This document summarizes a workshop on using reflective practice as a catalyst for change. It discusses concepts like agency, reflection, and critical reflection. It outlines questions from Tony Ghaye about defining goals and measuring success for change initiatives. The document also discusses methods for reflection from authors like Mezirow, Dewey, and De Bono. During the workshop, participants shared experiences, reflected on memories from a writing exercise, and discussed progress in their arts modules.

1. All Module Session
BAPP Arts
13th October 2015
Theme
Considering ‘reflective
practice as a catalyst for
change’

2. BA (Hons) Professional Practice in Arts
What do you want to change?
How does the idea
of ‘agency’ relate to
your arts practice?
How can reflection
add to this process?

3. Tony Ghaye’s questions
as starting points
1. Why do we need to change this practice or workplace?
2. Who and what can realistically be changed?
3. How can we make change happen through the
practices of reflection?
4. How can we turn change into improvement?
5. How will we know that the new situation is indeed an
improvement on the past?
6. How can we sustain improvement?
BAPP Arts questions were more basic but similar…
This is from an editorial Ghaye (2015) Refection as a catalyst for change, Reflective
practice, 6:2, 177-187.

4. Defining ‘agency’ - active learning
“Anthony Giddens addressed the concept of agency in his
outline of the theory of structuration (1984)…Giddens
understands human action and consequent events as
agentic only when the action is intentional from the
perspective of the actor. Such behavior is the opposite
of a mere responsive reaction (Giddens, 1984).”
From What is agency? Conceptualizing professional agency at work (2013)
Anneli Eteläpelto, Katja Vähäsantanen, Päivi Hökkä, Susanna Paloniemi
So agency is about your being a person who actively
makes changes to your practice. The concept means
that you can be the driving force behind change.

5. “Reflexivity
 “turning back on itself” (Steier)
 Awareness of the role of self in the making of knowledge –
awareness of “positionality”
Reflectivity
• Reflection involves the ability to deconstruct (own) assumptions
(Schon) and learn from experience (Dewey)?
• Therefore being reflective aids awareness of self and ability to be
reflexive?
• The “critical” element” – recognition of the power dimensions of
knowledge making and seeking to destablise these for social justice”
Defining reflexivity and reflectvity
from Jan Fook (2014)
This quote was part of the presentation Fook gave at Middlesex University for the DProf programme.

6. Ghaye’s discussion
“Failure, or fear of it, can be a powerful catalyst for change.”
“Interestingly some (Sitkin,
1996) have argued that
failure stimulates a greater
willingness, or readiness, to
consider alternatives. It can
encourage us to be more
critical of current working
practices.”
“For example Sitkin (1996)
suggests that success can lead to
actions that preserve
the status quo, an avoidance of
risk-taking, an over-confidence
from practitioner and possibly
action where practitioners become
blind to even more effective ways
of doing things.”
Ghaye suggests these might be
extremes… but failure and
success might make us think
differently.

7. Tony Ghaye’s editorial discussion
1. What are we trying to accomplish?
This helps us focus on the change we wish to make, on how we
would like things to be better and what would constitute success.
Having a clear and agreed view of how we plan to
improve the current situation is vital. We also need to
know what criteria we are going to use in order to make a
judgement about the relative success or failure (worthwhileness)
of our actions. Some criteria can and should be pre-specified.
Other criteria might emerge naturally during the course of action.
This three quotes are from the editorial by Ghaye (2015) Refection as a catalyst for change,
Reflective practice, 6:2, 177-187.

8. Ghaye’s discussion continued
2. What practical action can we take that might
lead to success?
This is about being realistic and pragmatic. Staff
might usefully ask themselves, ‘What have other people done
that we could try?’ It is often a good idea to try to gather as
many ideas as we can before we act. An appreciation of your
sphere of influence might also be helpful. In other words staff
might usefully ask ‘what is it we feel we can do’.

9. Ghaye’s discussion continued
3. How will we know that something is a success?
This can be a tricky question. Clearly not all change is a
success. Not all change improves the existing situation. Much
depends on the evidence used to make such judgements and
how it is interpreted. We must not forget that
important attributes of either success or (relative)
failure cannot always be easily measured.

10. Ghaye’s challenges
“The challenge is to
develop the ‘right’
reflective processes,
with the right people, at
the right time and with
the right purpose(s) in
mind.”
Can you relate this to
your experience?
“In many organizations efforts
to establish and sustain
cultures of reflection collide
with hostile cultures of
positivism, performance
targets and means-ends
instrumentalism.”
Workplaces exist with ‘givens’
so you need to consider what
your workplace requires in
your planning and reflection.

11. Ghaye’s suggestions from Dewey
“Dewey was opposed to the idea of ‘routine action’ and suggested
personal qualities needed for reflection:
● Open-mindedness which enables us to be receptive to different
views on significant issues. It is an openness to a plurality of ways
of noticing, understanding and working
towards improving practice and policy.
● Responsibility in pursuing intentional action designed to bring
about improvements in practice. This involves putting our
achievements and successes ‘under pressure’ from public scrutiny.
● Wholeheartedness in our commitment to pursue something
worthwhile”
Dewey offers some suggestions on how to think about change in your
workplace - personal qualities for a change agent?

12. Ghaye’s critical reflection
“Critical reflection is gaining popularity. It is caught up with
terms like emancipation and liberation.
The theoretical underpinning for it is offered by critical theory.
This involves a look at the way history, identity
construction, power, politics and different discourses for
example, affect the way we feel, think and act in particular
settings.”
Critical reflection refers to ideas that might inform your thinking
about change.

13. Mezirow – someone who talks about change
through learning
p. 11 “ Learning is a dialectical process of interpretation in which
we interact with objects and events, guided by an old et of
expectations. Normally, when we learn something, we attribute
an old meaning to a new experience. In other words, we use our
established expectations to explicate and construe what we perceive
to be the nature of a facet of experience that hitherto has lacked
clarity or has been misinterpreted. In transformation learning,
however, we reinterpret an old experience (or a new
one) from a new set of expectations, thus giving a new
meaning and perspective to the old experience.”
Mezirow, Jack (1991) Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning San Francisco,
Jossey –Bass Publishing

14. Ghaye’s suggestions for critical reflection
“For me this critical disposition also includes our ability to critique a body
of knowledge and routine customs and practice.”
Some of the important elements of critical action which might be worth
reflecting on are: (text in black is quoted)
● The political and trying to lobby for and influence change.
Political here could mean the ‘politics’ of the workplace – so what is
considered normal ‘custom and practice’
● Constantly holding under review (critiquing) our relationship with
organizational structures and systems.
Thinking about your own practice and the practice of others.
● Engaging positively with forms of political oppression and
repression in the places where we work and particularly in debates
about who gets what, where and how.
Working toward fairness and following the debates about your area of
practice – utilising the university’s ethical processes.

15. Ghaye’s suggestions for creative reflection
“There are many knowledge enabling processes that help
us to be more creative. For example there is
brainstorming, reframing matrix activities, concept
fans, random input tasks and provocation techniques.
The use of de Bono’s six thinking hats, six action shoes
and six value medals (de Bono, 2005) can also be
particularly helpful.”
This is about mind mapping and thinking through creative acts - how
do you create?
Here is what Ghaye is talking about for De Bono if you have never
heard of him…
http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php

16. What we did at the workshop
1. We introduced ourselves - we talked about the ideas around
reflection, agency and how these could be interpreted in the various
workplaces. We talked about reflective practice and change.
1. We did a ‘Memoir“ exercise with continuous writing (taken from an
article by Hartog (2005) – so we wrote for 5 minutes about a memory
- then we discussed how we could reflect upon the memories using
key words from the writing – often concept words help us to unpack
the writing and lead to developing a way to look up what others have
said about the concepts that have emerged from reflection
2. We drew ‘heads’ to find out what was in our ‘unconscious’ minds at
the moment and to use our creative side!
3. We caught up on the various modules and the progress people were
making. Really a great discussion. More discussion is on the blogs.