Reflective practice

Answer

Introduction

Reflective practice is one of the foundations of professional development as it leads to social work practitioners making meanings from experiences and thus transforming the insights into practical strategies for both personal growth and improvement of a situation (Gardner and Tang, 2014, p.258). Reflection entails practitioners integrating various activities into daily life and thus raising awareness, promoting critical analysis, and aiding in not only self-management but also decision-making. According to Shcon (1991), reflection entails people having a conversation with the situation and taking the specific situation as a physical reality. Additionally, people should also pay attention to conversations with social reality as well as the diverse stakeholders of the problem. Two kinds of reflection exist- reflection-in-action, and reflection-on-action (Schon, 1991). This paper provides a reflection on how as a social worker, I acted on a case study of a woman in a marriage where she is discriminated against based on her gender, using gender and feminist theories.

Reflection-In-Action

In the reflection-in-action, people tend to have the cognitive habit of observing how they think in the process of action and then adapting their thoughts to the requirements of the change that they seek to achieve. According to Schon (1991), reflect-in-action explains how a professional utilizes an action, and that action generates an effect on the situation. In the present case, the woman makes a move by requiring his husband’s nephew; a 14-year old, to prepare some rice for lunch. Such a move resulted in an effect which was the husband being irritated and viewing the action as that of “turning a young man into a woman.” In such a situation, as a social worker, I provided the woman with counselling especially on the importance of staying clam because of the baby that she was carrying (Hammond & Czyszczon, 2014). Additionally, I explained to her husband about the importance of equality and love especially at the time when they were expecting a baby. I tried to change the narrative immediately to ensure that the marriage does not break down because of such issues. Such an action succeeded in ensuring that the situation was diffused and calm was restored (Hudak & Giammattei, 2014). However, in the future, I will ensure that I offer continued marriage counselling to the couple to make sure that they understand that times have changed where kitchen duties were the preserve of women.

Reflection-On-Action

This reflection-on-action is the type of reflection which is done after an action has already finished. In specific, it entails reconstruction of the experience based on the events that an individual can remember about an action (Schön, 2017). As such, people reflecting-on-action will make efforts towards stepping back into an experience, exploring their memory, and retrieving what they can remember. In the case study, after the action of telling the 14-year old to prepare some rice and after her husband had scolded her for her actions, as a social worker, I tried to reconstruct the actions and established that she was not only discriminated because of her gender but also treated as an inferior person (León, 2016, p.75). As such, I found it important to undertake the couple via extensive marriage counselling every week (Wiebe & Johnson, 2016). The counselling aimed to ensure a healthy and effective communication. The marital concerns which I established after the action had finished were one of one spouse not understanding the other especially when it came to the house chores. As such, counselling acted as a way of mediating to ensure that the couple can live happily and can communicate when they have similar marital problems (Wetchler et al., 2014). Such an action bore fruits as happiness was restored. However, in the future, I will make sure that I provide the counselling regularly to avert as and prevent the marital issues from arising.

Conclusion

Conducting a reflection is one of the ways of making meaning from experience as well as transforming insights into practical strategies for personal growth. Reflection-in-action entails observing how we think in the process of action while reflection-on-action happens immediately after the action and involves reconstruction of experience. Based on the case study of a discriminated pregnant women, a reflection-in-action entailed me; as a social worker providing immediate counselling to calm down the situation and diffuse the issues which were arising. However, reflection-on-action involved an extensive marriage counselling where I explained to the couple the importance of communication in the resolution of marital problems. Yet, in the future, I will ensure that I counsel the couple before issues arise to ensure a happy marriage.