This book explores the concept and facilitation of critical reflection and its implications for professional practice. It draws on the author’s own extensive experience to demonstrate how reflective processes involving metaphor and imagery, as well as critique, can be used not only to understand and articulate key values underpinning professional practice and to generate new theoretical models, but to explore one's own worldview, including the ultimate question: 'Who am I?’. The author incorporates practical examples of reflection-through-writing and other reflective techniques which illustrate how ideas about critical reflection, transformative learning, authenticity and spirituality are intricately entwined within theories and practices of adult learning and professional development. The book highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between personal worldviews, values and professional practice. It draws on the concepts of vocation and professional psychological wellbeing to consider what it means to act authentically as a professional within an audit culture. The book will be invaluable for practitioners, academics and students interested in critical reflection, educational inquiry, autoethnography and the use of the self in and as research, the nature and use of metaphor, and the development of worldviews.
Table of Contents:
Part I: ‘Of Dots and Dragons’.- Chapter 1: Joining the Dots.- Part II: ‘Shifting Shadows’.- Chapter 2: Understanding Reflective Practice.- Chapter 3: Reflecting on Facilitating and Doing Reflective Practice.- Chapter 4: Speaking Metaphorically.- Part III: ‘Encounters with Elephants’.- Chapter 5: Shaping a Unique World.- Chapter 6: Walking the Talk.- Chapter 7: Spiralling Around Spirituality.- Part IV ‘Only the Trying’.- Chapter 8: Seeking Integration.
About the Author :
Cheryl Hunt is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. She has designed and facilitated numerous academic and professional development programmes involving the theory and practice of critical reflection. She is the Founding and Chief Editor of the international, interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Spirituality.
Review :
"This exceptional book ... . This book has much to offer those researching children's spirituality. ... Through a critical review of her own personal and professional life's journey, Hunt teases out many of the questions research in the spiritual realm must address. One of the lessons from her very rich interdisciplinary approach is that the act of writing is itself, as Richardson argued, 'a method of discovery and analysis' which discloses that form and content are inseparable." (Noel Keating, International Journal of Children's Spirituality, Vol. 28 (2), 2023)
"The scholarly rigour is evidenced in the writing, the ample reference list and endnotes. ... The writing is rich and buoyant ... . There is a refined professional voice in the writing ... . I would like to see Cheryl Hunt's book on the reading list of several of these courses for its capacity to enrich the literature offered and provide practices and models applicable to the curriculum, adult education, community development, medicine and mental health fields." (Kelli Nigh, International Journal of Lifelong Education, Vol. 41 (2), 2022)
"This book is an excellent re-source for academics in this field, prac-tice teachers as well as practitioners themselves who want to continue as lifelong learners and continue to hone their critical reflection skills and their understanding of the significance of spirituality in practice. ... This book will have resonances beyond education, and I highly recommend it as a well written, sophisticated text which should become an essential book in this field." (Sally Nash, Spirituality Studies, Vol. 8 (1), 2022)
"Cheryl Hunt's book presents an inspiring personal and professional journey. Also, it is theoretically rich and well-founded as it introduces a wide range of important theoretical models and approaches including action research, meaning-making, autoethnography, embodied knowledge, cooperative inquiry, psychological wellbeing, and mindfulness." (Laszlo Zsolnai, Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, Vol. 19 (1), 2022)
"The combination of critical reflection, spirituality and professional practice sets off alarm bells for many people involved in education or research. ... I do hope that the book is read in such an explosive way ... . The book deserves a wide readership, and deserves to set off lively debates. ... This is a marvellously satisfying ending, one that might persuade the most sceptical of people to read this book. I hope so." (Julian Stern, Journal for the Study of Spirituality, March 17, 2022)
"This is a rich book, in which Cheryl does indeed provide a fascinating and detailed 'worked example' of what it means to continuously ask the question 'Who am I', and - through critically reflective practice - to follow where it takes her. Any reader who shares an interest in the same core question will find Cheryl's narrative an invaluable source of support and wisdom to guide them on their own journey." (Joan Walton, Paradigm Explorer, Vol. 3 (137), 2021)
