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Self-help is among the world’s best-selling literary genres… projected to reach 13 billion USD by 2022 in the United States alone (LaRosa, 2018). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, for example, has sold more than twenty-five million copies in forty languages since its publication in 1989. Archeologists suggest, however, that the progenitor of self-help books might be the Sebayt, an ancient Egyptian instruction guide for living a verdant life (“A Short History…”). And some sociologists view the Bible as history’s most successful self-help book (McGee, 2007), with its seemingly endless array of lessons for humanity, which are expressed in the form of parables.
According to Kemmis (2010), teachers are people too, often engaging in self-help activities of their own. It is not uncommon, he explained, for teachers to engage in an exercise which he dubbed a reading— an exploration of…
an act, an episode, or a life of professional practice… to make one’s own judgement— which may disagree with the judgement of others— of the quality of the practice on this or that occasion or over that whole life. Such a reading is not a measure or an assessment, it is an elucidation of the way in which the act or episode or life holds up as a consistent, developing effort to realize the distinctive ends and goods of the practice (MacIntyre, 1982) in one’s own life, in the lives of others with whom one works, and in a society (p. 143).
Kemmis’ notion of a reading evinces the broader discourse on reflective practice which has existed for decades in the field of education. In his 1910 book How We Think, for example, John Dewey (1910) outlined a specific cognitive mode which he called reflective thinking, and which, he argued, was essential to teacher (and student) learning. Hoyle (1974) and Stenhouse (1975) both cited reflective practice as a distinguishing feature of teachers who become extended professionals. And Moore (2000) proposed that teachers ought to consider themselves as researchers, in addition to practitioners, because effective teaching concerns not only the acquisition of skills and knowledge, but also the ability “to reflect constructively upon on-going experience as a way of developing those skills and knowledge and improving the effectiveness of one’s work” (p. 128).
This discourse on reflective practice in the field of education was mirrored in the seminal work of Donald Schön (1983), the MIT social scientist who explored how professionals in various fields (engineering, architecture, management, psychotherapy, and town planning) solve problems. Drawing on the work of John Dewey, Schön theorised reflective practice as the process by which professionals become aware of their implicit knowledge, and learn from their experience. He demonstrated that problems can be solved through professional artistry, rather than a more technical-rational application of science. And he proposed that reflection occurs both during and after problem-solving— reflection in action, and reflection on action.
By extension, therefore, professionalisation requires development in reflective practice. Indeed, as suggested by Mamede et al. (2011), “reflection on experience is the basic mechanism for learning and improvement of professional practice” (p. 10). Fontaine (2018), for example, called for reflection to be an integral component of the continuing professional development model of registered veterinarian nurses. Reidsema et al. (2010) argued that reflective practice will help to professionalise engineers, weaning them “off convergent and quantitative methods of solving highly structured textbook problems towards more divergent and qualitative methods of solving ill-structured ‘real-world’ problems” (p. 1). And more than 30 years ago, Velayutham and Perera (1992) suggested that a reflective practitioner professional development model would equip accounting professionals with the flexibility which is paramount in the increasingly dynamic business world.