Professional Experience and the Investigative Imagination: The Art of Reflective Writing

by Buck,Alyson

• ISBN13: 9780415195423
• ISBN10: 041519542X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-12-02
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Art of Professional Reflectionexplains how creative writing can be used successfully in the context of professional education. It argues that there is a role for this imaginative style in an area that has traditionally favored a more distances approach to reporting on the professional experience. This book makes available a new and more broadly based approach to the process of professional reflection.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Acknowledgements	xiii
List of stories and patchwork texts	xv
Reflecting on experience and the imaginative construction of meaning: writing and sharing `fictions'	1	(19)
Prologue	1	(3)
Sharing stories	4	(5)
Constructing a `patchwork text'	9	(6)
Writing fictions as a contribution to `methods' for reflection	15	(3)
Conclusion	18	(2)
The imagination of meaning: writing and interpreting stories in a professional context	20	(44)
Introduction	20	(1)
Stories	20	(4)
The Story-writing workshops	24	(40)
a story as a statement: repetition and reversal	25	(3)
Story as a projection of sympathy l empathy	28	(6)
empathy/ stereotyping/ identification	34	(3)
contrasts (I): theory and practice	37	(2)
contrasts (II): professional and client	39	(3)
contrasts (III): theatre and society	42	(2)
a ghost story	44	(3)
a story as a metaphor for practice (I): an exotic myth	47	(3)
a story as a metaphor for practice (II): a mundane allegory	50	(5)
what is a story? (I): `reflexivity': a story about writing a story	55	(3)
what is a story? (II): voices for documentary'	58	(2)
what is a story? (III): a patchwork of quotations	60	(4)
The `patchwork text': shaping meaning through the exploration of diversity	64	(43)
Introduction	64	(2)
The patchwork text	66	(4)
The `reflective writing' course	70	(37)
Opening up the ending of `a story'	72	(4)
Variations on a theme	76	(5)
Exploring a role (I)	81	(6)
`Professional' meanings in `personal' experience	87	(4)
Exploring personal `origins' for professional `skills'	91	(7)
Exploring a role (II)	98	(9)
The reflective writing course: distance-learning materials	107	(42)
Introduction	107	(39)
reflective writing, ground rules, sharing, getting started	109	(6)
beginnings endings, continuations	115	(5)
writing fiction	120	(7)
writing as exploration, moving from detail to generalisation	127	(8)
Ways of `structuring' a text, irony	135	(4)
metaphor, the variety of writing `formats'	139	(2)
constructing a `patchwork text'	141	(3)
putting together the final draft	144	(2)
Two notes for course tutors	146	(3)
Participants' views: `What was it like and what effect did it have?'	149	(16)
Participants' experience of the reflection writing course	149	(9)
The impact of the course on participants' practice	158	(3)
Responses to the story-writing workshops	161	(4)
`Breaking the mould', a case study: experiencing the reflecting writing course	165	(15)
Artistry, fiction and reflection: the strange absence of the creative imagination in professional education	180	(41)
Introduction	180	(1)
The reflective paradigm (I): a summary	181	(4)
The reflective paradigm (II): theoretical and political context	185	(10)
Reflection and `the shaping spirit of imagination'	195	(11)
From `literature' to `storying experience'	206	(4)
The multi-voiced text: collage, montage, patchwork	210	(4)
Writing and sharing fiction: an emancipatory social practice for the stroying imagination	214	(4)
Conclusion: writing and sharing fiction as an artistic practice for the reflective citizen	218	(3)
Epilogue: The professional worker and the artist - two myths of betrayal	221	(4)
Bibliography	225	(6)
Index	231