‘Doing’ reflective practice and understanding spirituality as a way of being: Implications for professional and transformative practice

ABSTRACT

This article is based on the keynote lecture which the author gave at the Seventh International Biennial Conference of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality (INSS) at the South East Technological University (SETU) in Waterford, Ireland, on 16 May 2023. The conference title was Spirituality, Critical Reflection and Professional Practice in an Uncertain World. The article addresses the question of what it means to ‘do’ reflective practice, and what makes reflective practice ‘critical’. It then explores different ways of knowing, drawing on John Heron’s (1996) ‘pyramid of fourfold knowing’, and points to a possible relationship between these ways of knowing, spirituality and professional practice. The article concludes with some thoughts on the transformative potential of understanding spirituality in the context of both reflective and professional practice, and how this relates to the concept of authenticity.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflective practice
• critical reflection
• spirituality
• ways of knowing
• professional practice
• transformative learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 British Association for the Study of Spirituality. For details of the development of BASS and its transition to INSS, plus details of all previous conferences, see https://spiritualitystudiesnetwork.org/The-BASS-INSS-story Accessed June 02, 2023.

2 ‘Outcomes-based assessment’ and ‘constructive alignment’ (Biggs 1999) still lay in the future.

3 https://blueislandpress.com.au/shop/artists/judy-horacek/large-cards-judy-horacek/bip-5f94/ (Accessed June 18, 2023).

4 Hunt (2006) contains further explanation, and also notes that James’s client’s imagery was not entirely idiosyncratic: turtles are part of several creation stories among indigenous peoples as well as in Eastern mythologies.

5 The ‘Rubin Vase’ is named after Danish psychologist, Edgar Rubin, who introduced the concept of two-dimensional ‘reversing’ forms in his doctoral thesis in 1915.

6 Images derived from https://pixabay.com/ (Accessed March 30, 2023).

7 See McGilchrist (2019) for a discussion about the ‘divided brain’. He refers to the left hemisphere as the ‘speaking hemisphere’. As far as I am aware, he does not make reference to Heron but much that McGilchrist attributes to the right hemisphere seems to be associated with Heron’s concepts of Presentational and Experiential knowledge. For example, as if to confirm what I said above about technical rationalists tending to regard these forms of knowledge as ‘irrational’, McGilchrist argues that: ’The left hemisphere relies on concatenations of serial propositions and the literal aspects of language to make meaning explicit; by contrast, metaphor and narrative are often required to convey the implicit meanings available to the right hemisphere, and in a left-hemisphere-dominated culture, metaphors and narratives are disregarded as myths and fables or, at worst, downright lies’. (xxiii)

8 Verse LII. The full poem is available at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45112/adonais-an-elegy-on-the-death-of-john-keats. (Accessed March 30, 2023).

9 Heron (1996, 188) suggests that where the Void ‘first breaks into the manifest it appears as a finite locus, the centre of reference that is the distinct person’.

10 The image I chose to represent the Void contains subtle swirls of turquoise against a dark blue/black background. Bearing in mind what I said earlier about ancient beliefs associated with turquoise, my intention was to signify the ‘powerful vibrations’ connecting humanity with the ‘great unknown’. However, I think my choice of this particular image may have been influenced by pictures of deep space, neglecting their overtones of being cold and inhospitable. When a conference participant observed that ‘Void’ suggests ‘nothingness’ and might therefore be associated with existential nihilism rather than spirituality, I wonder whether it was with such an association in mind. I agree that Heron’s terminology is not ideal but I could probably have done it better justice by choosing a more positive image – perhaps something shining white and evocative of the ‘radiance of Eternity’. (Images do speak!) The ‘overlapping’ in Figure 6 of the Void image with Experiential knowledge and the bottom of the ‘box’ is deliberate. It is intended to represent the ‘emergence’ and ‘embodiment’ of the Void/Spirit in the ‘manifest’ – the material world.

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Cheryl Hunt

Dr Cheryl Hunt is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK, where she was Director of the Professional Doctorates Programme in the School of Education and responsible for the HEA-Accredited University-wide Certificate in Academic Practice. She is a founding member, Director (Research and Scholarship) and Trustee of the International Network for the Study of Spirituality (INSS) and the founding editor and former Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for the Study of Spirituality. She has worked, published and lectured extensively in the fields of adult and community education, critical reflective practice in professional contexts, and spirituality studies.