own understanding and thought. Anxious reflections following this experi-
ence led to the construction of a practical way to individually support teacher-trainers to
engage more confidently in reflection by breaking the process up into small parts whilst
responding positively to their noted passion for visually capturing their learning through
drawings, diagrams, and colourful images. Subsequently, the idea of Self-Reflective Shapes
was shared with Kazakhstani trainers to engage them in acts of professional knowing that
were orientated towards self-development rather than group focused work that was orien-
tated towards passive knowledge telling of ‘best practice.
Self-Reflective Shapes initially require the individual to select and draw any two-dimensional
shape on a piece of paper or on a technological device. The chosen shape can be regular in
construct – think a star/rainbow/diamond/cloud/arrow/lightning bolt – or irregular; it can
 REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 103

Figure 2. An example of a blank Self-Reflective Shape.

have personal meaning to the self-reflector (e.g. a heart) or be random in selection. For the
purposes of explanation, a flower head has been selected (see Figure 2).
Self-reflectors are then required to segment the two-dimensional shape into separate
‘compartments’ with lines – these can particular qualities chosen by the self-reflector, e.g.
thin, straight, broken, crossing over one another. Figure 1 works well as a Self-Reflective
Shape because each petal helps to effectively break the overall flower head up into six
separate parts.
The self-reflector then identifies which questions they would like to ask themselves.
These questions can come from known reflective cycles (e.g. Gibbs, 1988), publications
(journal article-based – see Moussa-Inaty, 2015), online sources, or they could be self-
devised (see Figure 3).
Once a number of questions have been identified/formulated (as many or as few as the
self-reflector wishes to focus on), self-reflectors then use these to help them self-reflect on
their learning from any of the following: a professional experience, an event/critical incident,
a conversation, an observation, a review of their progress, or a personal practice. In response
to their selected questions, self-reflectors are encouraged to commit their own self-
reflective thoughts within the spaces provided by the individual compartments of their Self-
Reflective Shape – these thoughts can be recorded in the form of words, phrases, full
sentences, ‘speech’, drawings/sketches, doodles, symbols, colours, codes, or shapes – any-
thing that has personal meaning to the self-reflector. To illustrate this, Figure 4 offers an
example of one such shape:

Lessons from self-reflective shapes

Thinking back to our framework (Table 1) which outlines how creative reflection practices
can help teachers to balance the tensions between developmental objectives, there are
104 P. KIRKMAN AND S. BROWNHILL

Figure 3. Example questions for self-reflection.

Figure 4. A Self-Reflective Shape with a series of personal question prompts.

several features of the Self-Reflective Shapes approach that promote the development of
professional knowing as a creative practice. These are highlighted in Table 2:
The final column of the table shows how self-reflective shapes present opportunities to
focus on the development of professional knowledge that acknowledges the requirement
for teachers to balance the knowledge that is explicit and tacit, personal, and social,
problem-solving with creative and conforming with disruptive. In selecting their own
shape and defining their own ‘constraints’, and in selecting their own reflective questions,
teachers are empowered to focus on and represent the tensions and intentions that are of
greatest concern in their current practice. By facilitating non-verbal responses to these
tensions, the self-reflective process overcomes the need to atomise them and thus
 REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 105

Table 2. Freedoms promoted through reflection and features of creative acts mapped onto opportu-
nities of self-reflected shapes.
Freedom intended through Opportunities in reflective
Reflective tradition reflection Features of creative acts shapes
Academic To transform subject A) Transforms form and Selecting and drawing shapes
knowledge to foster materials and to shape and and questions involves
student understanding. present novel ideas. transforming both form
and materials and offers
opportunity to express and
balance between both
explicit and tacit.
Social Efficiency Capability to make informed B) Personal response to Starting with a directed act of
judgements about using externally defined personal embodied
different approaches to standards. creativity (they choose and
achieve the means and draw their own shape and
ends of education. choose questions)
promotes balance between
shared/standardized and
personal needs and ends.
Developmentalist To create sensitive, C) Deals with ill-defined Using shape, word and image
differentiated, creative and problems yet clear contexts to express answers affords
exciting learning contexts. and ends. Has ambiguity of opportunity to balance the
purpose and is intrinsically need to address
motivating. a developmental problem
(ill-defined) with the need
to establish a creative and
stimulating context.
Social To disrupt the cultural and D) Disruptive by fostering The act of drawing the
Reconstructivist contextual constraints and knowledge that is placeholder shape and
free individuals from the embodied rather than graphic answers can serve
injustice within the status articulated developed by to disrupt the rigid, cultural
quo. restructuring implicit and contextual constraints
understandings of language. This balances
the need for safety in
conformity in a social
reflective context with the
needs to foster disruptive
thinking.

promotes more naturalistic intuitive and ‘artistic’ (Schön, 1983) responses. Notably, also,
this reflective approach is inherently less threatening as the teacher’s self-selected
responses can be well- or ill-defined and as meanings can be covert or can remain tacit.
Yet, the structured nature of the approach encourages teachers to participate in an
intentional process of thinking and acting (Švec, 2005). Through subsequent practice
and discussion exploring these meanings, a self-reflective shapes approach can also help
to transform tacit into explicit knowledge.
In the case of the Kazakhstani teacher-trainers, it was the case that this approach
helped to start the process of developing a professional reflective culture of honesty and
openness that also allowed them to manage external demands by maintaining their
protective veneer. While it is true that not all the participants came to see beyond the
pervading culture, and longstanding habits, it is that case that individual teacher-trainers
continued their process of professional development with a renewed awareness of the
freedoms that they could enjoy as creative-reflective professionals. Limitations of the
approach include the continued emphasis on representations of practice that can drift
away from acknowledging the importance of tacit knowledge and the potential for this
106 P. KIRKMAN AND S. BROWNHILL

approach to be exploited by trainers who may resist critical depth. Nevertheless, these
limitations are also true of language and action so it is hoped that this approach may at
least offer a step in the right direction.

Conclusion
In refining acts of professional knowing as creative practices, we hope to foster debate about
the intentions and environments of reflection. Self-reflective shapes are presented as one
such creative approach to reflection. It is clear that teachers work in complex contexts of
competing freedoms and constraints. It is also the case that they face increasing pressures
from the growing availability and power of big data and its associated reified knowledge.
Informed discussions about the complex intentions of educational acts and their impact on
individuals have always been a necessary precursor to strategic development. Thus, we would
argue that there has never been a more vital time to empower teachers to make informed
judgements about how to foster student understanding, to foster sensitive, differentiated,
and stimulating learning environments, and to disrupt the injustices inherent in the con-
straints of educational contexts. Having presented a framework that positions reflection as
a creative act of professional knowing and having outlined self-reflective shapes as one
practice-led approach that may offer the potential to support the development of such
practice, further research is now required into teachers’ experiences of this approach, its
utility in different educational environments and on the impact of this approach on student
attainment outcomes as well as on the more personal social and emotional aspects of
development.

Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the NIS Centers of Excellence teacher participants for their participation
during the development of the Self-Reflective Shapes approach.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Philip Kirkman is currently Principal Lecturer and Head of Education Partnerships in the School of
Education at Anglia Ruskin University. He is also the course leader for the MBA in Educational
Leadership and Management. Before this he was the Deputy Head of Department for Education and
Social Care, Cambridge. Prior to his work At Anglia Ruskin, Phil was a subject lecturer on the
Secondary PGCE course at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Before moving into
academia, Phil was a teacher, pastoral manager and department leader in secondary schools across
the UK. Phil also regularly consults and provides training for educational professionals, internation-
ally and in the UK.
Dr. Simon Brownhill, FHEA is a Lecturer in Education (Teaching and Learning) at the School of
Education, University of Bristol. He principally teaches on the MSc Education programme, serving as
the Teaching and Learning Pathway Lead. He was previously a Senior Teaching Associate in the
Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, working in international contexts as part of the
 REFLECTIVE PRACTICE 107

Education Reform and Innovation team. A former Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education and
Social Sciences at the University of Derby, Simon taught on a number of undergraduate and
postgraduate education-based courses, contributing heavily to the Initial Teacher Training pro-
grammes (BEd Primary and PGCE), and setting up and co-coordinating the PGCE 3–7 route for
several years. Prior to working in Higher Education, Simon was a qualified primary school class
teacher, gaining experience of teaching across the full 3–11 age range. He also worked as an
Assistant Head teacher of the Early Years (3–6) in a large, culturally diverse, inner city primary school.

ORCID
Philip Kirkman http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8113-8404
Simon Brownhill http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9155-5252

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