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Johns, Christopher
(1998).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0000d4a5
Abstract
The study aimed to develop, monitor and explore the process and outcomes of guided reflection and its impact on enabling practitioners to achieve desirable and effective caring practice. A secondary focus of the study was to monitor and explore the process and outcomes of guided reflection as a form of critical action research which may generate theoretical insights regarding its use in clinical supervisory practices.
The process referred to as 'guided reflection' was developed and used to guide this study. Guided reflection represents a form of social action research which was framed within an ontology and process of critical and reflexive phenomenology of experience between practitioners and their supervisors over a period of four years.
Whilst each guided reflection relationship was written as a critical narrative to illuminate the reflexive development of effective practice, these narratives became a secondary level of analysis to construct meta-narratives of the nature of effective work and dynamics of guided reflection. Various frameworks were developed and tested within a reflexive process that was appropriately informed and juxtaposed with extant theory to adequately interpret and present the process and ou.tc omes of the study.
The method and process of guided reflection generated two major empirical and theoretical insights.
• 'The 'Being available' framework to know effective caring practice, presented as one major exemplar of 'Pru'.
• Meta-reflection of methods and process of guided reflection. Three frameworks in particular are significant:
• 'Being available' as a parallel framework for effective supervision practice. This parallel framework supports the coherence between developmental and
research processes.
• The Model for Structured Reflection as an heuristic device for knowing reflection.
• 'Framing perspectives' as a series of integrated lenses to focus on discrete layers of learning within reflection.
The insights gained through the study have considerable significance for informing and guiding the future development of reflective practice within nursing curriculum, clinical supervision within practice, and the future development of nursing knowledge. The development of nursing knowledge is of particular significance in understanding the meaning and nuances of holistic nursing as a lived reality and have significantly contributed to the reflexive development of the Burford NDU Model: Caring in Practice. The study has become a springboard for research to gain further insight into the factors that facilitate or constrain the efficacy of guided reflection in enabling practitioners to know and realise desirable practice within everyday practice