Critical Reflection, Spirituality and Professional Practice

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Part I

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-2

      PDF

   2. Joining the Dots

      • Cheryl Hunt

      Pages 3-26

3. Part II

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-28

      PDF

   2. Understanding Reflective Practice

      • Cheryl Hunt

      Pages 29-62

   3. Reflecting on Facilitating and Doing Reflective Practice

      • Cheryl Hunt

      Pages 63-92

   4. Speaking Metaphorically

      • Cheryl Hunt

      Pages 93-120

4. Part III

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 121-122

      PDF

   2. Shaping a Unique World

      • Cheryl Hunt

      Pages 123-150

   3. Walking the Talk

      • Cheryl Hunt

      Pages 151-183

   4. Spiralling Around Spirituality

      • Cheryl Hunt

      Pages 185-223

5. Part IV

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 225-226

      PDF

   2. Seeking Integration

      • Cheryl Hunt

      Pages 227-275

6. Back Matter

   Pages 277-319

   PDF

This book explores the concept and facilitation of critical reflection and its implications for professional practice. It draws on the author’s own extensive experience to demonstrate how reflective processes involving metaphor and imagery, as well as critique, can be used not only to understand and articulate key values underpinning professional practice and to generate new theoretical models, but to explore one's own worldview, including the ultimate question: 'Who am I?’. The author incorporates practical examples of reflection-through-writing and other reflective techniques which illustrate how ideas about critical reflection, transformative learning, authenticity and spirituality are intricately entwined within theories and practices of adult learning and professional development. The book highlights the importance of understanding the relationship between personal worldviews, values and professional practice. It draws on the concepts of vocation and professional psychological wellbeing to consider what it means to act authentically as a professional within an audit culture. The book will be invaluable for practitioners, academics and students interested in critical reflection, educational inquiry, autoethnography and the use of the self in and as research, the nature and use of metaphor, and the development of worldviews.

• Reflective practice and learning
• Spirituality and education
• The self and learning
• Image semiotics
• Metaphor and learning

“This exceptional book … . This book has much to offer those researching children’s spirituality. … Through a critical review of her own personal and professional life’s journey, Hunt teases out many of the questions research in the spiritual realm must address. One of the lessons from her very rich interdisciplinary approach is that the act of writing is itself, as Richardson argued, ‘a method of discovery and analysis’ which discloses that form and content are inseparable.” (Noel Keating, International Journal of Children's Spirituality, Vol. 28 (2), 2023)

“The scholarly rigour is evidenced in the writing, the ample reference list and endnotes. … The writing is rich and buoyant … . There is a refined professional voice in the writing … . I would like to see Cheryl Hunt’s book on the reading list of several of these courses for its capacity to enrich the literature offered and provide practices and models applicable to the curriculum, adult education, community development, medicine and mental health fields.” (Kelli Nigh, International Journal of Lifelong Education, Vol. 41 (2), 2022)

“This book is an excellent re­source for academics in this field, prac­tice teachers as well as practitioners themselves who want to continue as lifelong learners and continue to hone their critical reflection skills and their understanding of the significance of spirituality in practice. … This book will have resonances beyond education, and I highly recommend it as a well written, sophisticated text which should become an essential book in this field.” (Sally Nash, Spirituality Studies, Vol. 8 (1), 2022)

“Cheryl Hunt’s book presents an inspiring personal and professional journey. Also, it is theoretically rich and well-founded as it introduces a wide range of important theoretical models and approaches including action research, meaning-making, autoethnography, embodied knowledge, cooperative inquiry, psychological wellbeing, and mindfulness.” (Laszlo Zsolnai, Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, Vol. 19 (1), 2022)

“The combination of critical reflection, spirituality and professional practice sets off alarm bells for many people involved in education or research. … I do hope that the book is read in such an explosive way … . The book deserves a wide readership, and deserves to set off lively debates. … This is a marvellously satisfying ending, one that might persuade the most sceptical of people to read this book. I hope so.” (Julian Stern, Journal for the Study of Spirituality, March 17, 2022)

“This is a rich book, in which Cheryl does indeed provide a fascinating and detailed ‘worked example’ of what it means to continuously ask the question ‘Who am I’, and – through critically reflective practice – to follow where it takes her. Any reader who shares an interest in the same core question will find Cheryl’s narrative an invaluable source of support and wisdom to guide them on their own journey.” (Joan Walton, Paradigm Explorer, Vol. 3 (137), 2021)

“Drawing on a wide swathe of fascinating literature on reflection, transformative learning, autoethnography and metaphor, Cheryl Hunt explores the contours of a life's experience in education. She chronicles in vivid terms how institutional and systemic tendencies to keep people isolated in functional slots are contradicted by the deepening of spirituality and the development of identity” (Stephen Brookfield, Distinguished Scholar, Antioch University, USA)

“This book builds on Cheryl Hunt’s years of scholarship in delving the linkages among the concepts of reflective practice, professional practices and spiritualty. Taken alone, these concepts are strong, yet disparate; taken together, they form a robust theoretical framework for understanding the transformative potential of reflective practice. In bringing in her insights from spirituality, poetry and narrative, Hunt creates new ways to continually create spaces for meaning making in our everyday routines. Her theoretical framework is rich in depth and in possibility for transformative learning among professionals” (Leona English, Professor of Adult Education, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada)

“Cheryl Hunt takes the reader on an illuminating exploration of her personal and professional life’s journey to determine the place of the spiritual, particularly related to using reflective practice/critical reflection in education and other professional practice settings. Using a formidable range of theoretical ideas, poetry and fiction, metaphors and images, she builds a convincing narrative that spirituality is an integral element of reflective practice and of life itself. This is a must-read for those in the health, social care and education fields and will be of interest to others wanting to understand their own professional practice more deeply” (Fiona Gardner, Associate Professor of Social Work and Social Policy, La Trobe Rural Health School, La Trobe University, Australia) 

“Understanding who and what we are in professional contexts should not be an optional extra and especially not within the neo-liberal academy which challenges many people’s motivations for becoming scholars and teachers. Within this book Cheryl Hunt takes an analytic autoethnographic approach to critically consider her lived experience over a professional lifetime, charting a route that led ultimately into the realm of spirituality. She offers an innovative view of reflective practice as transformative learning as well as demonstrating the potential of auto/biographical work to tell stories that can prompt personal and more widespread positive changes. This book will be of value to researchers and practitioners from a range of disciplinary and professional backgrounds who are interested in auto/biographical research methods, reflective and pedagogical practices, and in questions about spirituality and its implications for our professional lives” (Pat Sikes, Professor Emeritus of Qualitative Inquiry, University of Sheffield, UK)

“In this beautifully written reflection on critical reflection Cheryl Hunt combines her own story in the form of autoethnography with an exploration of critical reflection informed by the rational, the emotional, the spiritual, the metaphorical, and the mythical. In doing so, she breaks stunning new ground on the multiple ways we come to know and learn and how it all connects to critical reflection. This book is a must read for anyone teaching adults to be more critically reflective, or anyone trying to understand how their life's journey, almost as a pilgrimage journey, relates to their own continued unfolding with reflection and wisdom” (Elizabeth J. Tisdell, Professor of Lifelong Learning and Adult Education, Penn State University—Harrisburg, USA)

“Cheryl Hunt’s book has arrived at a good time in what is the worst of times: of Covid-19 ecological fragility and political sterility. The word vocation appears throughout the book, as a call to know self and other, in relationship, as deeply as we can. This is essential in giving of one’s best as a medic, teacher, community activist, health or social worker. This book is a must-read in this present moment, and in the lifelong and lifewide learning quest for the good and beautiful. It offers resources of hope for the heart and imagination, the mind and thinking, our whole embodied being and spirit, to help us to keep on keeping on. This beautifully crafted work offers help and succour to deal with abusive power, ignorance, narcissism, narrowness; and to learn to accept our own imperfections. The point is to keep trying to know our selves and others as whole psychosocial, psychospiritual, interconnected beings. In the final resort, this is what really matters” (Professor Linden West PhD FRSA, Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK)

• Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

  Cheryl Hunt

Cheryl Hunt is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. She has designed and facilitated numerous academic and professional development programmes involving the theory and practice of critical reflection. She is the Founding and Chief Editor of the international, interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Spirituality.

Policies and ethics