Building Professional Practice Education Cultures in the Online Environment - Information Communication Technologies for Human Services Education and Delivery - page 126

reflection, particularly as they relate to the practice
education experience and the online seminar. In
this conceptual framework critical reflection is
informed by the traditions of reflective practice,
reflexivity, postmodernism and deconstruction,
and critical social theory. Each of these compo-
nents is discussed below.
Reflective practice borrows from the work
of Argyris & Schon (1974), building upon the
premise of “reflection on action.” In this process,
the event of note is in the past, and the social work
student uses the incident to consider, more deeply
than is possible in the moment, the uses of formal
theory, the complexities of the situation, and the
personal reactions that were engaged. This process
is considered useful in honing practice theories that
are responsive to context and therefore dynamic.
Given the concern that formal theory sometimes
becomes irrelevant or at least somewhat distanced
from practice situations, the processes of reflective
practice allow for analysis of the inconsistencies
that are experienced when theories are applied.
Reflexivity refers to the ability and practice of a
social worker or social work student to locate her/
himself in the picture of what is happening, in order
to analyze how one's own self influences the social
work act. In other words, this self-critical approach
includes understanding how one's relationship to
power is implicated in one's social work practice.
Power here is considered in accordance with the
Foucauldian conceptualization: a component of
individual agency, available to all through social
performances as well as through social locations
and social structures. This use of reflexivity aligns
with the critical social science research traditions
as well, in seeking to make transparent the ways
in which we in social work can be complicit in
oppressive relations of power, undermining the
very emancipatory actions to which we aspire.
This analysis of power calls on postmodern
influences, as the invoking of Foucault suggests.
The postmodern turn on knowledge creation sup-
ports a call for social work theory that is rooted
in practice wisdom and the subjective, interpre-

tive knowing stance. Here we see a rejection of
the traditional tendency to value objectivity and
distance, privileging the academic to the practice
base of theory broadly, and in social work as well.
Deconstructing claims to truth and veracity takes
centre stage here, from an epistemological vantage
point that seeks to honour the subjugated voice
of the front line social worker.
Finally, the consciousness provided by critical
social theory is that social structures, policies,
laws and codes of conduct play a significant and
concrete role in people's lives. Notwithstanding
an analysis of power that understands the dis-
cursive, tacit movement of influence, intention,
performance and positioning, the emphasis on
critical social theory makes clear that the effects
of racism, poverty, misogyny, heterosexism and
classism, to name only a few, are experienced as
real and as true (Mullaly, 2007). Social workers
need to have an analysis of these structural op-
pressions.
The process of critical reflection is one means
through which to deconstruct the personal chal-
lenges to the political realities of the social work
field, present in every practice encounter. Criti-
cal reflection provides a means through which
to unpack both personal and social assumptions,
examining their relationships to material and
discursive power; it is a means through which to
'look both inwards and outwards to recognize con-
nections with social and cultural understandings'
(Fook, 2002, p.2). When we expose to scrutiny
relationships of domination and oppression, which
are structurally rooted and personally experienced,
we may indeed be engaged in transforming the
social structures that perpetuate inequity and
injustice.
Clearly, this practice framework is ideologi-
cally positioned. It demands different criteria for
the evaluation of theory and practice than that
promoted by positivist epistemologies: it refutes
the priority, even the capacity, of the worker to
stand objectively outside of her own experiences
when assessing the lives of others. It denies that