The power of reflection: making reflective practice power-sensitive

This paper aims to strengthen reflective practice by amending it with a better understanding of power relations. We address the critique that power relations have not received enough attention in reflective practice. We take the core components of the cyclical conception of reflective practice – routinized action, encounter of surprise, reflection and new action – and amend these with Mark Haugaard’s understanding of reification. This concept signifieshow arbitrary power relations appear as more than social constructs and hence are stabilized into a given social order. Amending reflective practice à la Gibbs and Schön with the concept of reification, we design a model, The Reflection Cycle, which is tested through practical trials. These are conducted with facilitators of communication to generate insights of relevance to the relational professions where reflective practice is applied. We analyze the facilitators’ written reflections, observe them reflecting, and interview them about their reflection experience. We find that amending reflective practice with the concept of reification can enable practitioners to destabilize their taken-for-granted systems of meaning and generate ideas about how to restabilize these, to allow for a broader action repertoire. Our contribution to the theory of reflection is to outline a novel conception of power-sensitive reflective practice.