An Autoethnographic Exploration of Learning and Teaching Reflective Practice

Learning and demonstrating reflective skills for practice is a key requirement for students and practitioners in Social Work in Australia. Yet teaching and assessing reflective practice continues to present a number of practical and ethical issues for educators. This paper will discuss reflective practice in the context of an autoethnographic study that researched learning to be a social worker and educator. The findings from the study suggest that educators should be cautious about the extent to which educational activities direct attention to student selves for the purposes of building skills in reflective practice. The conclusions suggest that the moral order of the discipline, the hidden curriculum and the course culture in addition to the actual activities can have a significant impact on the extent to which reflective practice assessments deliver learning benefits to students.