Reflective Practice in Physiotherapy Education: A critical conversation

Physiotherapy, like many other professions, has adopted the notion of reflective practice as a desirable and necessary attribute of the competent practitioner. This article describes how reflective practice is currently conceptualised and interpreted by practising physiotherapists and undergraduate physiotherapy students. The research, which took the form of qualitative interviews and workshops, highlights both contextual differences in patterns of reflection among practitioners and practical differences in modes of reflection of practitioners and students. Findings are contextualised by reference to the demands of the task-oriented culture characteristic of the current National Health Service. The potential of reflective practice as a social and political tool for practitioners in the workplace, if reconceptualised as a dialogical process, is examined. Although these issues are debated and illustrated with reference to physiotherapy practice, they are likely to have wider relevance for other professions and subject areas within higher education.